Southern Oregon Coast

The next day of our stay at the Mill Casino we decided to head South to explore the coast.  Our first stop was Bandon, an historic downtown and a world famous golf course, Bandon Dunes.  There are four different courses here, with summer green fees at $225 a round if you’re staying at the resort, or $275 for the public.  Here’s a photo from the website.

It’s quite a complex for being miles away from any major city.  The closest airport is in Coos Bay, unless you have a private plane to land at the resort.  I guess it’s really nice to be rich & famous.

One of the highlights of the area are the cranberry bogs.  Most people don’t realize that Oregon grows cranberries, and Bandon is the center of the production.  In fact they have a cranberry festival, and the 65th annual festival is Sept. 9-11.  The bogs we saw didn’t really show any growth yet.  5% of the total U.S. production of cranberries come from the Bandon area.  And one of the stores in the downtown area was a candy store, Cranberry Sweets & More.  They used jellied fruit to create unique candy.  It’s available by mail order if you’re interested.

We continued further down the coast.  Our next stop was the Cape Blanco Lighthouse.  It dates back to 1870.

The view from the top of the lighthouse was great.

As you tell from the photos, the good weather didn’t stay very long.  But we didn’t let it stop us from exploring.  Here’s the stairs going up to the light.

Next we stopped in Port Orford.  We were looking for a nice restaurant for lunch.  We almost gave up when we saw a vista point parking area, and parked the car.  Looking behind us we saw a new café, Redfish.  It’s located next to Battle Rock, the site of a battle between the first settlers and the local band of Indians. 

The food was fantastic.  I had the seafood chowder, which included anything that was fresh that day.  It was the best chowder I’ve ever had.  Linda had the oven roasted turkey breast on walnut cranberry bread with oven roasted fingerling potatoes that were fantastic.  The restaurant was located next to the Hawthorne Gallery.  Sadly it was closed that day, but I was able to get a picture of one of it’s wooden sculptures.

We headed back to the MoHo, enjoying the reverse drive.  We’ve found that you see things differently if you drive back along the same route from the opposite direction. 

Next we’ll head to California on our way back south.