Coos Bay to Eugene

Awaking to the sun rising on the beach is an experience incomparable to anything else. After our comfortable night on the beach, I arose early to catch the sunrise. I hurried to the Astro to grab my camera and then rushed back down to the beach to try and catch the sun before it rose over the pine trees. I didn't beat it, but I was still able to capture some amazing sights. Two things I'd like to mention here; one being racing to catch light or beat the light, is rather hard, and also sometimes losing a race with the light can create a better scene. Most of the time however, the latter is less true. On this certain morning though, I defied the odds. I ran to the top of this sea stack attempting to catch the next National Geographic cover shot... Didn't really capture that high of a standard but caught some good stuff. On my way down Sheldon still wasn't up so I decided to play a little prank on him. Since I was on this high lookout I gathered some small rocks, aka pebbles, and started throwing them down onto the tent. I nailed the tent dead-on with the third rock. I kept throwing more rocks and he finally started to wake up. He stood up in the tent and I launched this rain-maker directly onto the bulge in the tent. Bulls-eye! Later I would find out I hit him on the dome. :)
Even after this remarkable shot, I kept this rock-throwing business going for about five minutes. He had ventured out of the tent and was looking around confused and pissed off for the culprit. I would throw a rock behind him, duck down, and peek around to see him desperately searching for someone or something. Oh my, I crack myself up. I eventually walked down from my hideout all nonchalantly acting like I had just come from taking pictures (I really had been...).
        After we had cleaned up camp, we headed north up the Oregon coast and stopped at a special place called Elk River. Here we played in the water and became clean. A baptism of sorts. I even dropped my towel in the near-freezing water. I won the rock skipping contest and got to dine on nature's finest blackberries. Continuing north we stopped at a lighthouse of popular liking named Cape Blanco. I crossed into the out of bounds area to catch a few shots but got some good-lookin shots of the lighthouse, personally approved. :) After staying there for about 2.35 minutes we got back on the highway heading towards Coos Bay. The city of Coos Bay was welcoming and an overwhelming emotion came over me as we pulled into Prefontaine's hometown. Visualizing Pre running on the roads we were driving on, picturing him training in his city. Pretty inspirational. I was thinking his memorial rock was in Coos, but it is actually in Eugene (Tomorrow will be a Pre remembrance). We stopped and gassed up in Coo's, had a bite to eat and headed out of town.
             About an hour out of town a quick Google search revealed that there was a Museum in Coos that has Pre's medals and ribbons with a memorial in his honor. We totally overlooked it! I was half-tempted to have Sheldon flip around so we could go back and see it. Being so close to his greatness gets me a little emotional... But we kept on 'vanning', similiar to trucking but in a van. It's a new term I created.
           The next big city was Eugene. Bustling to the max, nestled along the Willamette River was the beautiful and freindly Eugene City. We pulled into the town on game day and holy smokes was Duck Spirit in the air! The school and sport spirit here in Eugene is amazing. Green and yellow is prevalent on almost every t-shirt, car, business and street. Especially on game day. We luckily found a parking spot about a mile from Autzen Stadium and started walking to the game hoping to find a ticket to watch the game. What a better way to experience Eugene than a home football game? While walking there however fate had a different path picked out. We were walking when all of the sudden to darling young women, about our size, approached on the same sidewalk as us. I instantly knew they were going to be a part of our night. We, more like I (Sheldon just stands there and looks good), struck up a conversation and talked about the University of Oregon and Eugene. The girls were up to nothing and we talked them into giving us a tour of the campus. They took us past the dorms, the academic buildings, the music department, I must say it is a very well-kept campus, and then onto (drumroll!) HAYWARD FIELD! The girls promised us they could get us into the track and I was ecstatic! I mean Hayward Field! Shall I rave about this legendary track? Bowerman, Prefontaine, Ryun, Symmonds, Dellinger, Moore, Prefontaine, Prefontaine... So many great running athletes that have graced the track. I could almost hear the crowds cheering, see the athletes giving their all. I could feel the greatness. Simply spectacular. When you dream about visiting a place and finally get to experience the actual location it's hard not to feel overwhelmed. I mean Hayward Field! Gosh dang... It's still surreal that I had the privilege of seeing the track. That is to say we couldn't get in because of resurfacing but still fulfilling nonetheless. (Tomorrow would be a different experience of the track.) Back to our tour guides, they took us on a loop back to our van, helped us home, so we "serenaded" them for payment.
          What an uplifiting day... We ate some dinner and then headed to a comfy, cozy neighborhood. We fell asleep to the rain playing its song on the van's rooftop.

Note: Eugene has some extremely attractive women.