Lobster Creek – Rogue River

At Huntley Park, Gold Beach, OR

Last year when we were in the area we traveled in the motorhome up river from Gold Beach along Jerry Flat Road up to Lobster Creek…along the way we found Huntley Park, and less than a week later we pulled into Huntley and stayed for two weeks  Wednesday evening I decided to head the 2.5 miles up to Lobster Creek to see if I could see any wildlife…and with the sun already over the hills, I saw this amazing view above…

Saw just a handful of people, most shown in this picture above..so note the boat launching ramp…that is located in the Lobster Creek Campground, a National Forest Campground which has perhaps a dozen sites…many of which are for tents.  When we drove through last year we found  a couple of sites we would have fit into…but no Internet or Cell reception at all…not good for us.

   

The picture to the left is the eastern view from the bridge, and the picture to the right is the one-lane bridge at Lobster Creek, said creek flows into the Rogue River here.  The campground does not require the use of the one-lane bridge as it is accessed from Jerry Flat Road.

,Above you can see the total amount of wildlife which I saw while I was at Lobster Creek.  And yes, that is Lobster Creek running into the river.

   

Along the roadway are these violet flowers…not sure what they are, but they are pretty.

   

   

I promised pics of Huntley Park.  We are under this tree which gives us morning sun, then cool shade during the day.  The solar panel picks up the sun behind us all day long…just need to adjust the position a few times each day,  Three nights and we have recharged our batteries each day so far.

Found an Osprey Nest yesterday…and got this shot near dusk.  Going to try and get a pic of it fishing…wish me luck!

As I write this post I am sitting outside the Curry Public Library in Gold Beach.  Yesterday I came here and found the Internet to be very good, much like Brookings except no password needed.  They might leave it on all night, so even on Sunday you could probably get it out in the parking lot close to the building.  They are in the midst of an expansion of the building…adding about 40% more space.  It sure looks nice.  Yesterday I came to download some movies.  My Kindle had about 4 gigs of space being used by phantom music which I had removed…but the missing data was still taking up space.  One option is to reset, which wipes everything off of it.  It did do that, but would not let me download movies…but it would download TV shows.  I went back and researched at the motorhome, ended up calling Amazon and talking to a tech for about 45 minutes.  He asked if he could call me back today, and I told him I was going back to the library in case it needs another reset.  At 10:30 last night I tried my Kindle again and it was working.  I have already downloaded  a dozen movies, the maximum you are allowed, and some country music, Blake (Shelton) and Brad (Paisley), and nearly done with blog…might be headed back before he calls back…

Hoh Rain Forest, Pics of more Critters

We took the nearly hour long drive up to the Hoh Rain Forest, just to find out that dogs cannot go on the trails, and the temps up there were hitting the ‘80s.  I went into their small visitor’s center, got a little info and confirmation about no dos on the trails, and walked a small trail while Marcia waited with the dogs in the car with the A/C going.  Now normally you would think that a place that gets 140 to 170 inches of rain each year would be safe to take and leave dogs in a car…but not today.  It may rain up to 14 feet each year, but that does not mean every day.

   

You don’t have to walk far to see the effects of so much rain on the forest.

The growth is everywhere, and fallen trees become ripe places for new plants to spring up from, like the roots of this fallen tree.

And they have Sitka Spruce Trees up there, and they too grow very large.

Near the entrance to the park is, or should I say “was” what they called, “The Big Spruce”, one of the largest Spruce trees in the world…until December of last year when it snapped during a wind storm.

I found a path that took me to where the top of the tree fell, and you can see the mangled mess leading back to the now stump of this once awesome tree.

I think Marcia would have been more disappointed except just two days ago we left what seemed to be our own little rain forest, or as she called it, “An Enchanted Forest” before moving to where we are now.  With one big difference, very few people compared to the rain forest we went to today.

Much of the drive after leaving highway 101 is along the Hoh River, which is a glacier feed river from Mt. Olympus.  Due to other mountains being in the way, we did not get a look of the peak of Mt. Olympus at all…a bit disappointing.

As we were leaving the park there is a pond on the right hand side.  Something caught both of our eyes….

…what the heck is that?  At first Marcia thought of a Beaver…but as I got out an looked around the answer became very clear.

DUCKS!  Here there are five with their butts up in the air, an done is the normal sitting position.  It was amazing how much they kept digging their heads down under the water…it was a bit amusing.

   

After we had been home for awhile, ran the generator for a couple of hours, I went back out in search of the Beaver….and I saw two this time in that same pond!

Fairly certain this is a beaver too in the Quillayute River where we saw Otter yesterday.

I am pretty sure this was a small family of Beaver which had crossed the river just a little before I got the shot above. They all seemed to duck into the cover to the left of where these four were taken.

This time I saw about five different Heron, but all my flying pictures were blurry since the sun was covered with that ocean cloud bank.

