09-23-09

Still hungry I biked to Port and Starboard. I longed for the comfort of a cheeseburger from a good restaurant. All of the good places here specialize in seafood. It’s hard, and almost embarrassing to order a cheeseburger when the seafood is so good, but I’m a “Cownoisseur” and was in need of some turf. I went with Jalapeño Poppers and the Patty Melt. I chatted with the waitress and a couple of travelers, the only other people in the room. They were reading their paper placemat map and wondering what the Heads were. I was surprised when the waitress said that she didn’t know. I teased her, “Aren’t you from here?” “I’m a transplant” she said. She had just moved there in May. I encouraged them all to go to the heads, “the short walk is well worth it”.
Corey and I went for a drive down the coast to see his friend “Lucky”. When we pulled in Lucky was riding a mountain bike. I did a double-take because Lucky only has on leg. He rode up and stopped by leaning on the deck rail. Lucky is a smaller man probably in his upper 40s, with a long scraggly grey beard, tattoos and only one eye. He showed us how he was going to attach a sandal to the pedal so he could ride it better and how he would carry his crutches on the side that didn’t need a pedal.
The location was beautiful, secluded up in the trees in the mountains just off of the coast. There is a redwood tree growing right in the yard. It’s probably 100’ tall, the size of a typical adult pine, but young for a redwood. Lucky used to be a tree surgeon, so we learned some cool stuff about trees. Corey asked lucky about a different way to drive back to Port Orford to avoid a detour. Lucky told us of a way that didn’t make sense, but he was sure it would go through. “It’s part of the original Pacific Coast Highway” he said.
It was a great two lane road, a motorcyclists dream, curvy and hilly with great views of the ocean. Knowing it was the old PCH gave it a great feel too. Eventually we seemed to lose the path of the historic road. It went from two lanes to one, from good concrete to bad concrete to gravel to dirt. It got narrower, trees closed in on both sides and eventually over top. It started to get rocky and rutty, so I put my Jeep into 4 wheel drive. We came to a steep hill down. I stopped and said, “I don’t think we can do it”. Corey said, “but Lucky said it WOULD go through“. Nervously I slowly pulled forward and crawled down the hill. I was just coasting with my clutch on the floor and my foot on the brake. I let the clutch out in first gear for better control. I was worried if we couldn’t make it through we would have to back up and might not be able to make it over the big rocks and ruts.
Small tree branches and shrubs slipped around the Jeep like brushes in a carwash. We bounced down the trail. Suddenly it opened up, flat, wide, level, nice gravel and right on the highway. Lucky was right; it does go through. We noted where the trail head was on the main 101 so we could spot it again in the future. I want to go down it again and check out the feasibility of going up it. If that looks good we’ll try it.
Corey and I rode our bikes to Agate Beach. He wanted to try swimming in Garrison Lake, a fresh water lake on the backside of the ocean beach. It is much warmer that the ocean. He jumped in. “It’s like a Minnesota lake” he said. I threw him a little peace of driftwood and joked, “Here’s a floaty”. “Too small” he shouted, so I went down the shore of the lake and got a driftwood log. I brought it back and rolled it into the lake. It actually worked pretty well. I climbed up the steep bank on the backside of the lake then along the ridge and back down a driftwood covered sand dune. As I got to the bottom I came up on the back of a sign. I walked around it and found out that I had just walked out of a “do not walk on” zone.
We went to the ocean part to f the beach. It looked like high tide was just starting to recede. We kicked around in the gunk on the beach and found some really nice agates.