Saturday, June 9 - to TT Whalers Rest, South Beach, OR 97366

The sun is shining as we prepare to leave Richardson Park but the forecast says snow at Willamette Pass today!  Just as well we don’t need to go that way - we are heading west to the ocean.

Leaving the wider Eugene area we drive by lots of vineyards, Christmas trees and all sorts of agriculture, even some sheep, gently rolling hills and it's very green.

The highways aren’t wide, just two opposing lanes and not much of a shoulder, wish the oncoming traffic would pay as much attention as us, especially you 'Mr Big Dirt Moving Truck' on highway 200.  Once we join Hwy 20 at Corvallis (a pretty town and we drive over both the bridges to get onto the westbound 20) the road curls and climbs gently, we don’t get above 400 feet at each of the four I think summits - these are snow zones shrouded in wet cloud at the moment.

Heading west on Hwy 20 towards those hills in the distance

We are only on the road a couple of hours and we see our first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean.

Yep, that's the Pacific on the horizon, driving into the lovely little town of Newport

An even bigger glimpse of our ocean as we drive south along the Oregon Coast Highway!

We decided to go straight toThousand Trails Whalers Rest as Larry & Lois have already arrived there and say the park is pretty full.  By the time we arrive there are only a couple of sites free so we choose 37 which is the exact opposite corner of where L&L are, looks like we will get some exercise visiting.

There are 174 sites here, in two halves separated by a road and we are only 150 yards from the ocean although that too is over the main road.  Doesn’t matter - we can hear the waves crashing. Its raining on and off so don’t get to explore much, just a walk to the office to tell them which site we are in and to check out the cable TV which is a pay for option, but just $3 a day.  However we can’t get it at our site but I'm sure I can find something else to do with the $12 we’ve saved!  And we also save the beach combing expedition for tomorrow, as long as the weather clears.  I’m going to watch for whales and I expect to see some too!

We have FHU, the site is level and we are treed in on three sides.  Not much outside room but so far we haven’t had an opportunity to be outside.  The ocean is behind us.

Photo obviously taken between the rain showers!

LL drive over for HH, it’s so nice to have fun company for HH again!  Not that we need any encouraging : )