The weather was great again today: There was a little patchy fog in the morning that quickly burned off - it was sunny the rest of the day with the temperature in the mid 60’s and a cooling wind out of the north.
After posting the journal entries from the last few days on-line at the local coffee shop this morning, we went down to the Off Highway Vehicle (OHV) rental place at Spinreel campground south of where we are staying. We decided the best plan for us was to take the 1-hour guided dune tour before deciding if we wanted to rent a OHV to explore the dunes on our own. As it turned out, this was the right decision. We rode in a converted Chevrolet Blazer, modified for off-road sand operation (open top, 4-wheel drive, big tires, roll bars, aircraft 4-way seat belts, etc.) and got to see areas of the dunes not open to OHV rentals. It was a great tour through the dunes and along the beach with an excellent guide (Dann) who told us everything one might want to know about sand dunes, including why the dunes are here, the dunes ecosystem, and issues related to OHV use and the people who recreate on them. It was an exciting ride and much rougher and more windy than we expected.
There are also a myriad of roads and trails in the dunes; it appeared that it would be very easy to get lost if you didn’t know where you were going. It also appeared to be very easy to encounter an unexpected crest or dip and in the dunes and some of the slopes are very steep. It was evident you could get into trouble if you didn’t really know what you were doing. There were also a number of people sand camping in the dunes and numerous OHVs of all sizes and descriptions zooming about in every direction. We probably could have managed it all, but the tour gave us an excellent overview of the dunes and we decided not to rent an OHV after it was over.
Later in the afternoon after we took a short walk on the beach from the south jetty on the mouth of the Umpqua River, we went out to dinner at the Sportsman’s Cannery and Smokehouse, one of several seafood restaurants near the marina in Winchester Bay. We shared an excellent seafood barbeque including clam chowder, cippino, (barbequed and Cajun) oysters, crab, blackened snapper, shrimp, potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans and rolls. It was a lot of food, but a great way to spend our last night along the Oregon Coast.
We hope to get an early start tomorrow and arrive in Fortuna, CA near Eureka tomorrow afternoon.
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