Oregon Dunes National Recreational Area

Prospect, OR - Coos Bay, OR
5/25/24 - 5/27/24

Miles Traveled   203
Trip Total          4641
Travel Time       4:11

States visited: FL, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, AZ, UT, NV, CA, Oregon

Leaving Crater Lake, we headed back to the coast.  We took the longer of a couple possible routes to avoid some of the steeper and winding roads.  Even taking the easier route there was still twist turns, and of course hills, hills and more hills.  Who am I kidding, they are not hills they are mountains!  

Our original plans were to stop at an Elks Lodge about 25 miles south east of Coos Bay.  When I was setting up our route in the GPS, I could not find the RV parking at the Elks, Then reading more of the reviews for that Elks it turns out they are not setup to handle anything much bigger than 25 feet long.  One of our other options was The Mill Casino and RV park, after a quick call they confirmed they had space for us.  We had planned to stay for one night, and planned on figuring out out next stop from there.   We also realized that we were heading into Memorial Day Weekend and open campsites might be hard to come by.  Between it being a holiday weekend, and the area looked like it had enough to entertain us for a couple of days, we extended our reservations until Monday. 

When we checked in at the RV park they gave a packet listing the area attractions.  Friday we headed out to check out a couple of places on the list.  The first place we checked out was Charleston, a fishing village just south of us.  Unless you like seafood, there not much to see or do in Charleston so we moved on.  Angel picked the next stop Simpson Reef Vista Point.  When we arrived there it looked very much like several other overlooks we have stopped at, only with a lot more people.  Wow were we wrong, not only did it have an incredible view, the rocks were covered with sea lions.  There was a conservatory group with very good spotting scopes setup to view the sea lions.  They also had one focused on island with eagles, and one pointing to a rock where a seal was lounging.   As far away as the sea lions were you could clearly hear them barking and bellowing.  Our last stop for the day was the Coos History Museum.  As far as museums is was ok, it filled a little time but that was about it.

Saturday Angel and I checked out  Oregon Coast Historical Railway Museum.  It was small and free, free being the best part of it.  It was cool that you could board the trains that they had with no restrictions.  Leaving the train museum, Angel found another gem for us to check out, Dean Creek Elk Viewing Area.  It was about 40 minutes away, but having nothing but time we headed for it.   It turned out out to be another cool find.  Even from the main road as we approached we could see dozens of elks.  Once we were parked, we could see even more elks.  We also timed it perfectly, after about 30 minutes the elks started heading further away from us and started laying down in the brush.  After viewing the elk, we met backup with Mark & Karen then headed to the casino for their Blues Brews & BBQ Festival.  The festival was one of the reasons we decided to stay for the weekend.

Sunday morning Angel & I took the RV to fuel up.   Chevron is running a special, that if you signup for their rewards program you get $1.00 of per gallon for your next three fill ups.  The only problem is we can not get the RV into the Chevron towing the car, so a quick run with just the RV saved ius $60 on out fillup.

Sunday afternoon was the highlight of Coos Bay.  This section of the coast is home to The Oregon Dunes and Oregon Dunes National Recreational Area.  This is a 40 mile stretch of sand dunes towering as high as 500 feet above the sea.  The best part is you can ride off road vehicles through most of it.  What was so great about it was we rented two CAN-AM Maverick Sport ATV's. It was AWESOME!!!!!!  Mark & I had a blast, the ladies did not think it was as fun.  We rented them for two hours, and after the first hour Karen & Angel decided they were done, Mark & I played far the last hour on our own.   I do not know how they can not think flying down the face of a 500' sand dune at 40MPH is not a blast!

Monday we are heading to Lincoln, OR.