Day 25 – It was 41 degrees this morning at 7:45 a.m., sunny & still. We aren’t in a hurry to leave since our next campground isn’t far from here. We’re going to Boice Cope County Park, north of here; it will probably take us a whole 20 minutes to get there. They have a dump station, and we can also do laundry there. Small park on the New River & Floras Lake. Sorry to leave Cape Blanco, one of the best State Parks we’ve ever camped in, but Boice Cope looks promising, too.
15 miles!
Cape Blanco State Park, 91814 Cape Blanco Road, Port Orford, OR 97465, (800) 551-6949, http://oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=44. Check-in at 4 p.m.; check-out 1 p.m. (no reservations – first come, first served). Most people arrive around 2 p.m. after previous campers have checked out, drive through, & pick their site. This is a great campground with many good sites, lots of them are quite deep in length & surrounded by trees; most people drive way in & set up, so you have to look all the way into the site to make sure the site is unoccupied. Also, unoccupied sites are early on because people tend to drive beyond them & pick a site, so if the Park is crowded, if anything is not occupied, it’s these. And, the same applies for the final 3 sites which are located just past the entrance to the Park. Best sites otherwise were 46, 49, & 53, but there were many other good sites. No matter what day of the week it is, they tended to just about fill up. Sites were electric & water; there were no sewer hookups & the dump station was closed – not working. Because of that, campers can dump in any OR State Park for free. We had site #46, an excellent campsite with an ocean view thru the trees. Fairly private on both sides. The campground is quiet & there are many hiking trails, also beach access, plus lighthouse and a historical home tour. It’s set back at least five miles from Highway 101. Most sites are shaded. Biking the paved roads through the campground & to the lighthouse, etc., is great but there are very steep hills. This is one of the best state parks we’ve ever been to. We’d camp here again. We stayed 4 nights & could’ve stayed longer.
We departed at 11:40 a.m., and since we weren’t going far, we didn’t bother to hook the Honda to the RV; I just followed behind in the car. Twenty-five minutes later we arrived at Site #11 at Boice Cope Park, had lunch & set up. Discovered we’re coming up on a holiday weekend; glad we’d picked a site & reserved it. ($20 per night.).There were only a few people here when we arrived but the campers showed up steadily throughout the day. The campground was about ½ full by evening.
We did a couple of loads of laundry & sat outside reading in the afternoon, high 63 degrees, sunny & breezy. You can hear the ocean waves close by (just behind a sand dune), and the sound of the waves crashing on the beach is relaxing. A man in a small trailer camped on one side of us; he has a cat which he walks on a leash. It is currently in a cage outside checking out what’s going on.
This is a great campground, very small, clean, electric/water hook-ups, a dump station, sites a reasonable distance from each other, surrounded by trees but sites are situated around a grassy field & open. The kitties are loving the sunlight in the RV; it was pretty shady & dark at the last campground. Between the campground and the Ocean is the New River/Floras Lake, lots of trails, and the sand dune. This area & others along this part of the Oregon coast have signs up showing emergency evacuation routes for tsunami’s. They got tidal surges of 8 feet just from the Japanese tsunami. Also, there’s signs indicating what to do if debris from that tsunami washes ashore.
We’ll be here 4 or 5 nights, depending on campground availability over the holiday. It looks good for biking, hiking, and kayaking. And the girls can watch the neighbor kitty sit outside, cold in his/her cage? They sit on their heated pads and watch the cat. One wonders which a cat would prefer in this situation, indoors or outdoors.
