CAPE BLANCO STATE PARK (OR) ★

MONDAY - Looking at a 150-mile drive to our next campsite reservation, we decided to leave Panther Flat Campground three days early and add a stop in the middle of that 150-mile drive.

Not quite in the middle, more like 3/4 of the way there, is Cape Blanco State Park where we are going to stay for the next 3-days.

Before we ever hit the road I used to read a blog written by 2 full-timers called Wheelin' It. They volunteered at this park back in 2013 and operated the gift shop, plus gave tours in the lighthouse. They made it sound so wonderful we just had to stop and see for ourselves.

At about 2:30PM today we towed ROVER across the CA/OR state border, it's the first time we've done that. It was our 104 such state border crossing and there are only 107 of them in the lower 48 states. I'll tell you a secret, we've got two more such crossings planned for this year, leaving only one uncrossed.

We keep track of all these crossings on our Border Crossing Challenge Page.

One other item of note, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA) the average price of a gallon of gas in the United States is $4.50 today. Currently, the average price of a gallon of gas in California is $6.15, the highest of all 50 states.

The good news is that thanks to our use of the Gas Buddy App, we managed to never pay more than $5.97⁹ a gallon during our 84-day visit in CA. Thankfully the average price of gas here in Oregon is lower at $5.33.

TRAVEL DAY PHOTOS

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Since entering Oregon, we've been seeing more and more of these sea stacks offshore.
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At Meyers Creek Beach there was finally a parking lot big enough to pull off the road.
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The sea stacks here have got to be at least 50' tall!
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Looking north towards where we are headed.
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In the town of Gold Beach we saw a very ornate bridge up ahead.
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The 1898' bridge over the Rouge River began construction in 1930 and completed in 1932.
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The art deco style bridge was dedicated on May 28, 1932 as the Isaac Lee Patterson Bridge.
Isaac Lee Patterson served as governor of the state of Oregon from 1927 to 1929.
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The bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 5, 2005.
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ROVER and THE POD fit snugly into our campsite here.
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With electricity we don't need solar and we have enough cell service to not need Starlink.

no·mad·i·ver·sa·ry
/ˌnō-ˌmadˈəˈvərs(ə)rē/
noun

That's right, today is our 8th nomadiversary!

We've been traveling for 8-years as of today and haven't yet found any reason to stop.

18 5 12
Those are "our" Big Red Numbers!
All you Airstreamers out there know what I'm talking about.

All members of the Airstream Club International get to pick their own personalized membership number and we chose 18512.

Let me word it another way, 2018 MAY 12th. It's the date we left Broward County, FL with everything we own to begin our new full-time traveling lifestyle exactly 8-years ago today!.

WEDNESDAY - We had every intention of photographing the lighthouse and exploring the gift shop yesterday, along with visiting the Historic Hughes House, both right here in the park.

Wouldn't you know it, Tuesday is the only day of the week that both are closed for cleaning and maintenance. Luckily, we don't leave here until Thursday.

SCENES FROM CAPE BLANCO STATE PARK

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Cape Blanco Light Station (1870) holds five Oregon records, including most westerly
and oldest continually operating lighthouse on the Oregon coast.
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Before 2020 you could drive out to the lighthouse, today we had to walk from here.
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While the lighthouse is only 59' tall, the light sits 256' above the sea below.
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At that height, it can be seen from 23 nautical miles out in the ocean.
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Standing behind the lighthouse and looking up towards the light.
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Now it's time to walk all the way back to ROVER waiting for us in the parking lot.
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Looking north from out at the lighthouse.
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Looking south from out at the lighthouse on the cape.
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What looks like a bunch of sealions resting on the beach are actually piles of driftwood.
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Why do a lot of these sea stacks look like shark fins?

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Constructed in 1898 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
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The historic Queen Anne-style house sits near the mouth of the Sixes River.
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The home had acetylene lighting, hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing and a chapel.
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The first room inside the door is the main parlor.
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The furniture is not original to the house, but represent period pieces of the late 1800s.
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The sewing room is right off the main parlor.
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This is the ground floor office where their dairy farm was administered from.
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Electricity was brought into the home in 1942 during World War II.
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The pencil drawings on the mantle show that work was never finished on it.
In 1901 Patrick Hughes died of a riding accident just 3 years after they moved into the home.
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The dining room for the family with nine children.
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The food preparation room with a passthrough to the dining room next door.
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A large stove for the large family.
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The other side of the kitchen with the indoor hot and cold water.
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The only downstairs bedroom was occupied by the parents, Jane and Patrick Hughes.
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The bedroom had a bathroom on one side and the front door on the other.
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Son John was only the second person born in Oregon to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest.
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This is the view of the house from down by the Sixes River.
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This is the view from up at the roadway through the park.

Patrick and Jane were both born in Tyrone County in Ireland, but never met each other. It wasn't until they both lived near San Diego, CA in 1860 that they met and married.

For 30-years they worked hard, saved money and eventually moved here to Cape Blanco where they built a home, began a dairy farm and eventually purchased nearly 2000 acres.

I mentioned how their one son John became a Roman Catholic priest, well another son James was the lightkeeper at Cape Blanco Lighthouse for 37 years. Two of their children died young and their two daughters married and moved away.

The other three sons, Edward, Thomas and Francis, lived upstairs at the ranch and worked the dairy farm.

Jane continued running the ranch with her three sons until age 90. Francis' wife Annie tended to Jane and the housekkeping duties of the 3000 sq. ft. home until Jane's passing.

One side note about the cost of camping in Oregon State Parks for us out-of-state visitors.

When reserving a campsite on the Oregon State Park's ReserveAmerica website you will automatically have a 25% surcharge added to your cost at the last minute before entering your credit card information. Keep in mind that $55 campsite will cost "YOU" $68.

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