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Show Go Love/227 happy hour to want to be still, find a place to drink and eat and watch the sun set into the ocean All along the coast, from Astoria down, we've scrambled for campsites in state parks crowded with noisy, good-hearted Oregonians out for the weekend, setting off fireworks and wolf whistling They're people like us. The young carry surfboards and wet suits in jeeps, have forlorned looks on wise-looking faces, everyone seems full alert-great beauty makes you that way, it sharpens the consciousness. And I'm here to tell you, the Oregon Coast we've driven and camped is nothing if not the most physically beautiful piece of earth and sea that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. Today we're lucky. Renee's library book hints that a site at this Cape is a hard one to land with tent and camp stove. The sites are large, half-acre plots nearly, overrun with these rainbow butterflies and moths, with sweeping views out over the Pacific Named Blanco by Vasco deGama, sailing north for the invisible northern passage to the Atlantic, the towering white cliffs are the furthest point west in the continental U.S., a point me and Renee make hay of during the drive down Here is as far as you can get from Florida and Arkansas without jumping in the goddamn ocean and swimming. Campers come here to get away from the people and the fireworks and wolf whistles, to have the long and difficult beach to themselves, and they stay Sixteen days is the max, but Renee's books says it's hard to get a spot, sometimes the place just books up and the site gates get shut. Whoever's in is in, and whoever's out is out. But today we're lucky Renee swings into the A-loop, where we immediately spot this big open site with a view west over the ocean just like the picture books, flat with big trees for tying drylines and airing sleeping bags. Three rabbits circle a table and grill grate, disappear into the thicket where an owl sounds over the waves or the wind. We pay money to a benevolent couple |