September 15, 2015 Albany to Newport, Oregon

We have escaped the parking lot and are actually on the road and camping now. Woo Hoo.

We drove back to Albany, Oregon and dropped the coach off at Silver Leaf to have them install an engine monitoring system. That took 4 hours so we had time to kill. We drove around to check out Albany and found this Carousel museum. I love Carousels. We always stop so I can ride them when we find them.  Here  they are building a carousel from scratch with volunteer labor and donations. They have been working on it for 11 years and say they are 3 years from completion. The mechanism which will hold the carousel was built by Gustav Dentzel in 1909-the last one he created. Gustov brought the first carousels to America from Europe. It is set up and housed in a large warehouse elsewhere. Here they are making the animals.

A model of the finished product. This frog is one of the figures they built. Each one is purchased by a sponsor for $4000 and they get to help design them.  They all have names , but I did not get them all.

 

Some more of the animals. The detail, colors and artwork are fabulous. The finished ones have a description with each one explaining all the details on them.

These are some in progress. All hand carved by volunteers, and hand painted.

   

More in progress pieces. You can tour and watch them work on the pieces.  It was fascinating. There is also the Dentzel Museum.   There are pieces carved by 4 generations of Dentzels displayed. We will have to come back in three years to see and ride the finished product.

Back at Silver Leaf ,Dale is going through how to work the product with John. It is the screen in the middle by Dales hand. It tells him everything he wants to know about the engine, it also shows the back up camera. It will run all of the bus’s systems for a much larger installation fee, but we just got the engine monitoring so far.  After Albany we headed to the coast. We drove on this narrow highway in the rain through the deep dark forest. Up and over the coastal range.

We are now camped at South Beach State Park outside of Newport, Oregon. It is a huge campground with hundreds of sites. It is practically full. We plan to stay here 3 nights, but we will have to move each day. It is full on the weekend so we will move on. I hiked  a 1/2 mile each way down to the beach  in the rain. The path is this tree tunnel through the foliage. There were tree frogs and birds singing. They sighted a bear at the park a couple days ago.

Finally the beach. It is a cool, rainy windy day. Welcome to the pacific northwest. Delightful.