Sunday, June 5: I had two long days of driving ahead of me, so after a quick breakfast I left from Seattle and headed south toward the US-101. Today’s goal was the Oregon Dunes campground near North Bend, about four hundred miles away.
Under normal circumstances on a highway, this should not have taken more than six or seven hours. Unfortunately, circumstances were anything but normal that day. It absolutely poured pretty much throughout the drive, making visibility and driving extremely difficult. To slow things down further, the Pacific Coast Highway is not a major interstate and the speed limits are much lower, meaning that I was making very poor time indeed.
To compensate for this, the view out to the west over the Pacific was simply breathtaking. Chicago is on the banks of Lake Michigan, a Great Lake that really is more like an inland sea. But there is something majestic and mighty about the Pacific Ocean that somehow intangibly conveys its immeasurable vastness, even from the shoreline. In cloudy, blustery conditions, that feeling is many-times intensified. As a testament to the strong ocean breezes that blow in from the Pacific, trees and shrubs alongside the road all pointed inland, permanently moulded into a windswept shape. There were birds everywhere, but I was not in the best frame of mind to enjoy these and other sights, having to focus on making sure I got to North Bend without incident.
When I finally arrived at the campground and checked in, well past sunset, the rain still hadn’t let up and I wasn’t too keen on camping in those conditions. So I decided to spend the night in my car. After more than an hour of trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable enough to sleep, and mindful of the even longer drive I had ahead of me the following day, I gave up and drove into North Bend to find a motel. After an early dinner and some account-keeping, I went to bed.
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