Oregon "Coos"t

Trees, moist air, and overcast skies. Well-stocked rest areas, low highway speed limits, and no sales tax. The gatehouse at the campground is unmanned, with an honor-system "envelope drop" when you check in. The next day, the ranger at the Nature Center sips from her stainless steel water bottle as she waves you hello. We must be back in Oregon! Later than we would have liked, we pulled in to Sunset Bay State Park in Coos Bay, Oregon. One campground set-up M.O. we liked to follow sometimes was to have Andy begin setting up the tent and sleeping bags (with Minerva sorrowfully tied to a picnic table), while I would drive toward the nearest town with Alton and grab either takeout or grocery essentials or both, depending on what we needed. 
With the Pacific Northwest sky still lit up with sunlight past our regular dinner hour, Alton and I collected our necessities and filled up with gas, returning to Andy to explore our temporary home. Love! The cozy, tree-filled campground held a good couple dozen tent campers (it is early in the season for Oregon, but it was a Saturday night so more people), a smattering of RVs, and a full roster of yurts. These are the large reinforced canvas tents erected permanently on platforms in the park, which we admired somewhat jealously (no dogs allowed, so we couldn't stay in one). But the tent campsites were very nice. Although a little on the small side, they were carpeted with grass and had tall, 8-9ft shrubs growing between each one to give you privacy. Small outdoor lights illuminated the path to the bathrooms, which we visited right away. Uplifted by the large women's restroom with a handicapped stall (a nice roomy plus for the mom who often has to squat or kneel on the floor to support a little guy too small to keep himself from falling into the potty), soap AND paper towels, I waited for Andy and Alton outside of the men's room. Curious about the shower cubicle doors I was seeing, I checked them out just as the guys were making their exit. "Andy!" I gushed giddily, "The showers are free!"

The campground is just a short walk to the beach, where you have your recreational choices of a volleyball court, sandy shore, or trails along the rocky coast with beautiful views of the ocean, the lighthouse, etc. 

Our first full day at camp, Alton and Andy went on a little stroll to check out some of the walking trails and (Alton's favorite) bridges, and they came upon a small "theatre" setup, where wooden benches point to a giant white screen obviously made for a projector. Alton scurried over to hop up on one of the benches and play "movie."

At one point he even whipped out an imaginary remote control and changed which movie he and Andy were supposed to be watching.

After breakfast was over with, we decided to head into the town of Coos Bay to have a look around. While our campground was on the ocean in a cozy little c-shaped lagoon, Coos Bay lies to the east, with a larger bay surrounded by land and fed from oyster-rich streams. With a cute little downtown, waterfront walks and other touristy treats to choose from, what did we end up doing? Playing at the local playground, of course!

Some map surfing yielded a big city park in the middle of town, and upon inspection it was a perfect fit for us. Some grassy areas, jungle gym, swings...

...and bridges.

The bridges were courtesy of a picturesque little Japanese garden at one end of the park, created in honor of Coos Bay's sister city: Choshi, Japan. Alton was definitely in awe--do you get how much he loves bridges? He loves to look at them, go over them, go under them.... He calls freeway overpasses "bridges" (which they technically are, I suppose) and gets excited when we approach one. He intently studies his Bob the Builder program about bridges and can therefore identify beam bridges, arch bridges, and suspension bridges. Appropo that we live in the Portland area; one of the city's nicknames is "Bridgetown." Back in Coos Bay, we went over each of the five adorable bridges in the garden. Twice.

Finally it was time for lunch. Food had become a definite source of issues at this point of the trip. Our economical plan had been to acquire groceries and prepare our own meals at the campsites, but this was proving to be difficult with our continual moving around. It was hard to carry a lot of food around with us because of myriad limits: shelf-life, space in the car, space in the cooler, ice needed for chilling, etc. We had staples that we carried from place to place, but it seemed like with each new campground, we'd arrive with our stockpile of eatables dwindling and immediately need to flail around the local commercial district, hunting down grocery stores and trying to come up with semi-original, diverse menus so that we weren't pulling up a picnic bench to the same old burgers 'n scurvy every night. 
So we came up with a new plan. We decided to loosen our frugality strappings a bit and allow our first day at camp to be a "restaurant" day: rather than stress through our first 24 hours in the new place hunting and gathering, we'd simply enjoy ourselves, get the lay of the land (and proabably spot a grocery store or two while we were at it), and dine out. A great plan!...except that it was Sunday, and Coos Bay is apparently small enough to be nearly downright deserted on this day of rest. Many places were closed or devoid of customers, we drove by the Red Lion and couldn't see their alleged restaurant from the outside, so we were hesitant to hop on board. Then we spotted the Kozy Kitchen, kozily packed with customers and sporting all the right diner regalia: vinyl booths, faux wood paneling, coffee advertisement posters, fake flowers on the tables. It gave me the familiar feeling of being at Jack's from my hometown (which has recently undergone a modern makeover I'm not sure I like).
So with breakfast served all day and nary a skinny waitress in the place (so you know the food is good), we settled in to make our selections. I decided to go the breakfast route, and ordered a breakfast burrito with a biscuit on the side. The waitress taking our order hesitated over her pad and leveled her gaze at me to make sure she had my attention when she said, "The breakfast burrito is big." Her stare did not waver and she did not crack a smile when she continued gravely, "So's the biscuit." Appropriately warned, I proceeded with both orders.
She was right. The jumbo biscuit looked like a tugboat next to my ocean liner of a burrito. The largest tortilla I'd ever seen was simply draped over and pinched around a longshoreman's mound of filling; no tuck-tuck-fold required. I wish I could say I ate it all (or do I?), but the leftovers made a great lunch the next day.

