Left the wine country for the Oregon coast – seems like all of the coast is a state park.  Expected to find a lot of traffic but surprisingly, not much.  Remember, I’m in my “go ahead and pass me” mode.  One minute you’re driving along the edge of an ocean cliff and the next you’re in a pine-forested area with twisty, turny curves, then back to the edge of the ocean. 

Things to know about Oregon – you can’t pump your own gas, in fact you can’t even put the credit card in the slot.  The speed limit signs are REALLY big so I figure they mean business.  Seat belt violations are $142 in Roseburg and $97 in Medford.

The the mountains in Oregon are different from the Rockies – the height in the Rockies is exhilarating, heady.  The ones in Oregon are calming – forested, lots of streams with rocky rapids.  Took a short hike to Fall Creek Falls (Falls is pushing it a bit as there are water problems here too).  Beautiful trail tho - up thru moss- covered trees, fern-covered floor and instead of boulders, huge fallen trees or trunks.

Beautiful drive over to Crater Lake along the Umpqua River Valley.  You walk up a small dune at the park and there it is!  The fellow in back of me asked if it was ice – it was so clear and smooth.  Made from a collapsed volcano and has no stream water source

Took a drive thru the woods to Medford along the Rogue River and stopped for sandwich where I met a young man who’s a musician with an Eastern European folk band.  Said they were practicing the next day for a performance on Sunday in Ashland and I was welcome to come.  Did go to Ashland (the Shakespeare Festival capital of Oregon) but somehow messed up on the time so missed him.  Ashland has play performances (Shakespeare and others) from February thru October in three theaters (one an open-air Elizabethan-style).  Passed on seeing one but  Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa, playing on Sunday, looked like fun. Contented myself to wander around the artsy town and stroll the park.  

There’s more than one wine valley. Drove along the Applegate River and passed the Fiasco Winery (among others).  Should have stopped for a bottle – how bad could it be?  Continued on toward Crescent City CA and took a “shortcut”.  Shortcut, my back-end! Turned out to be what looked like an old logging road through the mountains.  Barely enough room for two cars and luckily I only met one.  I think he was as surprised as I was; wondering what a car with IL plates was doing way up there. Even my GPS didn’t know its name for a while.  Finally came up with BLM-38-7-13. Ten miles up and ten miles down – all at 20 mph or less.  Came off the mountain thru Williams and there were five old guys sitting on the front porch at the general store.  Quite an Americana picture.  On to California!!