Each day this trip we are trying to keep up our morning exercise routine from home. Tony dons running clothes and finds a bike trail or neighborhood (or even a large Walmart parking lot once) to run a 5K while I take my yoga mat and the picnic blanket outside for a quiet bit of yoga using YouTube videos. I attend a live yoga class at home on Saturdays while Tony runs around our neighborhood. The Oceanside RV Park we are staying at has a nice, paved bike path that leads to a path down by the Rogue River that is perfect for a walk or run.

Bailey Beach North (#173)

This was the best beach day yet in terms of observing sea life. The tide was low today, so the rocks on this beach had exposed sides where we could see crabs, snails, anemones and star fish. The Ochre sea stars, which have a range of colors, are an indicator species which means their presence here is evidence that the ecosystem is healthy. It probably helps that the beach access has only a small parking spot off the old, single-lane highway 101, keeping the human visitors to a small number.

Oregon numbers its beaches starting at the border with Washington and increasing in number as one travels south to California. The beach signs display the large numbers toward the ocean in bright colors. It helps with rescues, but also with remembering where you entered the beach.

Lunch in Gold Beach

Wood fired pizza is a favorite of ours, and the Groundlings bar and pizza joint makes delicious ones. We also had some very smooth and creamy peanut butter and dark chocolate gelato for dessert. We each got our favorite type of pizza, so we carried out leftovers. Yum!

Evening stroll along the bike path

We enjoyed the bike path that leads from the campground in this evening’s sunshine (no fog for a change!) and walked to the bridge. We found sea lions along the piers and walked through a gift shop where Jerry’s Rogue Jets operates jet boat tours up the Rogue River.

The 101 crosses the Rogue River on the Isaac Lee Patterson Memorial Bridge. This concrete art deco bridge was built in 1930 with a length of 1,898 feet and a cost of $600,000. Salt is tough on concrete so it needed some renovations that cost about $20 million in 2004. It’s really decorative.

The Mary D. Hume

The shipwreck shown below is along the bike trail before it heads under the bridge. It was built here in Gold Beach in 1881 with a cedar keel and named after the owner’s wife. The Mary D. Hume had a long life as a freighter, a whaling vessel, and then a tugboat before it came back to Gold Beach in 1978. She sank in 1985 while being restored to become a museum. At high tide, she is mostly underwater.

Overall, this campground was really convenient, not too noisy with the small airport and fog horn nearby and had very lovely showers. Those larger, hot showers with rain head type faucets can really make for a nice end to the day.