Two Detours
We left early in the morning, made our way to Bend, Oregon and took a break at Di'Lusso Bakery Cafe getting there around 2:30pm at mile 1898. We had finally found a wi-fi connection there in Bend. Up in Crater Lake we were cut off from the world. Barely had a cell signal up there. After that, the plan was to turn west and go through Eugene on our way back to the coast.

Looking back again, we probably made a mistake in going to Bend. Although it's a nice town, we passed up the opportunity to take a very scenic drive from Crater Lake over the Cascades to Eugene. We found out later that drive is a scenic byway. The drive to Bend was kind of boring.

After leaving Bend, we really didn't get to see much. We were trying to take the McKenzie Pass which would have taken us just north of Mt. Bachelor (the ski resort) and the Three Sisters Mountains. Unfortunately, we were detoured completely around the range by a forest fire. So that set us back about an hour. And we didn't get to see those mountains.

When we finally got to Eugene, we stopped by just to drive through the downtown area. We really didn't have much time to stop and walk around or anything. Seemed like a pretty nice town though. After Eugene, we headed straight for the coast, but again we were diverted by a closed road. Lost another hour there, but at least the drive was really pretty. Found out later on the local news that one of those double gas tankers overturned and road would be closed for at least 24 hours. Must have been pretty bad because they had to evacuate some local residents.

We made it to the Oregon coast by mile 2118, once again just in time to see the sunset. It wasn't quite as impressive as before because of the heavy low fog, so no pics to post. After that, we checked into the Old Town Inn in Florence, OR for the evening.