RV trip to the Oregon coast

[PZ]

Well boys, I just returned from a one month RV trip in which we did everything from thermal springs to beach combing on the Oregon coast. We like to go to Winchester Bay and reserve a space that allows up to back our rea living area right to the edge of the bay for a spectacular view.

We enjoyed visiting the wineries a bit inland, lighthouses, riding our fold-able bikes around the tiny town that reminds me of Bodega Bay in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds", and of course plenty of oysters and crab.

Traveling toward home we visited the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument while staying in Dayville, then went to Baker City where we explored the Sumpter Valley gold dredge. and also found a fantastic Mexican food truck about a mile from our RV spot in Baker City.

It was a fantastic memorable trip, and I'm going to do a full report with pics when I get a chance. However, it is unload the rig day, laundry day, and get ready for winter day.

Oh, a truly touching moment: our son, his wife, and new baby daughter have moved into our guest house because housing is so expensive in our area with the influx of thousands of Californians, most people are being driven from our area due to finance. He told me to follow him to the back yard area leading me to believe that something wrong. That "something wrong" was his birthday/Christmas present to me - a 27 ton log splitter!

Coincidentally I was talking to my wife on the drive home that I needed to get a splitter ordered because I have a massive stack of logs, and I'm getting too old to do heavy wood splitting without hurting myself. He said he would like for me and him to split logs on his next day off. He is truly a precious kid.

Life is good in this 'hood

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sounds pretty awesome there, vacation, good food, then a nice present when you get home! Looking forward to the pics!

[PZ]

I'm looking forward to posting our adventures, from fossil bed explorations to eating crab on the waterfront!

[nex]

Don't forget the wood chopping pics......

[PZ]

Most definitely - as soon as it stops raining! 

[fragger]

Welcome home, buddy! Sounds like you had an awesome trip! Looking forward to seeing your piccies. There's so much history and so many natural wonders in the US that if I went there I don't know what I'd want to check out first. I love Oz, but as far as the foregoing is concerned, it's a tad lackluster by comparison - unless you're a mad fan of weird animals, beaches, deserts, and really big rocks

Just joking, it's a bit more diverse than that, but it can't compare to the States for natural diversity and historical richness. Not even close. Maybe I'll get over there someday, once I have the wherewithal and this flipping pandemic is behind us.

Still trying to get my head around a 27-ton log-splitter...

Why are so many Californians invading your state?

[PZ]

The price of housing in California is sky high. The good thing for me because of Californians moving here is that the prices in my area have risen to at least 30 times what I paid for my place.

My son has a home in Imperial Beach (near the Mexican border in San Diego) that would cost about $15k when I was there decades ago, but is now estimated at $750k for a tiny (1000 square foot) home - he bought it for a bit under $500k about 5 years ago. Some Californians are coming here because it is advertised as a 2nd amendment state with very little gun regulation. Consequently, when they sell their place in California they can have essentially the pick of homes in our area because they have so much profit from their homes (good luck finding a job).

What makes me sad is that the locals that do not have a home they own can now not afford to live here any longer and need to move away.

As to the 27 ton log splitter, my other boy gave me a demonstration of how it works. I have three large piles of logs, two of which were from trees that fell on my house and need to be split. He put a 1.5 foot diameter log on the splitter and in a few seconds it was split. Less than a minute and the entire round was split into fireplace sized pieces. This is very welcome to my old failing body 

[fragger]

The price of housing in California sounds as bad as Sydney. A few weeks ago, a 100-year-old 2-storey house in the inner suburbs was sold for $1.4 million - and it was already completely burned out. No floors, no roof, half the walls had collapsed, the remaining ones looked like they about to, and everything was soot-blackened and dirty. It can't possibly be rebuilt, so what's left of it will have to be torn down and a whole new house built in its place. So someone paid $1.4 million for an average-sized suburban block of land with a soon-to-be pile of ruined bricks on it. I was flabbergasted.

[PZ]

 

Sounds like southern California!

[nex]

That's the main reason why it's impossible for us to leave South Africa.
selling the property with all the "improvements" I've made will bring me a tidy sum,
but all that won't get me half of what I have anywhere else.

[PZ]

All I say is that I;m lucky to have purchased my place so long ago - I'd not be able to afford it today. 

[fragger]

Indeed, it's crazy. Pokey little weatherboard houses in Sydney which were built in the 40s and 50s and look like they'd fall over if you sneezed on them are regularly selling for close to, or sometimes over, a million bucks these days. A roof over one's head is one of the most basic human requirements, yet it's the costliest thing most people will ever need to buy. I feel that's wrong on some intrinsic level.

My parents recently had their house evaluated. They paid $350,000 for it when they bought it in 2008, it's now worth over $700,000. With people leaving Sydney in droves and moving up the coast (as they mostly tend to do) housing up my way is increasingly in demand. Our little town had about 3,000 people in it when we arrived in '08, it now has over 7,000 and shows no sign of slowing. And now that we're coming out of COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions are easing, the exodus from the city will almost certainly boom.

We're actually getting a volume of traffic on our main street now, which kind of sucks. The days of one car every fifteen minutes or so are clearly over, and the permanent holiday feel of the place is fading. I may have to up stakes and move further afield in the years ahead to find some new place that the city-slickers haven't heard about - yet

[PZ]

... I may have to up stakes and move further afield in the years ahead to find some new place that the city-slickers haven't heard about - yet

I've said the same thing many times in the past few years 

Shame, because I love my place, but hate the politics and awful extreme radical right attitudes moving into the area.,

[PZ]

I'm not sure I posted the pics for the Sumpter dredge photos, so here it is (maybe again  )

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NVVRfwd26xGdMmzY9

[Dweller_Benthos]

Nice, some big heavy machinery there, cool that it's being at least maintained enough to be educational about the history of the place. Stuff like that is hard/expensive to keep accessible and a lot of the time is just fenced off and posted and left to decay.