Day Thirteen Sep 11, 2000 Monday Coos Bay to Newport We woke up in Coos Bay, drove the town once or twice and headed south and east to see a nearby scenic overlook. On our way, we passed this small restaurant in Charleston overlooking a small bridge at the mouth of one of the dozens of inlets that dot Coos Bay. The hot coffee and a warm breakfast was particularly enjoyable with the cold wet weather. The house speciality was a "crab omelette" that Dave ordered (of course) and proclaimed to be the dreaded "interesting". Dave is wearing the Oregon Beaver shirt we bought in Portland on the way down. After breakfast we drove over to Shore Acres State Park and its beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean (we skipped the formal gardens, not our style). The grounds were the original homestead for a famous Lumber Baron, that made his wealth by clear-cutting the nearby spectacular trees and sending them back east as two by fours. It was fascinating to read about a time in America when natural resources were so abundant that a stand of trees or scenic glen could be viewed only for its resale value of its destruction, with no need to weigh that against the cost to humanity of its loss. Of course, that was a long long time ago, right? The Devil's Churn was the rock and shore formation pictured below where the ocean waves cause the small rectangular area to fill and drain on a slightly different rhythm than the ocean surf. I guess that early settlers saw a resemblance to a 'butter churn' in its delayed echo motion. It was first novel, then strange, that each such natural structure was attributed to Satan, with later visits to the Devil's punchbowl and Devil's elbow. This eventually became a running gag for us with many of our own inventions, the best of them being Jesse's suggestions of the "Devil's Broomcloset" and "Devil's Mixmaster". We stopped at "Seal Point", Oregon, hopeful to see some of the city's namesakes. Several brochures had tipped us off for the previous couple of days to look forward to the stop. Of course, when we arrived, NO SEALS! Actually, one seal swimming around, and dozens of interesting shorebirds. There was a charge to pass down to the seal viewing area, and the proprietor would only answer the question when placed directly: "Are there any seals today?" A little bit of dupery at work. Oh well, the picture of the nearby lighthouse was pretty too. Further north, we stopped to enjoy another scenic viewpoint at the Devil's Punchbowl. While we all took in the view from the top, Jesse felt adventurous and took the camera, following the path down to the base. Imagine the surprise after developing the film and finding this sign, warning that a "mis-step could be fatal". The pacific coastline is just a continuous presentation of beautiful scenery like this. We have several entire rolls of film capturing the infinite variations of this coastline and beach view. What a feast for the eye and delightful vacation trip. We arrived in Newport, Oregon, a little earlier than normal. We grabbed a motel room, then had the luxury of an hour or two of daylight. Lyn and Jesse visited a nearby kite store that we had passed during arrival, and bought us a ready-to-go kit. We headed to the beach area where Jesse played in the wind while Dave and Lyn enjoyed the wind and surf, the shorebirds and sunset. The shore in Newport is beneath a bluff with its walkway pictured here. The 'ants' are actually Lyn and Jesse and the kite.  We had expected to do a little bit of touristing in Newport, but both Ripley's and the Undersea Gardens had closed unexpectedly early (and we were nearly the only true tourists present). We had a simple dinner at a Chinese restaurant then took the car for a circle around Yaquina bay, a small trip that let us cross the memorable bridge twice, but ended up taking more than an hour and finished in the dark with Jesse asleep in the back seat. It was up early in the morning and continuing on our way north. Original Web Upload May 2001 Last Update: June 3, 2001