On the final day of our trip to the southern Oregon coast, we got up early, packed up our belongings from the one-room seaside shanty, and headed south on the Oregon Coast Highway (Hwy 101).

So many amazingly beautiful ocean and bluff vistas along the route. This “road sign” made us chuckle and we felt like we couldn’t ignore the directional, so we left the highway and drove to see this advertised “ocean view.”

Then we took a nice little detour on a rural road that paralleled the Rogue River, which flows directly into the ocean. And, of course, I stopped to take a photo of this one-lane bridge on this rural route. (Full Disclosure: In addition to waterfalls, bridges rank pretty high on my list of favorite things to see and photograph.) It was extremely windy and a bit chilly as you approached the bridge/river valley.

We continued on, making roadside stops when a particular view caught our eyes.

Our next major stop was at Natural Bridges, a neat little spot we read about online and made a plan to see on our trip. I really wanted to hike out onto the rock formations, but both access points were extremely steep. One side even had a rope tied to a tree that you could use to pull yourself back up to get back out to the trailhead. After some of our “slippery” experiences on the books already this trip, I was a little hesitant to give this one a go.

Not long after this stop, we crossed over into Northern California. We eventually stopped at a busy Patricks Point State Park and enjoyed another tailgate turkey sandwich lunch in one of the parking lots, followed by a short hike out to Marriage Rock, where, admittedly, a very strong fish odor might have distracted me from the beauty a little bit. This was also where we came across a young couple carrying their “adventure cat” (it was more like a 6-month-old kitten) back from the Marriage Rock hike. That was a first for me. I’ve seen social media personalities who post photos of their adventure cats out in the wild, but I’ve never come across one on our hikes.

We still had about 7 hours of driving ahead of us and in the end it kind of felt like 10. It was a very fun and overall enjoyable trip, and it felt especially good to get away, but I was also supremely glad to be home. In my warm house. With electricity. And plumbing. And running water. And a kitchen. The cats were also happy to see us, but probably mostly because they were hungry for some overdue wet food. They must take after their momma.

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