When someone says “sand dunes” to you, it generally conjures up a vision of a hot and dusty monotone landscape without any shade or water for miles. The Oregon Dunes are a polar opposite. Located just north of Coos Bay is a densely forested seascape dotted with dozens of brackish lakes of the deepest azure with ribbons of the brightest sand woven in between them. This is a duners dream—from the towering dunes of Winchester Bay to the technical trails of Spinreel and Horsfall, the Oregon Dunes have something for everyone.

Trying to describe the Oregon Sand Dunes reminds me of a Jimmy Buffet song “...don’t try to describe a Kiss concert if you’ve never seen it.” Well, let’s see if he is right, with the aid of a few pictures!

This was my second trip to Horsfall one of the three dune areas that make up the Oregon Dune OHV area. Coos Bay (aka Spinreel and Horsfall), Winchester, and Florence make up the balance. The weather on our first trip last year was typical for Oregon, misty grey mornings with partly sunny days and rainy nights. The saying goes, if you don’t like the weather here, just wait ten minutes. This was not the case this year as we were blessed with four out of five days of brilliant clear blue skies with an onshore breeze that covered your tracks in minutes that made for the best riding conditions one could ever hope for. The sand here is brilliant white and is surprisingly dry and powdery, when it’s not raining. Horsfall campground is dry camping on asphalt or sand with full facilities and dune access from the campgrounds. One should be aware that if you choose to camp on the sand, there isn’t any alcohol allowed on the sand, even in your campsite or in your RV. Horsfall Beach is similar except it has both dune and beach access from the campground.

Spinreel campgrounds resemble a KOA in that you have a little grass next to your pad with more privacy than at Horsfall. There are two campgrounds and a day use staging area available as well as a very friendly ATV rental business that was more than willing and helpful when one of our group needed some electrical help. The riding at Spinreel and Horsfall is first-rate and ranges from recreational to technical as you move from wide open rolling dunes to something that can only be explained as trail riding on sand where riding cat and mouse will give you an extreme workout as you dodge trees and thickets and whip up high banking turns while ducking under branches. Time passes quickly with this type of riding. What started out as a quick morning ride was interrupted by a red light on my quad that indicated we had burned through over three gallons of fuel in less than four hours. There are just so many paths and detours and rounds that you don’t realize just how far you have gone and how long it had been since you last stopped for a break. The fact there isn’t any searing heat can be disorienting in that you just don’t feel drained of all moisture and energy as you do when you are in the desert. Don’t bother packing a lunch; you will never stop long enough to eat it.

Winchester Bay is what most people are used to seeing, wide open spaces with tall dunes peppered with razorbacks and witches eyes with a forest of pines to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. We rented a flatbed trailer for the fifteen mile trip to get our quads to Winchester as there isn’t any sand access from Horsfall or Spinreel. We parked at one of three day use areas and rode out from there.

One of the best known attractions here is Banshee Hill. As with any climb its slope is steeper than it appears as you wind your way up the hill avoiding the trees that are at times within elbows reach while you’re at 5000 RPM. There are two distinct approaches but only one path through the trees so the challenge-race is to see who can reach the tree line first—sort of a high speed game of chicken. There isn’t any room to abort your climb past the trees so you better have the horsepower to make it to the top, or at least the skill to back your machine down a very steep grade. We traveled the length and breadth of Winchester looking for this infamous Super Bowl, a bowl so deep that a fifty-five gallon drum in its belly looked like a spool of thread; no one in their right mind with less than a 450 could make it out. There were even stories of a burned out hulk of a buggy that this monster had claimed. As I said, we searched high and low, left and right without a sign. So we asked a local who was riding the fanciest Banshee’s I’d ever seen about where we could find this bowl. He said he had been riding here since 1985 and has never seen anything like what we were describing. He chuckled as he departed leaving us to wonder if he was just saving it for the locals or if it was just another urban legend. Winchester Bay marina has a few restaurants and fishing tours available as well as several RV parks and camping areas. We only spent a half day here favoring to return to more technical trail riding that was waiting for us at Spinreel.

I have heard that the dunes can get packed in the summer but we saw none of that. We typically rode for hours without seeing another soul sometimes wondering if we were out of bounds or maybe we strayed onto private land. That may soon change as Horsfall is adding a new group camping area by summer 2008 and the completion of Riley Ranch campground. Myrtlewood, which already has eighty plus dry camping spots, has expansion plans for next year. The big news is there is a new campground in the planning stage inside the dunes that will feature full hookups that will give the KOA a little competition. If you have the itch, the Mill Indian casino is a short fifteen minute drive. I ventured there one night during our visit, and that’s all I will say. Vegas isn’t the only place that holds its secrets, right Guys?

Well, that was the fastest five days out of my life. It was well worth our ten hour drive and my friends from Southern California were not to eager to repeat the eighteen hour return trip to L.A. but they were already talking about coming again next year, and so are we.

For more information on the Oregon Dunes as well Oregon’s other OHV trails, visit www.oohva.org.

--Scott Butera