COUNTRY ROADS TAKE ME HOME

At last we are headed home! Mom is driving me nuts though because she cannot stop singing Country Roads and you outta hear her try and carry a tune! John Denver would have a heart attack. But, it's ok because my mountain mama is taking me home.

First I want to say how much we enjoyed our time in Florence and appreciate the new friends that we made. There was Paulie at the Pacific Pines RV park. If you are RV'ing through Florence, I highly recommend this park. It's like a home away from home for us now. Thank you Paulie!

Then there were Glen & Keith at the Dunham RV Service Center. These two guys were princes to work with and treated my mom really well and did great work. Believe me some of these RV places treat people like last weeks lunch. Thank you guys!

And a great big thanks to Virgie, Bill and Patrick at the Bill Roberts sign shop. They were the ones that did the sign work on Clementine and Shadow and made me look so handsome. Well, really they had a lot to work with! :)

And, last but certainly not least thank you to my friend Buddy. The little runt is a weenie dog and he bit me! Can you imagine? :) And a VERY special thanks to Buddy's mother Marilyn who drove us all over the place. It's that "blowing the coat" time of year and I left an incredible deposit of hair in the back of her SUV. She was extremely gracious about it! You don't know what shedding is until you see a husky blow its coat!

We left Florence a little late in the day and only got as far as The Locks along the Columbia River. We are headed for Spokane where we will wait for good weather and clear roads. Since our ranch is at nearly 4,000 ft. we may not be able to get all the way home. But, I don't care. We are headed in the right direction!

©Kinsey Barnard Photography

Florence to Gold Beach

We have bid fond farewell to Florence. It was a glorious day. The sun was out and the driving was easy ... or so it seemed to me.

We got into Gold Beach in time to take a walk and catch the sunset. The beaches here are beautiful and the sunset was too. There were lots of fishing boats going out for the evening and in one of these photos you can see a lonely trawler in the sunset.

Really looking forward to exploring a new location!

Ooops! I seem to have loaded the same photo twice and I'm not sure how to get rid of it so pardon me!

© Kinsey Barnard Photography

I Love My Mom But .......

This is getting to be too much! I am getting RV fever! It hasn't stopped raining for a second. The rain beating down on Clementine's roof makes it sound like living in a popcorn popper! And, it never stops popping!

Where is my snow?! I miss my snow!!! It's so beautiful and SILENT!

We tried to get some walking in yesterday. We went down to Old Town and walked along the harbor there. I wind gust came up and blew me right off the sidewalk!

The only walking I'm getting now is to take care of business. This is not my idea of fun!

Well, I could complain all day about being trapped in this RV with my mom but that won't help anything so I'll be checking back in here as soon as the weather breaks and that may not b e for another couple of days.

Florence Beaches & Rainbows

Yesterday we took a really long walk from the north jetty toward Heceta Head. It was really great except that we got absolutely drenched. The rain really came down. I didn't mind so much because that beach had so much good stuff on it to smell. It was my kind of nose candy! There were also lots of other humans walking on the beach in the rain and they all had dogs! I had a great time meeting them all. This Oregon place is pretty darned dog friendly it seems to me.

After the rain storm passed there was a perfect rainbow. Too bad mom didn't have her wide angle lens so she could have gotten the whole thing. It was something!

Also, while we were out there we were buzzed by a coast guard helicopter. That was kinda cool!

It's been cold pretty. Well, not by Montana standards but this marine air is pretty cold even though the temperature isn't that low. We have had frost in the morning.

©Kinsey Barnard

Florence, Loon Lake, Perpetua, Heceta, Yachats .....

Ok, my bad! I haven't been keeping up with






blogging! But, that's what happens when you're having too much fun.

We've done a lot of hiking and you know that makes me very happy. I can never get enough of that!

Sunday afternoon we wandered around the Port of Siuslaw which is in Florence. We also window shopped in "Old Town" which was fun cuz everyone had to make a fuss over me! Dang, if I'm not the handsomest fellow! :)

Since I last checked in we have been to Loon Lake, not very pretty in winter. The Dean Creek elk wildlife viewing place on the road over to Roseburg. I gotta say, the elk over here look like midgets compared to the ones we have in Montana. The funniest thing I saw was a seagull sitting on the sign that said "Watchable Wildlife". :)

Yesterday was the best. We were gone all day. We started out driving up the coast. Made a quick stop at Heceta Head but I wasn't even allowed out of the car so I guess there wasn't anything happening there. We continued on up to Cape Perpetua. Spent practically the whole time there. There are trails everywhere and we tried most of them. There are some really cool ones that go high up the mountain on the east side of 101 and have way good views of the ocean below.