This one here was the best, showing the Heron in the far left, and all those dots in the water are ducks.  (click on the picture to see a larger version)

   

I also saw one or two young Sea Lions in the River.  I think this is two separate ones, but the pictures were taken a good half hour apart.  This is “not” what we saw yesterday when we saw Otters playing…the swimming behavior of these Sea Lions was totally different than yesterday’s Otters.  I did a bit of research and found that both Otters and Sea Lions are to be found in the area, although the Sea Lions don’t go up the river much past this area.   That pretty much wrapped up another good day…tomorrow it might rain.

Rialto Beach, La Push, Mora Campground

After we settled down in our new Mora Campground spot, we took the short 5 minute drive to Rialto Beach.  This is a favorite for those who wish to tent/backpack camp along the beach here in Olympic National Park.

Those type of campers head north, because to the south is La Push, and that is part of the Quileute Nation, the Quileute Indian Tribe. 

Although there are many nice rock features out in the ocean and some along the beach during low tide…there is also a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of huge piles of driftwood logs piled up along the top of the beach.

This is a crowd favorite, the hole-in-the-wall which, as it is shown here, very accessible during low tide.  During high tide, especially with high surf, you are going to get a bit wet.

Our next stop was just across the Quillayute River (above) to La Push, which is a 12 mile, 20+ minute drive to the east, south, and back to the west…unless one wants to swim.    (do you know how cold that water is?)  

Anyway, just a short distance from Rialto Beach on our way over there we came to a turnout where one could see the Quillayute River…and we stopped…and something caught my eye out in the river. 

Three Otters!  They were just playing and playing and bothering the ducks, and having a ball.  I guess someone forgot to tell them how cold the water was.

After we went over to La Push, we came back to the turnout and I was able to get some shots of the ducks…but the otters were no where to be seen.

   

Both Marcia and I captured this Blue Heron flying across the river.  I thought since we both got it, I would use both shots.  On our way back to the campground there is a small pond to the north of the road and I saw a beaver swimming in the water…but before we could get the camera out, he went under and was gone.   

Over in La Push we didn’t know what to expect…and what we found was a fairly clean city, some older homes, a few restaurants, a marina, and gorgeous views of the ocean.  This is where the River enters into the Pacific.  The same rock structures we saw at Rialto have a different look and feel from this side of the river.

I am really liking the panoramic feature of the camera…and to capture that bird, yes it is only one bird, and have it turn into three birds is something else.  We really enjoyed the views from La Push, and we are contemplating spending a day or two camping over there near the beach at $40 per night…but they have no openings until Sunday, and just not sure we want to hang around this area that long.

   

Above are two of my favorite shots of the day that I took…both with the older camera too.  We are fortunate to have two good cameras.

Marcia was so impressed with this area, she got out of the car and walked on rocky/grass to take a few shots too.  Here she got one looking over the River at the Rialto Beach area, capturing the clouds which hung over the inland just 10 miles or so in.  Early when we arrived at Mora Campground, she said, “If the sun does not shine today, you might not live another day…”, or something like that.  When we were traveling along the Oregon coast back in 2012 she was going nuts after a week plus of no sunlight. 

   

I think we could have stayed there along the beach parking lot for the entire day…except there were a bunch of people around.  So back to the campground we went.  But I would be amiss if I did not talk a bit about the Quileute Indian Tribe.  The Quileute are a Native American people who number around 2,000 people.  They settled this area, where their reservation is located, after a treaty signed in 1855.  Under 400 Quileute live on the reservation today.  In years past, they were great whalers, and great fishermen.  Fictionalized version of the tribe is featured in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Members of the Quileute tribe are shape-shifters (mainly wolves) and hate the vampires.  Meyer’s books are centered on the town of Forks Washington, which is very close to where we are.  Told much in real Quileute folklore, the Quileutes descended from wolves…hence Meyer’s use of them shape-shifting into wolves.  From our brief encounter with them, they are a proud and happy people, they have a good tourist industry, and lovely area to live.

   

The Mora Campground is another no reservation, dry camping area in Olympic National Park.  The sites are nice, but unlike yesterday, we are back amongst the “group camping” thing.  There are 5 different loops, we are in loop C.  We got here so early that we had a hard time to find a spot…but by the time we got back from our trip over to La Push, there were only 2 camping spots open in the entire park, one across from us now being used by a motorcyclist from San Francisco, and one down the way which was gobbled up by one of two cars which passed by as this guy was checking in…this was around 4 pm.  So you have to be quick and on top of things if you want to get into these parks along the coast.

 

 

These two panoramic shots show how we are up against a wall of forest, and open to a lot of road, people and noise.  But hey, it could be way worse…you got to love these National Park Camping Sites.

I realized with the change to August I had forgot to put the pink ribbon on the pictures…sorry mom, but we still love you.  See you in a few weeks.