Esotropiart

This trip to Gold Beach was the grande finale of my vacation for the year, and I took Monday and Tuesday off for the occasion. Monday morning, my aunt, Mom and I decided to head towards California, stopping at many of the scenic viewpoints and parks along the way. The original idea was to drive down into California, mainly so we could say we had been there. We would then drive back up to the Oregon Caves, and make that our final activity for the day.

We decided against visiting the caves and instead drove down to the Trees of Mystery. As far as I can remember, I had never been to see this fascinating attraction. Besides a huge gift shop, the park features a long walk on a nice path through a forest full of botanical phenomena. It was a fairly incredible array of large trees in weird positions. I was most impressed with the "brotherhood tree", a huge 297 foot tall redwood. Looking up at the enormous tree was amazing.

Perhaps the main attraction of the Trees of Mystery is a long and tall cable tram ride. The tram cars start near the brotherhood tree, and you are carted up a very steep climb to an observation deck. This ride alone made the entrance worthwhile in my opinion, and there is no limit to how many rides you can take while inside the park. We just went up once and back down.

After getting "home" from the roadtrip, I went out to dinner. Let me tell you, it is not easy to find a restaurant open after 9:00 in a small town like Gold Beach. I did find probably the only restaurant open past 10:00, to its credit. It was a charming Mexican restaurant on the north side of the highway, adjacent to a bar. The restaurant services the bar, and all the other customers were in there, so I had the restaurant to myself. It was nice: the prices were very reasonable, and the food was good and more than enough.

Tuesday we set out on our return trip to Portland. I already mentioned our decision to postpone our drive down highway 101, which parallels the coast. Well, Tuesday was our makeup day. Normally when going to and from Gold Beach, we go through Reedsport, Elkton and Drain. Instead we made a quick stop at Bandon for a picnic and ice cream (Bandon Cheese Factory - yum!) and headed north along the coast. Good grief! There are so many points of interest along the highway, you could spend a whole week discovering them all. Each little town and stretch of beach has its own flavor, beauty or unique shops. That would be a fun vacation... some day.

We started out slow and made so many quick stops that we had to part with the coast in Lincoln City, instead of going north all the way to Seaside. Even so, it was a fun day, and we arrived home quite late. We made a quick stop at the Chinook Winds Casino before leaving Lincoln City. We were under the impression that casino meals were cheap. After walking around to the various restaurants inside, we concluded otherwise and left. I had never stepped inside a casino before that, and I was quite impressed with the number of machines available for gambling. There must have been hundreds, maybe more than a thousand machines! Wow. I can't imagine what Los Vegas is like. It's too bad they weren't all video games instead... it would be the ultimate arcade - and something worth stopping for. Well, not really, unless it was a nickel arcade. Boo-hooey on those fifty cent arcades - they are just like casinos... gambling your life(s) away.