The last of Most of the Coast – OCT Day 22

• Brookings Riverside RV Resort to the Oregon/California state line
• Mileage – 11
• Accumulated elevation gain – 519 ft
• Pain status – none

Yesterday’s sunny weather didn’t hold and we got a gloomy, cloudy day for our last day of hiking. Bummer. 😦

We walked through the harbor area of Brookings-Harbor on our way out of town. Since we missed the farmers market there the day before, Rhonda bought a peach at a fruit stand. 

We came upon this cool wall of chalk drawings. 

We were disappointed that we had no chalk, but then this little girl, Stacia, and her dad offered to let us use theirs. (She is wearing a helmet because they rode their bikes there. And because it was cool. Obviously.)

Our contribution to the wall:

Some more road walking. Everything was already starting to feel nostalgic. 

We had decided to go a little bit out of our way to visit one last Oregon brewery, Misty Mountain Brewing and Tap Haus. We cut over to the 101 on a farm road. They were growing lilies! 

The farm lane with a misty mountain leading us to Misty Mountain (which was a Tolkien reference and not a reference to the landscape):

Lunch was yummy. We ended our Oregon adventure with a perfect track record for good restaurant meals!  

After lunch we backtracked back to McVay Rock State Park where a short dune trail led us to the beach.  

Nostalgia – my last beach walk picture:

The beach here was mostly gravel and not much sand. There were a few rocky points we needed to scramble over or around. 

Scrambling over:

Booking it around the point before the next wave came:

Climbing down off the rocks:

The next rock outcropping led to a little cliff that could not be climbed down so we had to take our shoes off and go around through the surf. Mike went first and found the deep spot that we should avoid. He was in to his waist. Running around the point:

A wave came in and it got a bit deep:

We all got surf-splashed on the far side that you can’t see in these pictures, but our bags did great at repelling water. It was a really fun adventure to end on!!

The rest of the beach:

We left the beach at Winchuk River which was too deep for wading. We watched two kids and a dog swim across it and they verified they could not touch bottom. 

We finished the last half mile on the highway. And we made it! The finish was pretty exciting so it required a lot of documentary photos. A group selfie at the California border:

Saying good-bye to Oregon:

We went into the Welcome Center at Crissey Field State Park. The staff were very excited about our accomplishment and took our picture for their Facebook page:

Jaiden was particularly excited. She gave us stickers, then went in to the back office and got us some pins they had saved from last year, and some more stickers. 

We went out to the beach to officially finish.  There is no sign to mark the state line on the beach so like our start line, we created our finish line. Done!!

Our adventure didn’t end there, of course. From Crissey Field we had to get 20 miles south to Crescent City, CA where we had a hotel waiting and a rental car the next day to get back to Portland for our flight home. 

The taxi company had one guy working. He had two runs in front of us so we waited awhile. He arrived in a Prius. Can 6 people and 5 big packs fit in a Prius? Yes! Yes, we can! 

A very pleasant surprise was in store for me at the Ocean View Inn! We had 2 rooms, so I actually got a bed! And even my own room so no one had to worry about driving me crazy with the TV on when we went to bed. It was so great not to have to pull out my sleeping pad and quilts while my friends climbed into soft beds!

It was a great end to a really great vacation! Thank you, all, for following along and for all your words of encouragement. It was fun sharing it all with you!