Next Up on the Oregon Coast – Umpqua River Lighthouse & Winchester Bay

My new camera (Sony WX350) is taking so many great photos (and trust me – it’s mostly the camera, not the photographer), and each of our stops have been completely wonderful on their own – that I’ve decided that each deserves a separate entry in the travelogue.

Our last stop was in Charleston, OR on our quest to find Cape Arago Lighthouse. The next lighthouse on our stop would be Umpqua River Lighthouse.

Salmon Harbor Marina – Winchester Bay, OR

When we were scheming our plans to head on up the coast, our buddy Nina shared with us all of her favorite stops. One that particularly stood out to us was the unique opportunity to park on a marina pier at the mouth of the Umpqua River!

Salmon Harbor Marina is in the quaint fishing town of Winchester Bay, just south of Reedsport, and only a handful of RV Park listing sites even include it. There are other nearby camping opportunity including the Umpqua River State Park, Winchester Bay RV Resort (just across the harbor) and nearby Windy Cove county parks nearby.

All 124 RV spaces at the marina are entirely first come first serve, all dry camping (no hook-ups at all) and cost $15/night.  But you get water views all around you!

When we arrived, there were a number of folks already parked on the ‘C Dock’ which seemed to have longer spaces to fit motorhomes. Some of those folks turned out to be some fun folks from the Escapee’s Boomer Group!

We opted for a space closest to the street, which had the bonus of room to the driver’s side of the bus to layout the solar panels we’re testing. This would be an ideal situation to continue the testing since some of the defective panels were replaced by the manufacturer. We currently have 856 watts of panels to compare and contrast.

We also had no direct neighbors the entire time, which gave us fantastic office views to soak in!

Another benefit of this location, is it just about a 1.5 miles down the hill from Umpqua River Lighthouse. On our first evening, we went out for a stroll, and ended up at the base of the lighthouse. It was surprising just how ‘on the road’ it is, compared to the last three we’ve explored which required a bit of trekking to get to.

The very unique thing about Umpqua River Lighthouse is its red & white Fresnel lens. It has a flashing pattern of 2 blinks of white followed by a red. It has 24 bulls-eye lenses that spin at a fairly rapid pace. Standing under it at night was such a treat – kinda like being underneath a giant disco ball. The trees behind it capture the dancing beams.

We stood there for quite a while like giddy kids.

Oh goodness. We are turning into lighthouse nuts, aren’t we?

We returned a couple days later for a tour, which was really well done. The museum is setup in an old Coast Guard housing building, and the tours also all done on a volunteer basis, like our gig at Cape Blanco.

 

Douglas County has taken over maintenance and running the tours, and the facilitator is quite enthusiastic about her role. We enjoyed talking with her and the other volunteers for quite a while. We have to say, upon learning they were short staffed this month, it was tempting to volunteer to sign on. It seems like a very well run program and host spots all have amazing ocean views over the sand dunes!

But we resisted. We know how much we need this downtime we created for ourselves.

The rest of our time in Winchester Bay was spent doing a little exploring around town and enjoying our amazing location. Here’s some shots from our time in the area:

Suffice it to say, we had a wonderful time at this location – and would highly recommend it. As the payment envelop says, it’s ‘Oregon’s Best Kept Secret’. Well, a few more bloggers talking about it, and it certainly won’t be.

How’d the solar do?  Great!  We stayed 4 nights, weren’t overly conservative with our power usage. We only had one really sunny day, the rest were quite foggy with some rain. And we managed to only need to run our generator for about an hour the entire time during our stay. And we wouldn’t have needed that if we hadn’t used that sunny day to do our testing (which involved hooking up each panel individually.)  Chris will write up his testing results in the Solar series… soon, eventually, sometimes?  Sorry, we’ve been a bit busy keeping up with the mobile internet stuff lately.

Next Up? We headed up the coast to explore our next lighthouse – Heceta Head! Stay tuned for the next travelogue…

Breaking Mobile Internet News: Millenicom Accounts Acquired by Verizon

Millenicom has long been our top choice for mobile internet – they resold bandwidth on the Verizon network. Well, yesterday we got a heads up from Millenicom that Verizon would be acquiring all of their accounts, and servicing them directly.

E-mails soon after started reaching Millenicom customers.

There’s not many details yet to share about how this will play out, but we’re tracking anything we learn at RV Mobile Internet Resource Center.

Here’s our news post about the acquisition: Millenicom Customer Accounts Acquired by Verizon

It’s been quite the busy month for mobile internet. Seems our timing for starting up a resource center on the topic is excellent!