Monday - The morning mist made for a pretty campground. I walked around a little, and down to the river. It was a chilly 56 degrees (had the furnace on last night).
We had breakfast in Hoquiam (or Aberdeen, which is only 4 miles apart) at Duffy's, a little pricey but good. On the wall, they had a clam digger, which we hadn't seen before. It's kind of like a post-hole digger except you squeeze it together, quickly, instead of pulling it apart (we think).
From there, we began today's adventure by driving to Grays Harbor's South Beach. Our first stop was at the harbor town of Westport. There was a Maritime Museum here, which was housed in a historic coast guard station, but it was closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays so we didn't get to tour it.
So we drove on to the harbor, which had lots of boats, all different kinds, and a few were moving out into the water.
We walked up to the observation platform and watched the activity for quite a while, lots of birds, fishing boats going out, a fisherman on the rocks, and finally we spotted a couple harbor seals and 3-4 dolphins.
There was a memorial of some kind at the end of the parking lot. Very nicely landscaped, it had plaques all around it but we didn't stop to read them.
We drove over to another observation tower on Westport's Lighthouse Trail System, walking past some "art work" on the rocks.
We could see North Beach, where we drove last night, through the sea mist, barely.
We named this outcropping of rocks "bird city."
We headed out from here, seeing lots of fishing gear in the yards, including these crab pots. Across the road from these was a whole backyard full of nets but they were behind a wooden fence.
Our next stop was the Cranberry Road Winery that I had read about in one of my many, many brochures. South Beach is also known as the Cranberry Coast, boasting more than 1,000 acres of cranberry bogs. They had nice landscaping, including this hollowed-out log that Joe really liked.
The Cranberry Road Winery, also a restaurant, sports a hand-finished native redwood bar and a granite slab counter, in addition to tables that are huge slabs of Douglas fir from nearby Tokeland. Joe was impressed with the "legs" on the tables -- jack stands. He forgot to see how they attached them.
They had a small case with their signature fruit wines -- cranberry, cranberry-cinnamon and sparkling cranberry -- which we passed on ($25/bottle) and weren't ready for lunch so we left, but were quite impressed with the beautiful wood furnishings.
We drove down to the beach a couple of times, but with the sea mist hiding the sun, we weren't brave enough to get wet.
The Buick on the Beach
Our next mission was to find some of the cranberry bogs, so we turned down "cranberry road" and sure enough, there they were. Very interesting, one field was terraced but the one across the road was not. We found out later that the terraced one is one of the few bogs that they flood with water.
We passed a wagon with very wide tires that we assume is used in the cranberry fields.
Don't know what this piece of equipment is.
We've seen variations of this old lumberjack or fisherman several times, finally got a photo.
As we continued along, we came upon a cranberry museum and we definitely wanted to learn more about this so we stopped. Ocean Spray is a coop made up of the farmers (growers) who grow for them. We saw some sheds stating "Ocean Spray grower." At the museum, our "hostess" explained that to us, she took us through the process with very old equipment, and just old equipment. In December, the growers get a check from Ocean Spray for their share of the profits.
The building is an old Ocean Spray processing plant.
Along the far wall of the museum, they had items from other parts of the history here -- the logging industry (lots of photos), the fishing industry, WWI and WWII. She identified 3 things from fisherman that we weren't sure about:
Crab pot
Oyster farm
Gill net
Then we watched a homemade film, and were served Craisins (instead of popcorn). From Ocean Spray, of course.
We finally continued on, driving the rest of South Beach and finishing the 49-mile loop drive. We drove through Cosmopolis, a small town with a large Cosmo plant (don't know what they make) and a huge lumber company.
There were lots of metal sculptures around this town, deer, etc. I got a photo of the bison as we left town, the one I took of the deer sculptures didn't show up very well.
Back through Aberdeen and Hoquiam, we grabbed lunch/dinner at McDonalds and headed back to the campground. I spent some time watching the river go by, but didn't see any wildlife. The sun had finally come through and it was lovely down here.
We rounded up the Brundiges and finished our card game from the other night, then they went home for dinner and I went back to the river. I decided to walk down to the other deck, and as I passed the last row of campers I came upon a small herd of deer!!! I started to go back and get Joe (I forgot my phone), then turned around to take a picture in case they disappeared before I got back. Collins and Marilyn were coming back over to play cards again, so Marilyn, Joe and I all walked back down and the deer were still here, in fact there were 8 of them! 3 or 4 fawns, 1 buck, and 3 or 4 does. We got to watch them for several minutes before they wandered back into the woods.
This was a very pleasant surprise, and we thoroughly enjoyed watching them.
Tomorrow we move on, a little further south, alongside the Columbia River. We hope to be able to watch ships coming in from the Pacific and heading upriver.
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