Day 60- Tuesday - 8/18/09 - ON THE ROAD

Small World Story 2: At the Umpqua River Lighthouse Overlook, Bob meets a kindergarten classmate of his from the one-room schoolhouse he attended! They didn't recognize each other (no surprise after 60 years), but both remembered the name of their teacher, and they were born the same year.

His wife is also very nice. They live in Tampa now and we'll probably keep in touch. We have a 1-hr. conversation.

This happens every time Bob wears his "Monroe-Woodbury" t-shirt and/or his 1943 Model baseball hat.

Driving to Coos Bay, after we pass Glide, OR, we smell a horrible odor. Is it fertilizer? Carcases? Livestock? Chemicals from Roseburg?

We arrive in Coos Bay and love it already. We luck into a gigantic RV site because someone with a big rig backs out at the last minute and that was the only one this park has left. I'm excited because we are only 5 days from my sister Roz in Portland, and I can never get enough of the ocean.

Upsides: It's very posh here.
They have Bingo tonight, but Bob is not "a Bingo kind of guy" (his words).
A hedge separates our site from the next ones and there's a woods behind us.
Good Wi-Fi.

Downsides: No fire pit.
We're on asphalt, not on grass or pine needles.
There are video cameras watching us.
There is a sign that says if you don't pick up after your dog, you will be asked to leave the park.
Outdated DVD collection. (But on the other hand, we have to give them credit for at lease having DVD's, which few campgrounds do.)

On the way to dinner, we see hairy hilltops, some thick with tree-hair and some sparse and almost bald. We stop to see a herd of elk in the prairie. There are two bucks. Overheard from another passerby: "Aren't they gorgeous. Look good on the dinner table, too". To me, this does not compute. We hear the elks bugling.

After dinner at Fisherman's Grotto, (where Corinne has a calamari steak for the first time ever and finds it out of this world both in taste and texture), we go to Sunset Park on the beach for stunning views of the sun disappearing behind the horizon. The reflections on the water are gorgeous.