8/10/2017 - Day Watching the River

Thursday - Yesterday ended with a ship going by about 11:30 p.m., and today started with a barge going by when we looked out about 7:30 a.m., but we didn't see anymore until about 2:00 p.m.  Joe thinks they may have to wait until the tide is in before they can navigate through here.  And we could see it was low tide because the steps were completely out of the water.

The fishing here is quite a process, and we got to watch this morning.  One guy in a green kayak hauls the line out, which has two brickbats on it for weight.  He drops it 200-300 feet from shore.  The line is braided line and breaks off it a fish hits, so they lose the 2 bricks.  Another lady uses sand for weight, and hers somehow releases the sand if a fish hits.  They are using lures, and spray some kind of anti-human scent on it, and use bobbers.  The lady's line was set up with three hooks, but I think the others only had one.

 cloudy and morning mist

 he trails the line along behind him, with the weight sitting in the kayak

Here is the sand process

She has 3 bobbers - one for each hook set-up

This one guy seems to be the main kayaker, but there are other kayaks here too.   So everyone is all set up and ready to fish now.

Joe was ready to take a little drive, to the General Store back in Cathlamet to get his daily soda.  And we drove across the bridge to Puget Island, which was larger and more heavily populated than we expected, although it wasn't crowded.

 We found a beach, with lots of driftwood (I didn't take any).  There was a guy fishing here, and he said he had caught a northern pikeminnow.  I found out later what that was.

 We could see Oregon across the water.

And some kind of lumber mill or wood processing plant on the Oregon shore.

As we continued through the area, we spotted 3 deer eating apples off the tree in someone's front yard.

And a house with so many flowers on the porch that it would keep even Dixie busy.  There are lots of flowers in this part of the country -- everyone has flowers in their yards, hanging pots on their porches, and hanging baskets in the towns. It's very nice.

As we got back around to the bridge, Joe spotted an osprey nest with a couple birds in it, and one standing guard.

We saw lots of cattle, some horses, an alpaca, goats, sheep and two sheep badly in need of a haircut.

There's a car ferry that goes across from the island to mainland Oregon, so we found that road, and the ferry was just coming back.

And our bridge

  We got back to camp and had lunch, then the lady's fish bell rang and we all went out and watched her bring in her salmon.  It  was a Chinese fire drill -- something like Joe and I go through when we catch fish in the boat!

 It weighed in about 19 lbs.

About 2:00 p.m., the ship traffic began again.  The first one was carrying a huge load of logs going downriver.  It was really close to our side, and Joe said he bet another ship was coming through.  Sure enough, a barge was coming upriver, bearing to the other side.

I had a bucket-full of blackberries to deal with, so I commenced to bake a blackberry cobbler to take to Joy's tomorrow.  Marilyn whipped up a blackberry crumble before breakfast this morning, so those are handled.  We really don't have room to freeze any, even though Marilyn and Joe really like to pick them.  We may be able to figure out how to use up our frozen food so we can take some home, but we will have to do some meal planning for that.

Then the largest ship yet came through!  It filled my windshield.  It was registered out of Nassau.

We had several more ships pass by during the rest of the afternoon and evening, and I took pictures of every single one.

The one above and the next one passed each other just down on the curve, that was pretty cool.

 Here's another load of lumber.

This one was different, didn't quite figure it out.

 And then a tug towing a barge of woodchips.

 This tug was not towing or pushing, so we assume it was just going back for another barge.

We saw one more tug, just after dark, about 9:15, it didn't look like it had anything either but it was dark and hard to see.

During the afternoon, our neighbors continued their fishing -- or at least their poles were in the water, but no one caught anything else.

It warmed up into the 70s about noon and the sun came out, so I finally ventured down the steps and put my toes in the Columbia River! 

Then I walked on down to the little beach at the end of the campground.  It had sort of black sand, but I didn't get in the water.  There was a fisherman there, fishing for squawfish, or northern pikeminnows.  He explained that these fish eat the salmon fries so they are trying to get them out of the river.  There is a bounty on them, and you can earn some money by catching them and turning them in.  He said he had earned $4,000 last year turning in these bounty fish.  I looked it up, and they pay $5/fish for the first 25, then $6 for up to 200.  But it was interesting to learn about this fish and the program.

After dinner, it started getting too cool to sit out, so we got an early start playing cards and got 2 games in, which we split.  Marilyn had shared her blackberry crumble with us before we came in, so we were well fed and had a good evening.  We really enjoyed our time here and were amazed at the river traffic, both at the number of ships we saw, and at the variety and size of them.  This was a good day.

8/9/2017 - Drive back to Columbia River

Wednesday - My morning started with my daily walk down to check on the river, through the mist, and of course I had to see if last night's deer had returned.  Yeah, 3 of them had returned, one doe and her two babies, so I got to watch them for a while.

There was an interesting tent down by the river, I wondered if it was a yurt, but I don't know.

