Humbug Mountain Views, Pacific Sushi & Grill and Ralphie At Nature’s Coastal Holiday Festival of Lights

This is a series of posts about our Southern Oregon Coast road trip in November, you can start here if you would like.

If you have driven on Highway 101 along the Southern Oregon Coast, you might remember that it carves its way around the base of Humbug Mountain between the towns of Gold Coast and Brookings. As it does this, it also cuts between the mountain and the state park of the same name. It is a shaded valley with the small Brush Creek that empties out into the Pacific Ocean at the end of the campground. This is where we woke up the day after Thanksgiving on our road trip.

After a quick breakfast of coffee and banana chip muffins, we walked through the campground to a footbridge over Brush Creek and through a tunnel under 101 to the trailhead for Humbug Mountain.

Being close to the state park, the trail was well signed, almost too well signed. It had a large parking lot and there was only one car when we headed up around 7:45am. The guidebook mentioned there were two options for reaching the summit, in a mile we could walk east around the mountain or west. There used to be just a trail on the west side but it was destroyed in 1962 so an east side trail as built. Once the west side was repaired in 1993, it made a loop.

I had looked up recent trip reports online that mentioned massive windfall on the east side and a sign stapled to the kiosk in the trailhead repeated the warning. So erring on the side of caution, we made plans for the west side of the loop.

The trail started out with a wayward stream overflowing the tread so it was a short hop and a skip on rocks to continue. It then made its way along side the stream on the left.

I say the trail may have been too well signed because after .25 miles we were greeted by our first distance marker. I muttered a little that seemed a bit soon and joked I hope they weren’t every quarter mile. Turns out, they would be.

We had our first view of the ocean by half a mile and 8am.

The next mile or so brought many oohs and aahs as we appreciated the massive size of the Douglas fir trees that we passed in what is considered a temperate rainforest filled with rhododendrons and Myrtlewood or California Bay trees. My husband remarked several times he hadn’t expected that the forest would be so impressive (he has a degree in forestry).

There were also a few obstacles to navigate. I wondered if some of these were from the windstorms that we recently experienced. Otherwise, the trail as in really great shape, benefitting from its inclusion in the state park.

The fungi were plentiful.

A long switchback to the east brought us back to a junction one mile up where we were able to take the righthand fork to make our way around the west side of the mountain.

The viewpoint designated on the map and in the guidebook arrived at 1.4 miles with a glimpse of the coast to the north.

More distance markers. You’ve gotta love state parks.

It was shortly after this one that the trail reached a ridgeline and began a more targeted approach up the fall line towards the summit.

There were small clearings in the trees for limited views to both the East and the West.

At 2.4 miles, we reached what looked like where the east and west trails came back together and much tree upheaval. If this is what it looked like on the discouraged eastside trail I was glad we had taken the route we did.

We came out onto the open summit area at 2.5 miles.

Humbug Mountain is one of the the tallest mountains in Oregon that rises directly up from the Pacific Ocean. There was also evidence at the summit of how this land was once below sea level as we could see the shapes of fossilized shells in the rock at our feet. There were two geological markers an more evidence of storm damage.

The hike back down was uneventful with my husband braving the east trail for his return. He reports it was not a problem so the windfall signs must be old. Maybe they leave them up preventatively?

As I made my way back to the campground, I ran into an older couple who said they were from nearby Port Orford and Humbug was a regular haunt for them. They both had British accents and she said she had been a traveling nurse at some point but had been in Oregon for 20 years. She also quipped she had imported her husband. I told them they were lucky to live so close by.

Back at the campsite, we took showers and ate some hard boiled eggs and bananas before leaving the state park.

We also saw signs of where the Oregon Coast Trail passes through the state park as we drove out. The hiker-biker camp sites were really nice (secluded) and just up the road from the bathrooms and showers.

From Humbug, HWY 101 passed through Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor. We stopped a few times to admire more sea stacks and I attempted to find a hike known as Secret Beach but we were in Brookings before even seeing where it would be based on the directions in the guidebook. Rather than turn around, I decided it would just have to wait for our return trip back up HWY 101.

We rolled into Brookings around 2pm, gassed up the car and went in search of Pacific Sushi and Grill that I had read about online before leaving home. They offer local and sustainably resourced ingredients and we were impressed by the freshness of the rolls we ordered.

At this point, we were in a waiting game situation. I had earlier researched state parks near by Brookings but then noticed there was a significant forest road heading out of town that offered plenty of places to boondock for the night and hikes for the next morning. I had also discovered that Brookings hosted Nature’s Coastal Holiday Festival of Lights which boasts 3 million lights and it was starting tonight! Why not stay in town a while and delay parking the car for the night with an early bedtime like the last 2 nights?

The lights took place at a local park in town and opened at 5pm. This meant we had a few hours to kill after our late lunch. So what did we do? We walked around the Goodwill store which may or may not have been our best idea, I mean it was Black Friday after all. The store was jammed packed with people and the shelves and racks were equally stuffed, I have to say it was more overwhelm than I have experienced in a thrift store for a very long time. We left having only purchased one thing (a skirt) which is good since there was limited storage space in the car.

Paying heed to the directions online for the light show, we arrived early at a side parking lot while there was still plenty of spaces left. We were some the first people to enter (it was only $4 per person) and this was a good thing because we had barely made our way around all the lights before the place was packed!

I say it was all worth it for the Ralphie display.

And the wreath selfie. Yes, the poncho came in handy again!

After our walk through the festive lights for holiday spirit and having sufficiently stalled long enough, we turned out of the park and directly onto North Bank Chetco River Road which drives past Alfred A Loeb State Park in about 8 miles. I had looked on iOverlander at possible boondocking places and there were multiple reports from the forest service dispersed sites that were further up the road from the state park so we continued to drive as the road narrowed.

Being dark and not sure the spacing of the sites along the road, we pulled into the first one (Miller Bank) and dropped down a short windy road to check it out. The pavement abruptly ended at the bank with my headlights illuminating both sand and good sized rock. Not wanting to drive out onto the unknown, I turned around and drove back up to a flat spot about 50 feet away. Parking, we got out to see if it was a place good enough for the night or if we had to continue back up on the main road.

The spot was about 15 feet above the bank and we could hear the river in the distance through some trees. The pavement we were on dropped down in the opposite direction to an unlocked privy. It was obvious that people would also pull down there by the tire tracks and fire rings but we opted to stay up on top. There were no other people around, here or on the bank that we could see. Perfect!

After moving the car a bit for a more level position, arranged inside the car and got into bed for some nighttime reading and knitting. You can see what the area looked like in my next post: Redwood Nature Trail And The Chetco River.