Camping in Florence

This is the view of the Pacific Ocean and Siuslaw River from the Harbor Vista Campground in Florence, Oregon. The sleeping sounds at night are harbor buoys and the crashing ocean waves. This is our fifth time to camp here and I think we love it more every time, though we're questioning whether our days as tent campers might be over. Our air mattress had a hole the first night and it left Ian's injured back in shaky condition. We drove to Fred Meyer's the next day to buy an overdue new one, and it gave me great pleasure to toss the old one in the trash.






Florence has become a major retirement destination. A shop owner told us that 65% of the population is over the age of 55. Just the same, it's a beautiful area. Lane County built this crazy viewpoint structure and it's where I took the previous picture. The structure includes a tower with webcam so you can check the conditions at any time by going to http://www.co.lane.or.us/webcams/harborvista/ The last time we camped here, Amy was with us and found the webcam so we could anticipate our camping trip. We left our camp site and drove up to my brother and sister-in-law's place in Washington. They were just finishing building the rooms for their B&B and we got to sleep on the floor for free. It was a magical visit.

I took this picture in front of the Siuslaw Public Library. It cracks me up. Alert, alert!! High Water!!!! Oh, by the way, don't you dare park on this side of the street. It's a bit of a mixed message to me. The library has WiFi so we were able to catch up on emails and I got my last blog posted. We cracked ourselves up, two old fogies sitting side by side with our laptops, whispering like kids in a theatre.
Whaddya think? Is this our future??? What kind of trailer do you pull behind a Subaru? I don't want to pull any kind of trailer at all, because I want to be able to swerve and pull off the road when I'm driving and have the absolute need to take a picture like this.