Epic Road Trip 2017 - Day #17

Today we woke up in Sunset Bay State Park.  We had planned on seeing the 4th lighthouse on the Oregon coast from the state park, the Cape Arago Light, but we weren't able to see it.  The Cape Arago Light is not available to be seen up close by the public.  Then we left the park and went for breakfast at a local place called the Pancake Mill north of Coos Bay.  The breakfast was great and the service was just ok.  We also went to the nearby My Yarn Shop in Coos Bay that seemed to be just a small local yarn shop, but was actually a giant warehouse style yarn holding that surprised us both.

After the yarn store, we continued our tour of the Oregon coast with the Umpqua River Lighthouse, that we had previously visited in 2010 on our honeymoon.  The lighthouse had a spectacular viewpoint of the ocean nearby that we took advantage of as well.

The next stop was Heceta Head Lighthouse, where we were able to get a look at the lighthouse and a nearby rock with some sea lions.

We did manage to top that though, when we were able to see some gray whales off the overlook at the Cape Perpetua visitor center.  We had planned to get a distant view of the nearby Cape Perpetua Lighthouse, but we settled for the awesome view of the whales!

We were not expecting to be able to see the whales at this time of year, but it was fantastic.  Our next stop was in Yachats, Oregon, where we got Katy some coffee at the Green Salmon Coffee Shop and me some ice cream across the street at Toppers Ice Cream, Espresso, and Candy.  We took our goodies to the nearby Beachside State Park and sat by the beach while we enjoyed them.

We took in the sights of the coast and saw two more lighthouses (Yaquina Bay and Yaquina Head) before getting to our destination for the day; Cape Lookout State Park.  Overall, this experience on the Oregon coast has been much more pleasant than our experience in 2010, in large part due to the weather.  Back then when we came through here, it was cold and rainy, even in June.  The past few days it has been sunny, warm, and quite clear for mostly wonderful views of the coast.  Cape Lookout has a great beach that we watched the sunset on and then had a nice campfire before bed.  Tomorrow we head inland.

What We Learned: Today we learned about the Oregon dunes.  We obviously knew that Oregon had lots of coastline, but what we didn't know much about were the Oregon dunes.  The dunes are not just on the immediate coast, but rise up to 500 feet as much as two miles from the shore.  This is due to the thousands of years of wind and sea erosion that have pushed the sand back this far.  They are a major tourist attraction to the area and have been made into the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area.

For the day we traveled 178.2 miles and saw license plates from 34 states and 3 Canadian provinces.