Humbug State Park OR (near Bandon OR) - Tionesta CA.
Woke up to a beautiful day, it was cool and sunny. Packed up the stuff as usual and headed to the next closest town, Bandon, which always sounds weird to me, I want to say Brandon. We had breakfast at Subway where the woman guessed John was from Australia by his accent. His accent doesn't sound anything like any Australian accent. But, just to goad her on and have a laugh with John I informed her that she was correct because he had just moved there, she exclaimed "I knew it!" After a tasty cinnamon roll we checked out the map to see which road to take to Coos Bay and say a fun little windy road 42S. Hwy 42S turned out to be one of the greatest motorcycle roads I've ever been on and it was only about 15 miles long, with an average speed of 60 mpg it only lasted 15 min., but it was one of the most blissful 15 miles of roadway I've ever ridden. The surface was pretty new, I'd say it was probably done last year. The best part was the constant, perfectly banked curves. We just rolled on and off the throttle and the speed was such that I was able to keep it in the same gear with a medium high rpm and had plenty of power coming out of the corners. ...oh 42S how I will dream of you. Sadly a long distance relationship won't work out and I'll probably go back to enjoying my local roads. I will always have fond memories of 42S.
From there we picked up Hwy 42 to Roseburg, for our soda stop and fuel. After a quick break we headed toward Crater Lake, the last real sight on this trip. The road wound along through the mountains along the Rogue river. We stopped a few times to enjoy the view and take some pictures. I would like to do some river rafting on this river at some point, it looks like it would be a lot of fun. We chatted with some cyclists for a few minutes and found out they'd been riding for quite a ways, though with the lack of baggage I assume they had a support vehicle.
I made a point to visit Crater Lake early on in the planning stages of this trip. I learned about Crater Lake and Wizard Island, located in the lake, during my Geology class in college. It's interesting because it's open to the public and it's somewhat of an active volcano. The big lake is located in the crater of the volcano and Wizard Island is the slowly growing lava dome that will eventually erupt. It was interesting to see that it had experienced a small eruption sometime in the last year or so as all of the trees near the top were badly burned or left as stumps with a small amount of lava remaining near the rim. I was told by another tourist that the lake is 1500 ft. deep. It's quite a deep blue and really something to see. John and I made our way around one half of the rim and stopped several times to see the view from different vantage points. After that we headed out of the park toward Klamath Falls, OR. I think John may have taken some video along the way. We had dinner in Klamath Falls, gassed up then headed toward Tionesta, CA.
I knew from looking at the maps that Tionesta was small, but I had no idea that the RV park where we camped was the only establishment in Tionesta. I'm still not sure if it's even a town or just some sort place marker or historical location. We stopped at one point to check the map because I was sure we had passed it or we would get to it soon. Luckily some locals happened by and knew where it was. We got there and were quite happy to find a quaint little RV park and campground complete with some little cabins. I'm not sure who stays in these little cabins as I doubt anyone knows it's there. The ex-trucker that owns the place pointed to where we could set up a tent. We paid our $10 and got a great little camp site complete with fire pit and a pile of split wood for our fire. The bathroom and showers were really pretty nice for being in such an out of the way place. John and I stayed up quite late chatting by the fire. At one point the wind picked up and very nearly sent out tent into the fire. Luckily we were quick on our feet and saved it before it met it's demise.
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