We spent the month of July in Gold Beach, OR. This was a new experience for us: new location and a new amount of time. While we have sometimes spent three consecutive weeks on vacation, we have never spent more than ten days in a single location. I stumbled across a very nice fully furnished large house available for a monthly lease. We invited our kids to come up for however much time they could get away. In the end, their schedules didn’t work for anything more than a week, so the two of us rattled around for three weeks in a 5,000 sq. ft. house high up on a hill overlooking the Rogue River.
Rogue River view
The southern section of the Oregon coast is spectacularly beautiful and we tried to explore every mile of it from Crescent City, CA to Coos Bay. We used the Oregon Coast trail to hike along the bluffs and find sometimes obscure paths down to deserted beaches. The coast trail in the Boardman State Park area is particularly nice. It passes through open grassland, thick, lush vegetation ten feet high, and sitka spruce groves so dark you almost need a flashlight. One of the attractions on this section are the many photogenic sea stacks.
Sea stacks, Boardman State Park
We did a little bit of bike riding, but route choices were limited since we had no interest in riding on highway 101.
One ride was along the ElK River to the Elk River Salmon Hatchery, another was from Brookings to Chrissy Field.
One day we went south for a hike among the tall redwood trees in Jedidiah Smith State Park out of Crescent City. Most days, however, we hiked on or above the beach.
I was all together a fun month.
Beach and sea stacks near Bandon
Links:
— Photo gallery for Gold Beach 2016
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