Day 32 Bandon, Oregon: Enjoying the fog

August 4, 2017

We slept in, knowing that we had a full day to relax, walk the beach and do a little grocery shopping. When we finally rolled out of bed at 8:00, I thought we had missed the early morning mist on the water – ha! Fooled me!

The fog was still pretty thick as we made our way down to the beach – thank goodness I brought my leggings! It was a beautiful morning, though, walking among all of the large rock formations and taking pictures of whatever took our fancy.

capturing the ever elusive Jim, capturing pictures

these two seagulls were sharing a little treat and did not appreciate our watching them at all!

Jim wandering the beach looking for the perfect shot

There are several rocks here with names and the lovely manager at our little motel was careful to show us pictures when we registered so that we would be able to locate them when on the beach. Sure enough, we found the elephant right away. I’m not sure that our photo is at the right angle to see it – can you tell?

We stopped back at our room for a warming cup of coffee before heading back out. This time we had to get to the grocery store. We found out yesterday that the only store in town was on the opposite hill from where we were, which meant that we would ride down our hill, through the little town and up the other hill. Oh well, it gave us a little exercise!

We found what we needed at the store to keep us stocked up for a few days and purchased a sandwich and some chips to eat in town. We had seen a Farmer’s Market on the way up and wanted to check it out before going back to our room. The market was small, but had the requisite displays of home canned goods, hand made trinkets and surprise surprise – wine! Oh rats! Too early in the day for me (plus we were going out for dinner). We sat overlooking the water and enjoyed our little lunch before heading back up our hill to the motel.

I should talk about this motel. It is very small and run by the nicest elderly lady. She is originally from Vietnam and had pictures of her son up on the wall. He is very successful in some sort of high tech business and she is obviously very proud. She has a lovely philosophy about life and living and shared her thoughts with us. They infuse the décor of this little motel so that many of the rooms have names and are decorated with a theme. Our room was Circles in the Sand. Apparently there is an artist in town who goes down to the beach on really low tide days and carves beautiful circles and labyrinths in the sand, which I imagine must be really amazing. Unfortunately, we would be doing this next the day after we left. However, we truly enjoyed staying in the little room with that theme. It was tiny, to be fair, but so sweet! We really loved our stay at Table Rock Motel and would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind small. If you are looking for a roomy place, this is not the one for you!

Marlene, I thought of you when I saw this!

even in the bathroom, such thoughtful decor

We enjoyed an afternoon siesta before heading back into town for dinner. We wanted to eat somewhere fairly nice as this was our early anniversary dinner. The first place we came to was full, but they recommended The Loft, just down the street. We enjoyed the lovely view from their second floor setting on the water, as well as the delicious food. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we forgot to take a single picture!!! But we did manage to take some pics of the local artwork on display.

there are these art pieces all over town

We stopped to pick up some fudge on our way back. We had found this shop yesterday and sampled some of their fudge and now we are hooked – good thing we are moving on tomorrow and don’t have anywhere to store fudge or we’d be in trouble!!!

Back in our room we did our usual resorting of the bags before repacking them and getting everything ready to head out in the morning. We have about 35 miles to complete to reach Humbug Park and are fairly confident we can do it, but there are options in case we are too tired. We are finding it very difficult to predict on a daily basis what mileage is best for us. Some days on this trip 20 miles has been just such a gargantuan task, and yet we did 55 miles coming up over the mountain from Eugene – go figure! At any rate, we are well rested and ready to hit the road tomorrow so let’s see how it goes!

just a couple of crazy cycle tourists enjoying yet another day!

Today's ride: 11 km (7 miles)
Total: 1,165 km (723 miles)

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