During yesterday's excursions, Marilyn had found a Walmart in Aberdeen, so I enticed Joe out of bed with the promise of a trip to town (which meant breakfast at McDonalds).  We made that run, did a little shopping and got back to camp around 10:30, Marilyn was just finishing up her laundry, so we were ready to hit the road about 11:25.  Yesterday while we took our loop drive, Collins and Marilyn had spent the day in Aberdeen, Marilyn got a hair cut (so did I, later when we came back through town), they shopped an antique store and a fabric store, and Walmart.  The other important thing I forgot about yesterday is that Joe bought Marilyn (and himself) a present -- buckets to pick blackberries in!  Which they put to good use later today.

Anyhow, we are underway, with 104 miles to go today to Cathlamet, Washington, to a fishing camp right on the banks of the Columbia River.  As we drove back through Raymond, I got a picture from the bridge of the lumber company we saw yesterday.

I also got pictures of more of those metal sculptures, which are literally scattered all over town.  I don't know the history of those, but they must have some local artists.  Here's what I found out.

"Raymond Wildlife Heritage Sculptures Corridor" is a display of dozens of rusty metal cutouts -- a mixture of area wildlife and logging industry scenes. In some places, bear and fox frollick next to loads of logs pulled by teams of oxen or horses. The Corridor was created with the work of local artists starting in 1993. It is eye-catching mostly due to the quantity and density of pieces. For the weirder statues, stop in town."

The "Town of Metal People" are metal, 3-dimensional figures sprinkled through town. The subject matter seems to result more from the whimsy of the artists than any historical figures from the region's history. One shows a photographer with a camera and telephoto snapping some wildlife. Another depicts a girl feeding an ice cream cone to a large dog/wolf."

 Here's some of the shots I captured.

As we continued along Hwy U.S. 101, then Washington 4,  through forests and sometimes along the bay, we spotted some logging equipment at work way up on top of a hill or mountain.  Would have been interesting to watch this from a closer viewpoint.

We stopped at the edge of one little town and had lunch in our RVs, then arrived at our campground about 2:35.  It was close quarters, hardly room enough to put out the slides.  In fact, the one on the other side of us is actually touching its neighbor -- the awning and the slide.  But we got set up, and are thrilled to be right here on the magnificent Columbia River!

Our view.

No sooner had we got settled than we saw the first two barges coming upriver -- the second one was some kind of fuel barge.  Collins spotted an eagle's nest, and an eagle but I didn't see the bird -- I did see the nest.

We ate dinner out on our picnic table, watching the river and a few small boats going by.  Several of our neighbors had fishing poles in the water, but we never did see any action there.

No sooner did we get dinner cleaned up when Marilyn announced she was going to go pick blackberries, and this time Joe got to go with her (as cameraman, I opted out), so they went across the road to fill up their new berry buckets!  Finally, they got to hit the patch together.

I filmed the picking crew, then took the scenic route back to our campsite, taking photos of the little deck just down from our row of campers (painted in Seattle Seahawk colors).

They came back after only about 30 minutes with 2 full buckets!


But Joe had wounds on both arms.

I was getting ready to go get them because another ship was heading our way, also going upriver.  This was a big one, I didn't want them to miss it, but they walked around the corner just then.  Collins read the back of the ship and said this ship was from Spain.

We got those berries all washed up, and Joe circled back over to the bushes to get the rod he had taken with him (and not used) to push the briars out of the way.  He walked on down the road a little and told Marilyn they had picked the best batch around.  Shortly thereafter, Marilyn dragged Collins with her back to the berries to pick another half-bucket!

While they were gone, Joe and I enjoyed the scenery.  In scanning with his binoculars, he spotted a doe and fawn across the lake.  Then we saw a river cruise ship coming downriver, Collins thought it was probably going to Astoria.  It didn't look like too many people were on it.  It was a pretty sight on the river, and it would be neat to see it all lit up in the dark.

We sat out until it started to get cool, then went in to play cards.  As I was sitting facing the front of the RV, I suddenly looked up and saw a huge ship in the windshield!  That stopped the card game!  It was the biggest one we had seen yet!  You can see the blue of the windshield in the top of the first photo, so I stepped outside to get a better picture.  On the back it said "Majuro" which I looked up. 

"Majuro is the capital and largest city of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. It is also a large coral atoll of 64 islands in the Pacific Ocean. It forms a legislative district of the Ratak Chain of the Marshall Islands. The atoll has a land area of 9.7 square kilometres and encloses a lagoon of 295 square kilometres. As with other atolls in the Marshall Islands, Majuro consists of narrow land masses." 

 I don't know where those islands are from where we are, but it had a ship go past us!

The boys' winning streak at Hand and Foot is over, Marilyn and I squeezed out a win tonight (by a whopping 55 points).  We feel so fortunate to have found this campground, with river view spots available.  This is something we will remember for a long time.

It was in the 50s again this morning, with the sea mist.  But here at Cathlamet, it was quite warm, in the 80s, with just a little breeze.  Portland has been having some hot weather, so I am afraid our break from the heat is just about over, but we are sure enjoying it while it lasts.