Oregon Coast for 4 Days - Day Two

This is our campsite for day two, tent site #23 in Bastendorff County Park, twenty dollars. I had looked at the park's website before leaving home, and it appeared reservations were not needed, but when we arrived at the park in the afternoon tired and weary, the first sign we saw said, "This is a Reservation Only Park"! After some searching I found a worker at what looked like a shop, but had an "Office" sign.  He had no problem assigning us this site, and I noticed the whole tenting area of 25 sites only had two other occupied sites.  

We began our day in Florence at the Harbor Vista County Park, completely engulfed in fog.  But, as we traveled south on Highway 101, we soon broke out of the fog and met with our friend Glenn at Carter Lake for some birding.  You can see our bird list here. 

Jeanette spotted this large female Northern Harrier fly over us at Carter Lake, and yelled at me to get a photo.  It's hard to quickly locate a flying bird in the camera and snap a photo, but I got lucky on this one as it swooped past.  This was the first Northern Harrier that we have observed at Carter Lake in our years of birding here. As we continued on south, we stopped at Eel Lake to check out William Tugman State Park.  According to the Oregon State Parks website it was not open, but we noticed a "Vacancy" sign and pulled in.  Seeing a Volunteer, we stopped him to ask, and sure enough the park was open.  Noted: its important in these chaotic times to have on the ground confirmation. Next stop was North Bend, and a search for a hamburger, and a Verizon store.  Poor experience on both accounts. A stop at Mingus Park for some birding found the pond overgrown with pond lilies and inbreeding of ducks caused by public feeding has caused this once pristine pond to be a mess. 

A Great Blue Heron at the pond in Mingus Park appeared to be doing fine on it's own, and not dependent upon bread from the public. We managed to get help from a second Verizon store (we are using a back-up phone with Verizon as a hotspot for areas that lack Mint Mobile coverage) before driving out to Bastendorff County Park.  Tired and discouraged we had dinner, and then settled down in the van to watch the Vice President Debate.  This was a good distraction, and took our minds off of our troubles and gave us a good nights sleep.