Astoria to Arcata on Hwy 101

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February 17-26, 2006
Seaside, Ore. - Arcata, Calif.
Mile 1,029


Greetings from sunny California! It sounds trite, but it really was warmer and we felt a mite more laid-back when we crossed the state line a few days ago.

Writing from Arcata, Calif., I [Shelly] am happy to report that both of us are healthy again, that Matilda kept us warm on a string of below-freezing nights on the Oregon coast, and that shirtsleeves never felt so good. When we were starting this trip in Port Townsend more than a month (and more than 1,000 miles) ago, we would look up the weather reports for regions of California and daydream about 80 degrees in L.A. It’s been in the high 60’s in northern California, so we’re getting there!

One interesting development: Jeff has been gluten-free since leaving Portland, Ore. My cousin, a naturopathic physician, convinced Jeff to abstain for at least six months to see whether a diagnosed allergy to gluten (found in wheat, rye, barley and even oats) is expressing itself in his long-lasting eczema (skin rash). We stopped by Bob’s Red Mill headquarters in Portland to load up on gluten-free pancake mix, brownie mix and hot breakfast cereal. These products use flours of rice, corn, garbanzo beans, fava beans, etc. I’m still eating up the gluten-y products we brought along, but Jeff is being incredibly disciplined about his diet. Future hosts, take note: Mexican and Asian-based meals are preferable to Italian breads and pastas.

From Portland we drove west on Highway 26 to Seaside, Ore., then turned north so we could traverse the whole coast on Highway 101, from Astoria all the way to Brookings. This took one week and we camped all the way, staying in one state park and three different Thousand Trails campgrounds (near Seaside, Newport and Florence), which are great because they have hot tubs and saunas. But even when it’s cold outside, Matilda is very cozy when we have an electrical hook-up.

We turn on the lights and one of us settles onto the backseat “couch” and the other onto a wooden stool with a cushion. We run a little space heater, swing out our dining table, lift the cover on the propane cookstove, and pull dinner ingredients out of our fridge (which can be powered by the battery, propane, or electricity). We can even wash dishes in our little sink. Matilda has a freshwater tank but we have to collect the graywater from the sink in a bucket on the ground. As for blackwater—well, we have a plastic bucket with a tight-fitting lid, and it’s sure handy when you have to get up to pee in the middle of the night!

If you know Westfalias, you know the top pops up at a 45-degree angle and there’s a bed up there (see photo below), but we’ve been sleeping down below, where the backseat folds out to make another bed. With the top popped, we have standing room in the main cabin, but we’ve been leaving the top down with this cold weather (so as to minimize the space we have to heat) or when it’s raining (so as not to get the canvas wet—just like a tent, you have to dry it out eventually). So that’s a bit about our home away from home.

I’m on assignment to write about maritime museums of the Oregon coast for Sea Magazine, and over the past week it was wonderful to meet the dedicated people behind the Oregon Maritime Museum in Portland, the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, the new Capt. Robert Gray museum in Garibaldi, the Oregon Coast History Museum in Newport, and the Port Orford Lifeboat Station Museum. Look for the article in the June issue. In Florence I also stopped to introduce myself to the editors at Northwest Travel magazine. Sometimes it is a challenge to find wireless Internet access, but so far, I’m keeping up with pre-assigned work and will just have to see how much more work I want to seek while we’re on the road. I may shift into the mode of collecting material and writing about it later.

Favorite stops along on the Oregon coast included:

• Fort Clatsop near Astoria, where the reconstructed fort burned down last October and we examined the piles of numbered logs that will be used to rebuild it;
  a visit with historical re-enactors in Seaside playing the roles of Lewis & Clark’s saltmakers from 200 years ago—they were boiling down seawater to get salt to preserve their meat;
  
• the Tillamook Air Museum (OK, I have to confess I read my book in the van while Jeff ogled the airplanes);
  
• downtown Newport, where a thriving fishing community co-exists with the tourists—on
  
  Battery Point Lighthouse

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  This lighthouse sits just off Crescent City, Calif.
  the upland side of the waterfront street are restaurants and galleries and on the seaward side are the fish processing plants;
  
• and Port Orford, the only port on the Oregon coast without a harbor, so the “marina” consists of a broad pier and two BIG cranes—the fishing boats are moored high and dry on trailers (gotta see the pictures to believe it).
  

A social highlight was watching two nights of Winter Olympics TV coverage with other RV’ers in the clubhouse at a Thousand Trails campground. Other than that brief exposure to The Games, we’ve been out of touch with who’s winning what medals, and that’s just fine with us. We get our news from public radio stations, when we can tune them in, and from online newspages when we have Internet access. We’re more interested in the local news of the area we’re traveling through…

…like the Arcata high school girls’ basketball team making it to the state playoffs! With our hosts in this city, we attended two of the games—until they got knocked out. But we got to cheer for a winning basket in the last two seconds of the first game, and take the pulse of the spirit of this community.

Our Arcata hosts are significant for being the first “recommended strangers” to take us in. Neal and Sharon met my parents last fall when Mom and Dad were cycling down the west coast and took them home on the strength of their being fellow cyclists. Although now retired and less freewheeling, Neal and Sharon have bicycled across America six and four times, respectively. They have also cycled in China and Russia and are a treasure trove of goodwill and stories. They and their children and grandchildren (see the picture of these cuties!) have made us feel most welcome, and we will wave goodbye tomorrow after four nights here knowing we’ve made lifelong friends.

Arcata also happens to be one of the few other cities in the nation that has adopted an ordinance limiting chain stores, like Port Townsend did just before Jeff left the planning department. So Jeff visited city hall to meet the planner responsible for this feat and spent an hour swapping stories. Turns out if we had arrived on the right day of the week, Jeff could have been a featured speaker at Arcata’s “Democracy and Corporations Committee” meeting. Arcata’s commitment to quality of life issues is similar to Port Townsend’s. Extensive community forestlands have been set aside, the town supports a well-stocked and modern food co-op, tertiary sewage treatment happens in marshland ponds that double as wildlife sanctuary habitat (we toured this unique system yesterday), and there are bike lanes everywhere. However, NONE of the college students zipping down the hill from Humboldt State University wear helmets. They would not last long with PT’s new helmet law!

Our hosts encouraged us to attend a very interesting and moving ceremony last night: a candlelight vigil commemorating the 1860 massacre of the local Wiyot Indian tribe on a place now called Indian Island. Sharon is a member of another local tribe, and she introduced me to the vigil’s leader and encouraged me to share a tune. So between mournful, thrumming Wiyot songs, the 100+ people gathered heard me play “The Mingulay Boat Song” on my pennywhistle. The vigil was also blessed by the fly-over of thousands of geese, amazing us all with their cacophony of calls and chain after chain of interlocking V’s against the evening sky.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the awesome introduction to the redwoods that we received north of Arcata, where a number of state and national parks together protect many square miles of these tallest of all trees (the rest were logged in the last century, of course), in what has been designated a World Heritage Site. We felt incredibly fortunate to be visiting in the off-season and have the truly magical groves all to ourselves. It’s a challenge to photograph big trees, but I’ve included two of my attempts here. The Roosevelt elk were much more photogenic!

We continue to be amazed and humbled by the opportunity we have taken—and been given—to do this trip. Our next extended stop is planned for San Francisco. Matilda is excited about crossing the Golden Gate Bridge!

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