Monday, July 1, 2019

Oregon Coast by Camper Van, Part Two - The Wreck of the Peter Iredale

Doing the camper van is something I have always wanted to do. It's not something we could do growing up in South Florida. Camping isn't really even a thing in Florida, either. I went camping with my mom when we -- briefly -- lived in Texas. We would meet my aunt, uncle, and cousins at a lake somewhere in Texas. Port Arthur or Lake Charles...or was it Lake Arthur or Port Charles? I don't remember much about the trips; in all honesty, there may have been only one (the same number of times my mom tried to teach me how to drive a stick shift. I want the number to be higher, but for the sake of authenticity, I have to admit she only tried once), except there was lake swimming and floating on inflatable rafts, rich, nutrient-filled black Texas soil caked to the soles of my feet like frosting, in between my toes, and under fingernails, country music, and mosquitoes.

South Florida is all about the beach, fishing, water sports, and boating. But -- truth be told -- I've always preferred mountains, trails, and snow. Whereas some may experience gender dysmorphia, when a man feels as though he should have been born into the body of a woman or a woman who feels as though she should have been born into the body of man, I sometimes feel as though I had geography dysmorphia; a beach bum who feels as though he should have been born as a mountain man.

I never had the chance to live out of a camper van. But badly wanted to do it. Mostly, I wanted to see if our family of five was up to it. To test out mettle, if you will. 

We left Westport on Sunday and drive to our next destination, Fort Stevens State Park in Oregon. It was one of our longer drives of the trip -- two hours -- and we broke it to stop at Columbia River Coffee Roasters just under the four mile bridge that brings you into Oregon for a little pick-me-up and to recharge our cell phones. The kids sat mostly quietly (when they weren't fighting over a pair of binoculars to see out over the Columbia), flipping through real estate magazines and admiring flyers advertising drum circles (no actual drumming experience or skill necessary). 

This may have been my favorite camp site given how dense and green the forest was around us. We made spaghetti for dinner on the camp stove.



Before.


After.


Scooting along the trail to the bathroom.


The fire master at work.



The next morning, Elise headed out for a run while the rest of us made the long (longer than we anticipated) trek down to the beach. It was over a mile walk. Fortunately, we brought the kids' scooters with us. Every night we pulled into a new campground (we only stayed in the same campground two nights in a row once), they would immediately pull the scooters out of the back, unfold them, and explore the new terrain. Unbeknownst to Elise or I, campgrounds in Oregon require riders under 16 to wear helmets, but since we were in a new campground every night, we had a new opportunity to play dumb until the park ranger came around to remind us the kids needed protective head gear. 


Like most of the beaches we visited, it was wide, long, and cold. A waist-deep stretch of water separated a broad sand bar from the beach. The kids attempted to cross it, but it was too deep. They discovered if they ran down the beach a half mile or so, they could get around the water, directly on to the sand bar, and they all went tearing off. They did eventually make it across, then came running the half mile back to the point where they weren't able to cross. 






Clem got tired, so I walked down the beach to the point where they could cross, and Clemey and I walked back to Elise and the boys. 

We found Peter and Sam naked from the waist up, huddled in the skeletal shadow of the wreck of the Peter Iredale, a four-masted steel sailing vessel that ran ashore October 25, 1906, en route to Portland, sailing from Mexico on or about September 26, 1906, with 1,000 tons of ballast and a crew of 27. The ship's voyage up the coast was unremarkable until the night of 25 October, when Captain H. Lawrence sighted the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse at 3:20 a.m. local time. The crew altered course first east-northeast and then northeast to enter the mouth of the Columbia River in thick mist and a rising tide. Under strong winds out of the west, an attempt was made to wear the ship away from shore, but a heavy northwest squall grounded the ship. High seas and wind drove the ship ashore (courtesy of Wikipedia). 

Our kids were similarly shipwrecked. In an attempt to cross from the sand bar at the point where they had previously determined it was too deep to cross, Peter and Sam stepped off the sand bar into ice cold Pacific seawater up to their necks, completely soaking their clothes in the process.



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