Mom also spent a lot of time trying to photograph waves. Sounds like a stupid thing to do to me but, oh well. She musta taken a gazillion photos trying to get the "perfect" wave. How nutty is that? It must be hard though cuz she kept cussin and snapping! I thought she was going to wear that camera out! Me I was having fun watching those great big waves crash on the rocks and gettin in that foamy stuff they leave on the shore. There was also a blow hole that was really spouting. First time it went off I nearly jumped out of my skin!

From Perpetua we continued on up the coast to Yachats. It's a quaint little coastal town. We wondered around there for awhile and then headed back down the coast. We stopped in again at Heceta Head. Seems like we go in there every time we pass by. I have no idea why. Must be something mom is trying to capture.

Anyway, by the time we got back to Clementine it was nearly dark so we called it a day!

© Kinsey Barnard

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Well, we certainly hope you all had as nice a Thanksgiving as we did. We started the day with a visit to the Darlingtonia Botanical Gardens. So small is this garden we went right past it and ended up going the whole length of Sutton Lake. Oregon has this way of placing signs that completely befuddles my mom. Instead of having the signs in front of the turn, like everyone else on the planet, they have there's at the far side of the entrance . The result is mom is forever going past. Hopefully she'll get the hang of it one of these days!

We did finally find it. It's like two feet after you turn off 101. And, it's very, very tiny. The only stata park dedicated to one plant, the Darlingtonia Californica. This plant looks like something from the Day of the Trifids.

After Darlingtonia we stopped in at the Sutton River trail and walked along the river a couple of miles. We ran out of time and had to scamper back to Clementine to get ready for TG dinner.

Dinner was great! I was the center of attention, as usual. And, got spoiled rotten which is only right! Everyone was sneaking turkey to me under the table when mom wasn't looking. She has very strict rules about begging. Nanner! Nanner!

After dinner we all piled into the car and drove up to Heceta Beach. It was gorgeous up there and the perfect ending to the day. We are going back for some serious looking today.

Newport to Florence, Honeyman Park & Lake Cleawox

Yesterday we packed up our gear, well I supervised, and headed down 101 to Florence. We have a cousin who lives there and we are going to spend Thanksgiving with her.

We were greeted with sunshine on our drive south. It was very pleasant. Mom commented that she thought this part of the Oregon coast was the most picturesque we had seen yet. But, we didn't stop for anything just steam rolled right to Florence. We be going back up to the spots we scoped over the next couple of weeks. There's alot to see here.

Basically, mom and her cousin Marilyn wasted the whole darned afternoon and I got zero hiking in. What a couple of chatty cathies!

Today wasn't much better. We went to Marilyn's for breakfast where another chatathon ensued. I was left to brood in the back of Shadow. They were afraid I might eat Leo the African parrot. Heh, heh, they mighta had a point! :)

Luckily, Marilyn had to go to Eugene to pick up her daughter Sarah and there wasn't room for all of us to go so mom had to take me out.

Just a little way south of Florence is a park called Honeyman Park. Goofy mom calls it honeybun. Anyway, we hiked for a couple of hours and the photos are of Lake Cleawox in that park. I almost caught something in the bushes along the lake. It was pretty big too but took off when I pounced. Always being on a leash my pouncing skills are greatly hampered! I think it coulda been a beaver because we saw several trees that had been felled by those rascals.

After Honeyman we went a little further south to the Tyler Dune Trailhead in the Dunes National Park. But, it is a fee park and it was late so mom didn't want to shell out. We did meet an very nice lady that told us where to go to get an annual pass. It was starting to add up all these entrance fees. Anyway, we went where the nice lady told us and got a year pass for $35. We'll get our monies worth for that one in no time. In fact, I dunno why mom didn't get one of those days ago! Duh!

After getting the pass we headed on home.

Until next time Lakota Sunrise

©Kinsey Barnard