"We had a bacon love - even when it was bad it was good." - Jarod Kintz

I finally got that pic of Noonie's Breakfast Barn off my phone. I'm not sure it was worth the effort, but the diner is. Tomorrow we move from Sunset Bay St. Pk. to Humbug Mountain St. Pk., but first we'll go back there for breakfast.

This morning wasn't as wet as yesterday but a good breeze and temps in the low 50's had us bundled up, eating b'fast in the car, and wishing I'd bought more firewood. But after eggs and BACON we headed 6 miles down the road to Cape Arago St. Pk. No camp sites there; just day use. But beautiful. The view from the cliffs above is breathtaking, the hike down to the beach surprisingly easy, and the views from the bottom a match for those from the top. Some people like long sandy beaches but we'll take the OR coast every time. Two dimensional images don't do it justice, but that didn't stop me from taking almost 30 pics. These give an idea what we saw.

You can see Pam's pretty bundled up. It reminded me of something we learned a couple of years ago: avoid camping at places with "cape" in the name. Our teardrop is at Sunset Bay and this was just a sightseeing jaunt, but being out on a promontory made a noticeable difference.

Adjacent to the trail along the cliff sits the gardens. This guy whose name I can't remember built an estate at the turn of the last century with a massive mansion, stables, gardens, and guest houses. It burned down and his wife died, all within three months. He remarried, rebuilt, and then lost a ton of money in the stock market crash. He donated the estate to Oregon, only to have it burn down again three years later. (The gardeners house alone survived.) During WWII the gardens were neglected but in the 80's (I think) they were restored. Incredible! In an effort to match what the original guy did they brought in specimens from all over the world and we saw plants and trees unlike anything we've ever seen. And it's all perfectly tended by volunteers and state workers. It should be swarming with people but because they don't advertise it most people never know it's there. We agreed that 90% of the people in our campground a few miles north have no idea this exists. Shame.

The sun came out at noon but that didn't warm things up much. Lunch in the car and then reading. I did some work on my computer, too. Then into Coos Bay for a cup of joe at a shop we found when it had just opened three years ago, where we now sit.

The layers of clothing to fight off the mid-50's, windy, damp weather are a reasonable price to pay for the beauty we're seeing up close. I've never seen so many monstrous diesel pickup trucks pulling trailers the length of a freight train. We can hear their propane heaters roaring away and at night see the flicker of their flat screen TV's. We're just fine huddled by the fire, or cozy in our teardrop, or sitting in the car listening to the radio while we read. In between we're hiking narrow trails along steep cliffs overlooking the rocky coastline of Oregon and discovering manicured gardens with plants from around the world.

I'm not ready to go back to the desert yet.