Beyond 100 In Oregon County Listing: Vacation to Southern Oregon

On Friday, September 21 Rosie and I took off with our truck and camper for a 10 day vacation. Rosie has not been able to take off for about 2 years, having been looking out for her parents. She was able to arrange for friends and relatives to fill in for her in taking care of her mother, who now lives with us.

Our plans were to head over to the coast for the first week end, camp there, and then head south, but the weather app was indicating a rainy, blustery couple of days, so we went directly south - inland, and ended up west of Roseburg along the Umpqua River, which is the main drainage system for the central Cascades to the coast, and was at its usual low autumn level.

We camped at Tyee Campground, a BLM owned piece of land, and were just east of the wet weather systems, so avoided the rain. It was usually overcast though. It was a quiet place and we enjoyed the scenery and went for a couple walks each day. I also added a few birds to my Douglas County bird list. I saw about 50 species of birds while there, and one memorable sight was an adult Bald Eagle cruising up river right in front of me.

Here are some pics from our time there.

Looking down river

Rosie overlooking the Umpqua River

Common Mergansers on the river

Frogs

Fresh water crocodile

Looking up river

More Frogs

On Sunday, mid morning, we drove about 50 miles to the coast. There is an Elk sanctuary near Reedsport where we have observed lots of them in the past, but today it was quite meager with only a few visible. We next drove down a road to a beach I had been wanting to take for some time as it is more remote than the usual busy places. It is 4 miles from the highway, and at one point you need a high clearance vehicle to go across a stream. There were about 8 other cars/trucks there, and we pretty much had the beach to ourselves and walked about a mile south and then back. If we were to have walked 5 miles were would have reached the north jetty of the Umpqua River, but we were not quite up to that.

We next drove back to Reedsport to a campground at the south jetty of the same river for the night. We have been to this area before, but as it was becoming windy, we did not venture out until the next day. On the coast it is usually more calm in the morning, getting windier as the day progresses, so we went for a nice morning walk before heading further south. Here are some pics from that area:

The dune area at the south jetty of the Umpqua River

The beach area at the south jetty of the Umpqua River

Heermann's Gull. These breed in the Cortez Sea and come north each summer.

Mid morning found us venturing south to Coos Bay, and then past Bandon to Floras Lake where we camped for the night. It was really windy but we went over to the beach for a walk anyway. It was not as long as we would have liked because of the wind, and it continued to be windy all night and into the next morning, so we decided to head inland to avoid more of the same. Which idea may bring up the query of how we actually planned our vacation - we really did not have any concrete plans as far as places to stay, only ideas of general areas we hoped or planned to visit. As the summer vacation season was over on Labor Day, we did not have to worry about vacancy at campgrounds.

So we drove back to the Coos Bay area and headed east, inland to near Roseburg again, and then took I-5 south to Grants Pass to the Redwood Highway south to Lake Selmac. (Some of you may have seen the movie “Redwood Highway” which was made along this stretch of road.) There is a banner like sign over Main Street which reads, “It’s The Climate.” Yes, the climate here is warmer and drier than in the Willamette Valley where we live. Since the legalization of cannabis, southern Oregon has become the hot spot for growers of it, and once away from the urban areas, there are “No Trespassing” signs and locked gates all over the place. Land values have gone up as well. Notice the two pics, one of which is a campground that is “user friendly” for cannabis users, the other is not.

Lake Selma is a county operated area, with some 90+ campsites around the lake. We stayed in one area the first night, and a different area the next two nights. The weather was warm and the campground virtually empty. We walked around parts of the lake each day. I entered Josephine County with a bird list of 110, and left at 127. We heard Screech Owls at night and Pygmy Owls in the morning. There were lots of waterfowl using the place, and a heron often came to our cove to search for food. On the 2nd day an otter paid us a visit. I tried to get decent pictures, but this was difficult. Some of the more interesting birds here were Kingfishers, Merlin, Peregrine Falcon, Virginia Rail, Sora and a group of Pileated Woodpeckers.

One reason for wanting to come here was to hopefully visit a friend of ours named Preston. We met Preston some 10 years ago while doing prison ministry where he decided Christianity was real and worth accepting, so he made the commitment. We kept in touch after he got out, went to his wedding, met his new son. He is now doing electrical work and in a year will have his journeyman’s license, so is doing quite well and has a wonderful family. We were able to spend an evening visiting as they came to our campsite. I took more pics here than elsewhere, and here are some of the sights:

A Sora swimming across a short stretch of water

Green Heron

Great Egret

Our first campsite at Lake Selmac

The heron which came to visit us each day

Deer and Turkeys

Our second campsite at Lake Selmac

The heron sunning himself

Otter

White-fronted Goose. We had a flock of 25 land on the lake while there.

Black Phoebe

Our camper as seen from the other side of the lake

A Stellar's Jay getting a drink

User friendly campground

Pileated Woodpecker

The sign speaks for itself

From Lake Selmac we were about a 5 hour drive from home, so I wanted to find a place in between to camp so as not to have to drive so far come Sunday morning, and we settled on a place named Galesville Reservoir, SE of Roseburg. We arrived there mid afternoon on Friday and found a campsite. The campground was not big, about 15 sites, and most were taken by RVs or Motorhomes, so we were fortunate to get here when we did. The reservoir was man made and had a dam at one end. It appears to have been created for fishing purposes as many trees were left standing, and these you can see in one of the pictures. These were undoubtedly left for shelter for the fish. Most, if not all such reservoirs in Western Oregon are emptied out of much of their water in the fall so as to make room for the deluge of the winter rain, and so this one was down some 40-50 feet.

The rest of Friday and much of Saturday was nice weather, but late Saturday and into the night it rained, the first we had seen all vacation. It was nice to be in a waterproof camper instead of a tent, which is the way we have camped all our lives. Both here and at Lake Selmac we experienced an overcast sky due to forest fires, but the rain had cleared the air at last, and the air was fresh an scented.

We left after breakfast and got home about 2:30, eating at a rest area along I-5. The truck performed just fine and we had no problems.