Day 20 - Florence, OR - TT

We left the Benton Oaks RV Park in Corvallis, OR, this morning. But before we left, Bridget swept off all of the acorns and leaves from the roof and especially the slide. We drove approximately two hours to South Jetty RV Park just outside of Florence on the Oregon coast. It is another Thousand Trails park. There were a handful of sites with full hookups but since we are only here for four days, we took an electric/water site. No sewer connection.

After getting things set up, we headed north on Hwy 101 to the Heceta Head lighthouse. This beach is at the parking lot for the lighthouse and it is a short walk (uphill) to the residence and the lighthouse. The residence was closed for the season which was Memorial Day to Labor Day. I guess there is a slight disadvantage to this traveling off-season.

This is the view of the lighthouse from the residence and it was operating. You could see the large lens slowly rotating and occasionally get a glint from the sun reflecting off of the lens. No one is allowed up in the lighthouse itself but one of the volunteers let me take a photo looking up the stairs. This was after their normal hours. All of the volunteers were walking down the trail ready to head for home.

There were some spectacular views from the lighthouse. The picture below is (obviously) looking south. The tide is out at this point. There were some old pictures of wagons going around the headlands on the beach at low tide carrying people and supplies. This was before the road was cut into the mountain.

We headed south again stopping at a viewpoint to get a good view of the lighthouse. We saw about a dozen sea lions swimming below the viewpoint. Shortly after that, we stopped at Sea Lion Caves. We didn't pay the $12/person fee to go down the elevator to the cave level. I had visited here about fifty years ago with my uncle and his family and friends. We went down to the cave and saw one sea lion sitting on a rock. I don't know what the current experience is but that was pretty disappointing.

We headed back to the campground and it really feels cold. High humidity and there is supposed to be rain coming in tonight and lasting for most of tomorrow. The last time we were in Florence was on the Ural trip in 2015. We didn't see much of the town except for some exploration in Old Town.