After a carb-coma nap for Alton (a giant, Mickey Mouse-shaped pancake had been demolished off his plate), we went on a nice beach walk to climb rocks on the windswept shore. Minerva whined and looked anxiously down the beach to where another dog was eagerly leaping around off-leash after a ball, but it was too late in the day to get her all wet with no means of drying her off, so she made do with some intense stick chewage and hole digging. 
We also walked across the little bridges to and from the beach area several times.

Alton found a long stick and insisted on going "fishing."

We turned back to get ready for dinner. It was still technically our "dine out" day, but seeing what a ghost town Coos Bay was, we decided to eschew a return trip to the Kozy Kitchen in favor of a golf club in another town. Before we'd arrived to check in to our campsite the day before, we'd noticed signs on the highway for a golf resort with a restaurant in a town just south of us. We had no cell reception, so without calling ahead or the ability to check a detailed online gps map, we aimed south on the highway and crossed our fingers that it wasn't some kind of members-only country club. "Why," we argued, "would they have a sign out on the highway about a restaurant if they weren't open to the public?" Let's hope we're right.
We exited the highway and followed a few twisty country roads to the place, noticing that one of the roads bore the same name as one nearer to our campground. "Huh," we mused, "looks like we could've taken a back way to get here." We followed signs until we got to...a gatehouse. No guard, but some splendiferous signs pointed us in the direction of a Main Lodge for the property, leading us past enormous landscaped cabins that were clearly out of our price range. The hilly driveway curved up to a series of gigantic buildings, erected in the architecture style of "sexy log cabin," with golf carts buzzing around driven by snappily dressed caddies. Posh. This place was posh.
I parked our dusty Mini with its bug-spattered cargo box on top, left the AJs in the backseat and headed toward the biggest building of the bunch, grateful that I'd combed my hair at the campground instead of shoving a baseball cap on my head. I obviously looked lost, so one of the Caddy Clones approached me and asked if I needed help. I talked to him about the restaurants (yup, more than one) at the resort, and after getting directions, I turned back to ask one last question: "Is there a dress code?" "Oh no," he assured me. Nothing to worry about. He glanced at my brown Columbia hiking pants with the zip-off legs. "I mean, you aren't wearing jeans, which is the only property-wide rule." Crap. Andy was wearing jeans. All our clothes were back at the campground, which was probably only 15-20 miles but forty minutes away down the slow roads. 
We decided to follow the signs down another quarter-mile of manicured avenues (nearly steering the Mini onto a golf cart path by mistake--hey, we would've fit!) to the restaurant and send Andy in to see if the maitre'd would make any comment about his hideous leg coverings. I mean, it's Oregon; we're a pretty rustic state, after all. How fancy could they be? Andy smoothed down his mohawk and went in, then emerged a second later flashing the thumbs-up. We were in!
Our delicious meal afforded us a view of the ocean sunset over gently-rolling sand dunes that were the resort's only neighbors. The restaurant had a patio anchored by a huge fireplace with a fire roaring away inside of it, so while we waited for our food we made some trips outside to take pictures, sit by the fire, and watch the deer that meandered lazily in the grass near a golf hole (Thirteenth? Seventh? It's all the same to me.). 

After dinner, we noticed that we had cell reception and so decided to check maps for our route home. The gps confirmed our ability to take that country road all the way back to our campground area, with only one major directional omission: "Turn off the paved road...." A huge section of the wiggling, curving, aptly-named Seven Devils Road was just dirt & gravel, which meant that our tight little Mini suspension was hopping and juddering through the dark tree tunnels ahead with whiplash setting in to all three of us, and bears (or at least deer and rabbits) expected to leap onto our path around every corner. We eventually made it to our tent home and dogeared an important lesson about "shortcuts."
The next day was our first rain of the trip! We knew it had to happen at some point, and it was good odds that Oregon would be the campground where that hammer would fall. The nice, steady downpour had started in the night and kept up in the morning, so we lazed awhile in our sleeping bags while we evaluated the weather, then I took our hotpot (a very useful purchase of this trip) to the power outlets in the restroom to boil water for oatmeal (and coffee...coffee...) and served up breakfast in the vestibule of our tent. Rain pitter-pattered over our heads while Andy shored up the edges of the tarp that were aiming rivulets of water underneath the footprint of the tent. We let Alton snuggle in his sleeping bag and watch a movie on one of our expensive electronic devices while the morning showers expended themselves, then after lunch we got some nice afternoon sun filtering in to dry off our gear and "lawn." Alton woke up from his nap in good spirits and was happy to loll around as we cooked dinner. 

He also showed off his woodsman skills to help get the campfire ready. 

Once the fire was going, it was time for us to cook dinner. Sometimes we'd use our stove, but in the cooler camping climates where we lit a fire, we would try to take advantage of it and cook dishes that way.  Sometimes the meals would turn out impressively tasty, like our pear-arugula panini night. But to be completely honest with you, Readers, we had some flops, like this night. We got the fire going late and tossed the chicken breast on the grate while the flames were still leaping and licking high, not low and hot, which is how we should have been cooking on this squat little grill. I laid two big heads of broccoli alongside our meat and went to drizzle them with olive oil, as you see...

...but my hand slipped and I doused the flames, causing a small flare-up that bathed one side of the broccoli in sooty tracks. We've "grilled" broccoli like this several times before, but always on large barbecues, not flimsy state park grates. We brandished our tongs and turned broccoli and chicken to cook them evenly, properly stoked the fire, continued cooking past our points of hungry...and still ended up with undercooked chicken and blackened, raw broccoli. The baguette from the grocery store was delicious, however. 
A night of packing stuff up to get ready for our early morning departure and drive up the Oregon Coast!