Sunday, July 24, 2022

Cape Blanco State Park & Quosatana Campground (OR)

For the drive following our departure from Eel Creek Campground, it was 58° F with dark gray skies and continuous rain. We drove the Oregon Coast Highway (U.S. Highway 101) through the towns of North Bend, Coos Bay, and Bandon. You can see just how dark and gray it was in the first photo. It was consistently a leisurely drive for the lack of traffic, which makes it more of a pleasant experience for us tourist types. Since Margaret did all of the driving on our trip, this particular scenic drive was made more memorable for me by a long phone call with my daughter. There were lots of offshore rocks, which made for a lot of white water from the breaking waves. It was very dramatic!

Bandon, Oregon. Photo by Virginia.

We arrived at Cape Blanco State Park for our next overnight camping location on 15 Sep 2019 at 2:45 p.m. The campground contained 52 campsites with electricity and potable water; we chose site #A44, which had a view of the coast through the privacy shrubs. The campground has restrooms with flush toilets and showers, trash, recycling, picnic tables, fire rings, and lots of non motorized trails—both for humans and horses. The fee per night at that time was $24.00. We saw the Cape Blanco Lighthouse from a distance, but we decided against taking the tour. Our T-Mobile signal remained unavailable; but with automatic network selection, we had a peekaboo one-bar LTE signal with U.S. Cellular, which was highly frustrating! 

Cape Blanco State Park. Photo by Virginia.

Cape Blanco State Park. Photo by Virginia.

The Roadtrek in campsite #A44 at Cape Blanco State Park. Photo by Virginia.

We left Cape Blanco State Park the following day at 11:45 a.m. The drive through the forest into Port Orford was very scenic. We stopped to utilize the Wi-Fi at Port Orford Public Library to back up our iPhones and download more content before proceeding further down the glorious coast through Humbug Mountain State Park and Gold Beach. We stopped at McKay's Market in Gold Beach and were very pleased to find that this tiny, independent market had some of our favorite and hard-to-find items, such as Bob's Red Mill Organic 7-Grain Pancake and Waffle Mix, So Delicious Creamy Vanilla Soymilk Frozen Dessert, and 2-packs of Viva Paper Towels. (When your "home" is only 85.5 sq. ft., you don't have room for 6 rolls.)

Port Orford on the Oregon Coast. Photo by Virginia.

Port Orford on the Oregon Coast. Photo by Margaret.

Humbug Mountain State Park on the Oregon Coast. Photo by Virginia.

Humbug Mountain State Park on the Oregon Coast. Photo by Margaret.

Gold Beach on the Oregon Coast. Photo by Virginia.

Gold Beach on the Oregon Coast. Photo by Margaret.

Gold Beach on the Oregon Coast. Photo by Margaret.

We drove the 15 miles from the market to Quosatana Campground in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. Our first impressions are represented in the following two photos: deer grazing in a meadow with a backdrop of heavily forested mountains and gorgeous blue skies with fluffy white clouds. We found a lovely spot (campsite #33) that backed up to the Rogue River(Funnily though, without a cell signal to check and a limited view through the trees and bushes, I called the Rogue River a "creek" in my notes!) 

Deer grazing at Quosatana Campground. Photo by Virginia.

More deer grazing in Quosatana Campground. Photo by Virginia.

The campground facilities included restrooms (although they were closed for repairs) and potable water (although we already had plenty of water and didn't need to fill up). It had started raining rather heavily at 5:00 a.m., but we were cozy inside the Roadtrek. After breakfast, it was time to get the Roadtrek ready to drive. As we were leaving, there were more deer grazing in the morning! They were so beautiful!

It was 17 Sep 2019, and off we went, continuing south on the Oregon Coast Highway again. It was still raining—perpetually lush, green, and beautiful. We enjoyed the scenery and were thinking about where we would be camping that night. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a sad, inconvenient, and second choice option. 


NOTE: Clicking on the photos in the post will open them in a larger view (recommended!). If you want to see more photos of the beautiful places we've shared, we have them in this Flickr Collection: Over the Hill Sisters Photo Collection.

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