Tuesday
The Monaco mfg area was even more than I had expected… Fact is, I could only cruise through one of their parking areas and happily gaze through the fence. On the other side of the fence were parked the most beautiful coaches you could ever imagine. On one side of the street were the Marathon group, and one the other…Monaco. Marathon’s price out well over $600,000 to over $1 M, and the Monaco’s from $4 to 600,000…anyone want to give me one??? Well it was nice to look anyway, so we did for a few minutes…nose pressed tight on the wire fencing and drooling hard enough to start a flower garden below us. I had given thought to finding a campground there but changed plans as my mind started thinking of a way for us to get into one of these fine coaches (what a laugh that is…). Instead we changed course and headed west on Hwy 126 and Florence. It was a nice drive along a 2 lane road that kept us entertained with small villages along the Suluslaw River, a couple of small lakes, and hills on both sides that were recently painted with Fall colors. All this for 54 miles and then…Hwy 101, the Pacific Ocean, and Florence. It was getting late in the day so our first thought was to find a campground for the night. Digging through our many campground membership books we found one that sounded great for the night. On our way there we came upon a state campground right on the edge of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. Besides being about 3 miles closer to Florence, the call of the sand dunes called. Pulling off of 101 and down a tree lined road we came upon a beautiful lake, and surrounding it on 3 sides were the glistening and softly rounded sand dunes. A little deeper into the tall fir and pine trees we found a site that had all the hookups. Now the big problem was “how do we get ourselves into it”? We’re only 4 feet longer than we were but those 4 feet are sometimes like a mile and this was one of those times. Well now that we’re in, they tell us that “what goes in can go out as well”…OK, we’ll see.