Fast, reliable internet connections are not a given when you’re on the road. I posted about this before.

Our stay in Chinook Bend really brought this home. Although our Verizon Jetpack showed 2 bars of 3G most of the time, the capacity was limited. At times of high usage (when many people were trying to load data through that cell) our connection speed was worse than an old dial-up.

Monday morning I rode the scooter into Lincoln City in search of free, fast, reliable wifi. I ended up at McDonalds on the north side of town and uploaded my blog post there.

Later I returned to town with Donna. She shopped for groceries while I walked across the street to the Ace Hardware store. It was a good, old fashioned hardware store. I could’ve spent hours there just looking at all of the stuff. I bought three wood screws for a whopping 21 cents. I needed two but bought a spare, just in case. I used them to repair the runner on my clothes drawer in our bedroom.

Chinook Bend RV Resort

We took a walk along the river. A fishing boat came in to the dock. They had six pretty good sized king salmon.

Six Kings on the dock

Fishing from the Chinook Bend dock

Salmon names can be confusing. Stores (and some people) call these fish chinook salmon. When we fished for them in Alaska, they were always called king salmon and I still use that term. Coho salmon also have more than one name. In  the northwest and Alaska, coho salmon are often called silvers.

In preparation for Tuesday’s travel, I cleaned the windshield. Then I cleaned our new tires and treated the sidewalls with Aerospace 303 to protect them against UV. I loaded the trailer. I greased the ball on the trailer hitch. I was killing time in anticipation of the Chargers Monday Night Football game.

I watched the game in proper attire. I had a Chargers T-shirt under my number 14 Dan Fouts Chargers throwback jersey. It didn’t help. They got off to a fast start with an interception followed by a quick touchdown. However, in the second half, Houston overcame a 21-point deficit and kicked the game-winning field goal.

Yesterday we drove down the coast of Oregon. We stopped in Newport at the Walmart and picked up a few things. We also walked to the Chase Bank so Donna could deposit checks she received in the mail over the weekend.

The drive was one of the most scenic of our trip. It’s hard to rank the views; we’ve seen such beautiful country since we crossed the Missouri River. We laugh at Nally, our Rand-McNally RVND7720 GPS. She pronounces scenic as “sen-nick” when she tells us we’re on the Scenic Byway.

Nally rarely steers us wrong, but on this day, we had an issue. We were headed for the Cape Blanco State Park near the Cape Blanco Lighthouse. I wanted to meet up with two full-time RV couples that are working at the lighthouse – Chris and Cherie of Technomadia and Paul and Nina with Wheeling It. I’ve been following their blogs for a while and felt like I already knew them.

Back to the issue with Nally. She directed me to make a left turn onto a gravel road as we drove up toward the lighthouse. There was a sign for the Cape Blanco Horse Camp. I was uneasy as we drove down the gravel road. What if it’s a dead end? I had no way to turn around. After half a mile or so, there was a road leading to a small camp on the right. I stopped. Donna walked over to camp to see if we were on the right road. We were told to use the road looping around their camp to turn around. It was very tight between some trees and fence posts, but we got turned around and back out to the main road. We found the correct turn a quarter of a mile up the road.

The Cape Blanco State Park is a beautiful place. The sites are carved out of the forest with good separation. You can’t see your neighbor through the trees. It’s first come, first served. We arrived around 3pm and found most of the sites were taken. All of the sites are back-in.

We drove around the campground and saw a group of people near a wood shed. They turned out to be the camp hosts and gave Donna a map of the campground. This map detailed the sites, including dimensions. It took a couple of laps, but we finally found a site we could back into that was more than 50 feet long. Once again, I did not have to drop the trailer.

Before we set up, we walked down to the Lighthouse Hosts sites and met Chris, Cherie and Nina. Later, they joined us with Paul at our site for hors d’oeuvres and wine. We sat at the picnic table and talked for a couple of hours. It was really nice to meet the people whose lives I’ve been reading about for the past year.

Today we’ll hike to the beach. Later we’ll hike up to the lighthouse for the grand tour. Chris, Cherie, Paul and Nina will be the tour guides this afternoon and have promised us the VIP tour. Donna also wants to get some bicycling in. We may have to extend our stay here.