Come for the wireless access point – stay for the breakfast! Or something to that effect.
Slept very well last night at the Eel Creek campground, just down the road from Spinreel, where…well, I’ll explain that in in minute.
After wandering hungry and aimless (more the latter than the former, but) through Coos Bay, I headed over the bridge and into the Oregon Dunes. I suppose it’s fortunate at this point that I didn’t have the Pinzgauer, as I might have been tempted to go out driving in them – and no off-road trip is complete without spending hours trying to dig yourself out of sand (or mud, or snow, or whatever), right? Instead I stopped off at Spinreel, one of the many quad and dunebuggy rental places along the dunes, and rented a four-wheeler for an hour. I would have chosen a little Oddessy-style dune buggy (as brother-in-law Dave points out, it’s amusing that Honda decided to recycle the name of their single-seat dune buggy, into a minivan), but the woman talked me into a quad, and it probably performed a lot better, given my size and the fact that they seem to have detuned the machines a bit to prevent speeding. But I had a really fun time. I still have some guilt about ruining the environment for the sake of a little sightseeing and some gravity play – tho the dunes tend to fix themselves fairly well, there was a fair amount of detritus on the beach from previous riders; and of course there’s the atmostpheric considerations. But it was still a kick. The “10-mile” road out to the beach (actually about 2 miles, I guess) was especially bumpy and mogul-y, and the beach was deserted and beautiful and cold and windy, so I headed inland to the dunes. I’ve driven on dunes before, in Jeep and Land Rover and once in my dad’s brand-new pickup (he felt he needed to get stuck, the day he got the truck!), as well as on motorcycles; the quad was a lot of fun tho I think I especially like a nice low-slung powerful dune buggy. Dune diving feels nearly identical to skiing, especially the g-forces as you go up and down and sideways over incredibly smooth slopes – and the geography is strangely similar as well, with islands of forest and moguls and tree-lined paths and wide flowing open spaces.
The woman there reccommended the campground down the road, which had about one single space left, that was flat and level and had a fire, uh, angle (two pieces of steel at an angle, with a grill on top), so I burned most of the wood I had left over from my surf scooter, and my two-week-old LA Times. Drank a few of my remaining beers (better that than let them explode in the cooler!) and fell asleep to the sound of a sprinkle of heavy dew on the roof.
Will be visiting my friends the Cubbages – Britt’s parents – in Portland this evening, and possibly looking up other friends-of-friends. Not sure why people are compelled to do that (I say this recognizing that I do the same thing): “Oh, you’re driving through Tumbolia? I have a friend there, you should give them a call!” then you get to meet total strangers, somewhat randomly, and all you have to talk about is your mutual friend. But what the heck – it’s a pretense for an adventure.
