Smith River

So we left Coos Bay with a short stop at Moe’s Bike Shop for last minute items, and Al at Moe’s called the police to escort us across the North Bend Bridge, that was fun being followed by the cops with lights on and not having to stop .  After he left us we made our way up the coast with tons of head wind and lots of traffic.  I would have to say the scariest part was the climb before Winchester Bay with no shoulder, but coming down made it all worth it.  When we made it into Reedsport we stopped at the grocery store and got some snacks.  We had decided to go on Smith River Rd to Eugene upon the recommendation of Al from the bike shop.  So about a mile after the grocery store we started to head east on Smith River Rd.  It was an immediate relief there was no wind and practically no traffic.  It was starting to get dark so about 3 miles down the road we spotted a beautiful camp spot next to the river with picnic tables, a fire pit, and BBQ, complete with a canoe.  We drooled over this site, but there were no trespassing sign all over it.  So Ryan decided to go ask at the house above.  So Ryan walked up to the door and asked the man that answered “Is that your camp spot down there.” and the man replied “Yes it is”, and Ryan asked “Could we stay there for the evening.” and the man says enthusiastically  “Knock yourselves out” We ride down to this totally picturesque spot and start unloading our gear, this man comes down in his pick-up and jumps down and lets his dog out, “now, this is Toby” he says, “I knew he was going to want to come down and see ya’ll so I brought him down to meet you.” this kind-hearted soul named Studebaker Jim (he’s got a sweet icy-teal Studebaker in his shop) told us to load his giant fir-pit up with cedar from the gigantic stack next to the pit and take the kids out on the canoe but made sure they all had life jackets on first,.  So I made dinner on the BBQ of fried rice with dehydrated veggies and egg in it in our pot that we had brought and Ryan took the kids out on the canoe, the sun was setting and it’s warm and just plain gorgeous in this place, everything is just too perfect, our tents are set up and dinner’s almost ready, I just want to pinch myself, is this dreamy or what? Toby the dog is a great fetcher of sticks and me and the children had a great time playing with this sweet tempered dog who loves water and can play dead when you pretend to shoot him.  Studebaker Jim is so sweet and loads the children up with snacks, I mean any kind of thing you can imagine, Atomic Fireballs, pistachios, smoked almonds, Reeses peanut butter cups, York peppermint patties, snack mixes, drinks and on and on.  This man is a big, burly logger with a solid heart of gold,  he’s such a special guy who’d give you the  shirt right off his back.  We were thankful, now normally I don’t allow the  children to eat a whole lot of sugar, but these guys are working their little rear ends off and I really felt they deserved the pampering .We went to bed very happy campers that night. Sometime in the middle of the night I had to get up to pee and stepped outside the tent that we set up earlier on dry land and now the same spot was covered in a couple inches in water, I totally soaked my socks and had to wring them out, later I could hear Lilly get up from bed and splash around, totally shocked, the girls landed  their tent in the deepest spot of a tidal pool.   When we packed up the next morning after a short visit by the fire with the Avery Family (on their way up to Washington) and they even brought cold O.J. which really helped with the bad sore throat I had and a great raw breakfast and then we rode on up to Jim’s place before taking off down the road, Jim hugs everyone vehemently and frantically searches around for some bright material to strap to our bikes to make us more visible, emphasizing how careful we need to be on these roads.  We all say our goodbyes, we will never forget his kindness to perfect strangers.  We ride on down the road just completely shocked at how amazing this place is, just like paradise, every corner we turn just awes us, we stop about 12 miles down the road at a remote little store and the guy that owns the place tells us that we can order whatever we want, Jim had called and arranged to buy us lunch.  We ordered 2 orders of French fries, a chicken basket (also with fries) and the snack basket (fried zukes, mushrooms, onion rings and fried jalapenos) yes, everything we ate was totally fried. We ate and took off up a steep incline which made me feel a little better about horking down that heavy lunch and made it to that evening to our goal, Smith River Falls, just before making it to the camp, a man pulls up behind us in a car and asks us where we staying that evening because he wants to drop off the load of wood in the trunk of his car for us at our spot, we ride up and he had a big pile of wood waiting there for us, Jim had told him about us.  That night Jon and Stef and Katie-Bug Alhers drove 1 ½  hours to come see us and shared the fire with us and we explored the old Smith River hatchery, sweet time, even after riding 30 miles the kids were totally bouncing off the walls with energy, Jon calls them the Energizer bunny children .  The next day we get an earlier start, 11:30( we have to get our systems down a little better) .  We had a short time of reading the Bible and praying, we asked the children maybe some things we could pray about, they thought about it and came up with water(the campsite we were at didn’t have any), food and a place to stay. We head down the road, beautiful day, perfect weather we just ride and ride. We pulled into a campsite and asked an older couple staying here if they knew of a faucet to get water out of, they said no this spot didn’t have water either but they were leaving and had tons left over, filled all our water bottles and gallon jug and had small bottles on ice they gave to everyone  , around noon we are having lunch on the side of the road and a man drives up and asks what we are doing, he told us he saw us the day before sailing down the hill with smiles from ear to ear and had to know what we were up to, he listened and then told us he had to question our sanity but give us some apples and bananas and slipped us some money, we were so thankful for some fruit after all the cooked rice and quinoa.  We just kept riding, climbing some major mountains and kind of got carried away sailing down the mountain and sailed ourselves straight out of all the river front sites that we could have camped at and wondered where we were going to stay where there was water.  We definitely did not want to turn around so we just kept going straight through this kind of dry looking place getting a little nervous as we had emptied all our water again.  A couple miles we thankfully came across a little creek and a grassy little road tucked next to it, we got baths, Obby made a great little fire we cooked our quinoa over, washed some laundry, tent was up and all of our stuff covered with tarps(we had heard it might rain) and sure enough it starts coming down, so it’s raining out now we are all in our tent warm, dry and happy.  We asked the children at dinner if God had heard our prayers today, they got all excited recounting about the water, the apples and bananas, and the sweet spot tucked in the trees with a creek next to it.  So they are all sleeping, we had a great day riding 37 miles and actually succeeded in wearing the children out, that was my answered prayer.