WHERE IS FLORENCE?

Florence is everywhere it seems. Florenceians from Oregon know precisely where they are, and where every other city of Florence is too. They are proud to flaunt that they are 5800 miles from Florence, Italy and 890 miles from Florence, California, and...

3,717 miles from Florence, Nova Scotia and 1,256 miles from Florence, Arizona...as you can see, its fun!
This is a nice town. You can get 25 different kinds of craft beers here, for starters. Even the local Moose Club serves up a Black Butte Porter. Ahh, the West Coast advantage, good bread and beer.

 The town is nicely surrounded by water, woods and sand dunes. The art deco 1930's style draw bridge takes you over the Siuslaw (pronounced say-use-slaw) River. Several fish houses and restaurants feature the abundant fresh Oregon clams, crabs, cod and halibut. In fact, since it was Mother's Day, we had planned to go out for lunch at a well recommended restaurant called the Waterfront Depot after poking around town and visiting the Pioneer Museum. 
 We found out they were only open for dinner and we were hungry. I ran into a shop and asked the cashier for a second best restaurant in town and she said in a very commanding way, "No, you must go there if you can get a seat. Every one up and down the coast comes to this place. You need a reservation. They are setting up right now. Go to the door and see if they have a spot for you." How could I refuse such an order?
But, they were full.  Since they are open 7 days a week we reserved a table for tomorrow instead.  The Bay Street Grill served us a nice bowl of clam chowder with excellent sour dough bread.

 The day was sunny and crisp. The rhododendron festival is just around the corner and we saw bunches of them around town and on the road.

Exhibits from the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum were of good quality and thorough about this locality. Great pianos, organs, dulcimers, drums, a military room, sewing room, the usual household items and tools you are likely to see. The docents were friendly and well informed.  I like museums where I find something I've never seen before. I was in for a curious treat.

This contraption is a Sears & Roebuck fireless cooker and radiator. The cooking and heating is done by placing soap stones that fit in the well in the sun to absorb heat. Then the radiated heat cooks your food and helps keep your room warm. And I thought solar cooking devices were modern green technology?

 This my friends, I wish I had at home. A musical toilet paper holder, as long as it doesn't play the Star Spangled Banner. The docent demonstrated it for me. You pull on the paper and it winds up the music box and plays a tune. Guess it didn't catch on commercially.

 This perfectly round bowling ball sized rock was formed by rolling around and around at the foot of a falls, trapped in an indent. Smaller stone "marbles'  were formed that way as well.

 Beach balls, another natural phenomena found on beaches the world over.

 This key collection, and a button collection; an old wooden ironing board with a metal plate built into it,   prevents the iron from burning the board. A couple gigantic pressure cookers. A whole raft of stuff I'd never been acquainted with. I've really played with trivial things here, but this museum, set in a former school house,  has interesting local history, families, industry, stories. The local Siuslaw Indians were peaceful people who got along well with the white settlers. The Indians would protect themselves from forest fires by heading for the beach and loading their families into a boat and anchor far enough off shore to prevent encounters with cougars, bear, and other predators also taking refuge near the water.

 I couldn't resist this picture. A bunch of  the Beach Gang, during WWII, volunteers who watched for ships but liked to play around a bit on occasion, built this gigantic sling shot.

I couldn't pass up this jail door, either. It says door, not window.

HACETA LIGHTHOUSE AND SEA CAVES

The Haceta Lighthouse is barely visible from a distance on this rugged section of the Oregon coast. The day was overcast, damp, cool and invigorating.

The steep hike up gave us aerial views of the beautiful point and cove it commands and also the Cave Creek Bridge over which we crossed to get to the parking lot. 

 From above, we watched the churning power of the sea swirling around huge rock outcroppings as though to pulverize them to pieces.

 On the way up I wanted to swing like monkey from the branches of this a tree that formed natural stairs along the trail with its huge root system. I haven't a clue what kind of tree it is.

 Amazingly, Haceta is an old 1894 lighthouse, but it is still in service. It has an automated fresnel lense that turns a 1,000 watt bulb, magnified a million times by the lense to shine 21 miles out to sea. Its an historic relic maintained by the Oregon Parks System because ships and planes have GPS and satellite sounding systems that have no need for this piece of history.

Jim and I visited about a dozen lighthouses on the East Coast last year, but I learned more about them on this visit than all of the others. Each lighthouse has two oil houses. In case one catches fire and burns, the oil from the 2nd house is available to keep the lamps lit for passing ships. The big can was filled and brought to the service level twice per shift. The small can was used to fill the oil lamp. On the day shift, the fresnel lense had to be cleaned of soot and smoke from the lamps.

 The keeper had to climb inside the lamp through this service bay and polish every facet of the lense and the lighthouse windows as well. The keepers had to wear white aprons over their uniform to keep their brass buttons from scratching the lens.The lense weighs two thousand pounds and operated in the old days by counter weights such as those used by a grandfather clock.

This is old growth forest, with trees that dare to grow out of even older rock outcroppings. The forest itself is interesting.

On our return to camp we stopped at the Sea Lion Cave, the biggest sea cave in the world. It was a natural wonder in its early days, but now a tourist rip off courtesy of its current owners who built a 300 foot deep elevator into the cave and ruined it for viewing. Don't be tempted. They do have a position over one of the biggest birthing rookeries for sea lions. But they can be seen almost as well from the cliff sides on the road.

The cliffs here are made beautiful by an invasive plant, the scotch broom. They can't seem to rid the state of the stuff but its adaptive form on these cliffs is nothing short of spectacular.