Move To Newport

The Whalers Rest Thousand Trails near Newport, Oregon has two sections, one on either side of the road, and everyone who has stayed there has told us the north campground is the better choice because it is more open and the chance of getting satellite TV is much better. You can’t reserve a specific site at Thousand Trails campgrounds, it’s first come, first serve, so we were hoping to get a decent site. Monday evening our friend Nancy Kissack called to tell us about a very good site that was occupied, but that the person in it was due to leave yesterday, and she advised us to get here early and hopefully we’d get lucky.

So we were awake before 7 a.m. yesterday morning and on the road a little before 9, driving through patches of fog and then blue sky. It’s only 39 miles from the Florence Elks Lodge campground to Whalers Rest, but my GPS said the trip would take 57 minutes. That because U.S. Highway 101 hugs the coastline and has lots of twists and curves that make for a slow drive.

But with scenery like this, who’s in a hurry? I’ve said many times that for my money, there is no more beautiful place in the country than the Oregon coast.

Historic Haceta Head Lighthouse is one of the most photographed points of interest along the entire coast.

We arrived at Whalers Rest just before 10 a.m. and sure enough, the site Nancy had called to tell us about was vacant. We got parked and hooked up, and I was happy to see that my rooftop TV dish locked right on. Unfortunately, if anything, the internet is worse here than it was in Florence.

This wasn’t unexpected, so I’ll have to make do with lugging my laptop down to the clubhouse to use their WiFi to post the blog and check e-mail. Since I get a lot of e-mails every day and it takes time to wade through them, deleting all of the forwards and nonsense, please, please don’t forward anything to me. I’d prefer not to spend an hour or so at the clubhouse every day dealing with them.

Once we were settled in we went over to Dan and Patty Chance’s motorhome to say hello. We have not seen them in quite a while, so it was nice to have some time to visit. Nancy was there too, so that made it even better.

Later Terry and I drove into Newport and through the historic bay front area, which is lined with shops and restaurants and was busy with tourists. We will definitely go back and spend some time there while we’re in the area. We do whenever we’re in Newport.

Then we drove up the coast a few miles to Depoe Bay, enjoying the views along the way. It was a beautiful day and  the sea was calm, so the famed spouting horns weren’t throwing water up into the air like usual, but the scenery alone was worth the trip.

By the time we got back to Newport it was after 5 p.m. and we were hungry, so we stopped at South Beach Fish Market, a small combination convenience store and seafood market that also has a few tables and serves up some delicious fish and chips, scallops, crab, and anything else that swims or lives in the water. We discovered this place a couple of years ago when we were in Newport, and it was just as delicious as we remembered.

After we finished eating we went to Nye Beach, a popular beach right in town, and spent an hour or so just watching the waves and the people enjoying the beach.

We don’t have much on our schedule for the next two weeks except for a Meet The Authors event I’ll be participating in and a tour of the aquarium, so we’re looking forward to enjoying Newport at our leisure.

Thought For The Day –   Every exit is an entry into somewhere else.