#5: [28-Jul-15]

#4: [22-Sep-11]

#3: [28-Aug-06]

#2: [10-Jun-00]

#6: [08-Sep-18] (incomplete)

29-May-2000 -- For my 25th birthday (which, this year, fell conveniently on Memorial Day), I decided I would give myself the gift of my first confluences. Two days after visiting 45N, 121W, my friends and I found ourselves on the Oregon coast. It was Monday, May 29, 2000. My birthday confluence would be 44N, 124W.

This confluence lies on the southern bank of the Siuslaw River, which flows down the western slopes of Oregon's Coast Range, emptying into the Pacific Ocean at the city of Florence. SR 126, the main highway between Eugene and Florence, also follows this river, but on the opposite bank. After backtracking 15 miles from our campsite in Florence, we crossed the river at the town of Mapleton, and headed west again toward the confluence.

My backroads atlas showed about 10 miles of solid line, then 2 miles of dotted unimproved road before we would reach the confluence. We figured we could always hike that last distance, if the unimproved road was too much for my car (a Honda Civic which had already seen more than its share of backroads in its lifetime). We were somewhat concerned when the road became narrow gravel after only 5 miles. If this was a solid line on the map, what would the dotted line be like? When we reached the beginning of the dotted line, there was a sign saying we'd reached the end of the county-maintained road. Fortunately, the road past this sign was of no worse quality.

To our right the edge of the road sloped down into a wide marshy area beside the river. To our left the forested hillside sloped steeply upward. Shortly before reaching the confluence, we passed a recently clear-cut hillside. Overhanging tree cover and the misty, overcast weather made for poor GPS reception, but we found what appeared to be the spot, roughly 50 feet north of the road, in the middle of the marshy area. A few hundred feet further on we found a place to pull off, with a short dirt road leading out onto a dike separating the marsh on the east from a southward jog in the river to the west. I walked out onto this dike to take some more scenic pictures of the area around the confluence.

We walked back to the point where we thought we were closest to the confluence. Due to the poor reception the GPS still wouldn't settle to all zeroes, but we knew we were close enough.