Medford, Merlin, and Lost
Medford
I arrived in Medford around noon. Medford was too big to navigate by wandering, so I stopped at the first McDonalds I saw, which is always a bad idea. At this particular McDonalds, since things were very busy, they took people’s names and then called them out when the order was ready. Alas, the girl was completely and utterly befuddled by my first name. “H…how do you spell it?” She asked about three times. She never did get it right, but she got most of the characters written down… not necessarily in the right order. “It’s Andrae, you know, like Andre Agassi.. ?” I attempted, but I could see the deer-in-headlights look in her eyes. The second girl managed to get “Andrew?” out of the first girl’s scribblings. Close enough.
I travelled north on I-5 a short distance above Grants Pass, then barely noticed and made my turnoff for a small little highway which rolls through the town of Merlin.
Merlin to Wedderburn
I didn’t see Arthur’s magician advisor anywhere, but the sneaky old codger was as devious as ever, as I discovered further down the road.
My Rand McNally Oregon roadmap told me there was a small paved highway from Merlin that headed relatively straight out to the coast to a town called Wedderburn, which is about 30 miles north of Brookings.
This highway was at first under the care of Josephine County and had center stripes and asphalt. Although I think the asphalt dates from Roosevelt’s presidency. Not Franklin, I mean Theodore. Eventually though, a sign proclaimed the end of their responsibility, and afterwards the road was maintained by the cobbler’s elves, who were too lazy to paint stripes on it. After a while, they bagged the whole thing, and it turned into a gravel road. But that’s after the fork in the road.
I arrived at a bridge across what must have been the Rogue River, and a fork in the road afterwards. I consulted my map. Yep, there was the fork in the road, and I should take the left fork to continue on to the coast, because the right fork heads north for a bit and then becomes a gravel road. However… the right fork looked like a more promising road. Hmm.. I decided to head down the right fork, hoping for a clue. After a little ways, it became a one-lane (but still paved) road. I decided this was not it; the left fork must be the way to go. So I retraced my steps and headed left, which quickly began to climb.
And then it turned into a gravel road. And it was only one lane. With a steep grade that made me thankful for driving an automatic. And whiplash turns. And not another soul in sight.
Uhoh. I think I’m lost.
The Road Not Taken
Now, a lot of women like to smugly tell stories about how the men in their lives will never stop to ask directions because they are too proud to admit they are lost. Well, I would love to ask directions at this point, if there was anyone around to ask. I thought about turning around and going back to the bridge, where at least there were some people down below fishing who might know where I was. But I was concerned about falling off the edge of the road while driving forwards, much less trying to turn around.
So I kept going. At length I arrived at a slightly wider spot in the road, where another road also ventured off, and there were some direction signs. Whew. They told me that I was a mere 14 miles from Galice, the last town I remember passing back when the road was Josephine County paving. Also, the way I was traveling was labeled “Ocean”. Well… it appeared that this was the way to the coast after all. So much for my map claiming it was paved, but oh well, at least I was on the right track.
Except about 20 miles further along, I was having doubts again. This just didn’t seem right, and it didn’t seem like it would ever end. Still, periodically I saw another sign indicating the coast was this way, so I continued.
At length I arrived at a three-way intersection, if you could call it that, and there was a wooden sign with an engraved and white-painted map on it. Ah, this should be helpful. Unfortunately, the map was at such a large scale, I could still get no bearings on just where I was in relation to my state map. But there was an arrow pointing off the map in the direction I was headed, which said To Powers, as well as to the ocean.
I searched my map for the town of Powers, and found it. Nowhere near where I thought I was. I might be on a road to Somewhere, but I was still indeed lost. I began to get the feeling that I was somewhere in the Wild Rogue Wilderness Area, on some BLM gravel roads that weren’t intended for pretentious city slickers looking for a nice drive to the coast.
But at least my road now became paved again, for which I was grateful. The end was nowhere in sight however. I was quite frustrated at this point, as one might imagine. All I knew was that when I got to Powers, I would know where I was. Prior to that, absolutely no idea.
Finally I reached Powers, a tiny place of no significance. What should have been an 80-mile trip from Merlin to Wedderburn became a 110-mile, 3-hour trek from Merlin to Powers the hard way. In retrospect, I can only assume that I made a wrong turn just out of Galice and never noticed that there was more than one option. Arriving at a fork in the road, I mistook it for a fork on the road not taken. If the fork I did pass was the only other fork in the region that is on my state map (though I’m still not sure), the irony is that if I had just continued along the right fork that I quickly abandoned, I would have gone about 15 miles east, hit I-5, and known where I was.
From Powers it was another 50 miles and hour and a half to Coos Bay, where I finally emerged on the coast at 17:45 (5:45 pm). May I point out that I left Medford at 12:30.
Rogue River