On a Friday night after we had all spent all day in school, Nell, Leslie, Linn, and I (Clare), all Chapmans, started on out on a tour to include the Oregon coast.

In an extra good old 1922 Model T, we left our home south of Cottage Grove and by dusk had passed through Junction City and over the High Pass road summit of the coast range. I remember nothing of camping that night but I do remember that Leslie spotted and shot a jack rabbit with the old 44-40 Winchester rifle formerly belonging to Nels Lewis and now owned by Linn.

We were surprised at the prosperous looks of most of the farms in the Triangle Lake and Lake Creek area.

The first notable event Saturday morning was contact with a road crew below Triangle Lake. The driver of the plow team spent about an hour talking with a passing neighbor, leaving the four horse plow team and plow in the road where we could not pass.

We went to Rainrock and made a side trip to Indian Creek and made a short visit with some of the Beers and showed my brothers and sister where I had taught my first school earlier in the year.

We backtracked to Rainrock station then toured Mapleton, eating a supper of pork and beans above Mapleton. I have a picture at that meal scene. We then went over Minerva Mountain to the North Fork of the Siuslaw where we camped for the night under trees. Mal and I retraced the trip over Minerva the summer of 1968. I imagine that road is still very much the same only a bit wider in places. I remember the night was very clear and starry. Sunday morning was foggy. Up and on our way at 6 a.m., we were soon through Florence and on our way to the Coast Guard station over some tricky corduroy road that followed close to the river for a ways then took off over a ridge past the station and down on Heceta beach.

The ridge was of dry loose sand, so that Liz with her 30 by 3 ½  inch tires got stuck. After trial and error we found that if Leslie drove and I pushed we could make progress in the bad places.

By accident we hit Heceta beach at low tide and made the run to near the sea lion caves where we again took to the hillside after bypassing several miles of impassable sand wagon road. Here we again ran into trouble. In spite of a force feed by means of a tire valve in the gas tank lid and Leslie pumping air into the tank we couldn't make it up to the wagon road again. The valve was installed for a trip to Bohemia earlier in the year.

We had taken everything out and off Liz including the rear floor boards but still lacked about 20 feet of reaching the road. Looking the situation over again I found a small knoll 50 or so feet below the wagon road. I backed down to the top of the knoll and more or less parallel to the road and beach.

Putting my three passengers on the upper running board to prevent overturning we were soon on the road, carried our load up, and were on our way again for a few miles until a flat tire required an on-the-spot repair. (By running forward and back on a slight angle I made the last part of the climb.)

The next few hours things happened too frequent, too often. At Yachats the road again took to the beach and left again near Waldport. We had seen only one person all morning, a man with a team and wagon north of Florence.

At Yachats there were several people near where the road forded the creek putting us on the beach. Someone yelled at us so we stopped to try and locate the source. No one said anything so we started on again and were soon hopelessly stuck. The crowd on the hill came down and pushed us back to dry land and told us the tide was in and the beach would not be passable until 6 p.m., it then being about three. In those days Yachats was already quite a summer home colony.

During the next two hours several more cars repeated our mistake. One was a big powerful car with lots of brass and leather top braces. I remember counting 16 pushers necessary to extricate him from the creek and loose sand.

The best beach drive, the mail carrier took off about 6 and we attempted to follow him but he soon ran off and left us. After two stops and starts looking for the exit, we reached Waldport. Each stop required jacking up the rear wheels; all four was better; and putting a plank under them in order to go ahead instead of straight down.

Being told that it was only 30 miles to Alsea and on terrain we were familiar with, we decided to go to Alsea to gas up for the last leg home. Today it is 40 miles on straighter road so we were near three hours late in arriving in Alsea after twisting, turning, and countless gravelly creeks.

At Alsea the gas stations were closed (at least two in town) so after quite a delay in finding anyone we located a young lady entertaining her beau. They went down to her father's men's store and gassed us up. Most of the people of the town were congregated somewhere due to a runaway horse and buggy accident.

Our next incident took place at Philomath. The Night Marshall had made a barricade across the street, of planks on boxes and had a fire hose across the street. There were no lights on anything and I knocked a plank off and ran over the hose before I could stop. After what seemed an endless lecture from the Marshall, punctuated by many remarks from a group of young people on the sidewalk in my behalf, I told him to either arrest me or let me go home. Thereupon he told me to go on. It didn't dawn on me until the next day that I could have given him a bad time about a highway barricade without adequate warning.

Leslie took the wheel at Corvallis. At 16 he had just been licensed a short while. I tried to get some sleep but even with a lot of bedding piled on me I suffered in the night cold in the top-down Lizzie. Leslie did well until he hit 11th Street in Eugene, then he went west instead of East. Discovering his mistake, he turned into the airport to turn around. I came fully awake to find the two left wheels on air over the side of a wooden bridge. By borrowing most of someone's driveway made of lengthwise planks and about three hours prying and blocking we were on our way again, arriving home Monday morning at 5 a.m.

We all made it through Monday at school but I had to take Tuesday off from my teaching at Comstock. I had the same experience earlier in the year when I went home from Indian Creek, when I walked about 40 miles and spent most of two days on the train and walking.