8/27/2017 - Coastal Drive to Cape Perpetua

Sunday - We ultimately made the decision not to go fishing today, but we did get to watch them pull in a salmon in a boat right in front of our dock.  Made it tough to stick to our decision, but it was sure fun to watch the fight that fish put up!  I think it pulled the boat downstream 100 ft or so.  (I checked the next morning, and I think this salmon was about 25 lbs).

It was funny to watch other boats suddenly head this way -- catching a fish sure acted like a magnet to the other fishermen.

I dropped my camera in the sand the other day, and I've had a little trouble with it since, sometimes the lens doesn't want to move in or out, or open.  And I can hear it grind sand when I open it sometimes, but right now it's still working.  I've also had trouble with my batteries charging, don't know if the charger was loose in the plug-in or what, but today I got down the road with 2 dead batteries.  At our first overlook, my battery died after about 6 pictures, and my other one, which I had with me, also was dead.  So we turned around and came back to the RV to get the charger, which will work in the car.  We were only about 6 miles down the highway, plus our 2 mile road back to the campground, but we were sure glad we did.  And I finally got my picture of the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway that we've been driving (Hwy 101).

The Oregon coastline is beautiful, a mixture of rocks, beaches, driftwood, dunes.  We pulled into almost every viewpoint and state park along our route today, and I have lots of coastline pictures!

And the best part -- we saw whales at the first three overlooks we stopped at!!!  Wow, that was exciting. The first one was at Boiler Bay. I never got a good picture, but we did see some whale tails.  The little black dot in the middle is a whale, believe it or not.  What we saw today were all gray whales.  And they were close in.  I thought, if we were lucky enough to see any, they would be way out to sea.  But these were close, in fact, the first one I saw, I heard it blow first, and I looked down from the cliff, and there it was!  And we didn't see just one, or two.  No, we probably saw at least a dozen, maybe even more than that. 

 

We stopped at Devil's Punch Bowl and watched the waves boil into it.

And at this stopl, there was a "Mo's West," so we had lunch right there -- Joe had a Alaskan cod sandwich and a bowl of clam chowder (I had grilled cheese).

We have seen several trees decorated with "floats" or "marker buoys" or whatever they call them, but today we got another picture.

Finally we reached Newport, we had taken a side road along the coast here and missed the first part of town, but came out right at the bridge.

We could see the sea lions barking, so we went looking for them.  They are so noisy, and so funny.  They just pile on top of each other on the docks and rocks.

 We drove down to the harbor, which is a working harbor (and very smelly).  Boats were coming in.  We saw one filleting fresh-caught tuna, and they had some crabs for sale too.

Another coastal picture.  Joe took a panoramic shot here.

We made it to Yachats about 4:00, and drove on through to Cape Perpetua.  The Croxtons celebrated their 60 wedding anniversary in Yachats and Jim has talked a lot about this little town, so we checked it out, as well as the state park.

We drove up to the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center, 12 minutes before closing, but we did get to walk around to the overlook.

 Joe drove back to the campground, and to the trail to the Tall Spruce Tree but we didn't hike it.  Our last stop was Cooks Chasm.

Today we saw whales, sea lions, 2 deer, and a salmon being caught -- I would say that is a good day for us.  We drove 64 miles and it took about 6 hours -- those Oregon miles again!  But we got back to the RV about 6:00, which may be a record for us.  The temperature here is amazing -- I'm about to wear out my sweatshirt taking it off and putting it on.  One outlook will be cold and windy, the next one warm and sunny.  Very confusing.  The Pacific is about 52 degrees we are told.  We don't see any bikinis!

8/26/22017 - A Day around Lincoln City

Saturday - We spent some time down on the dock this morning, watching the fishermen.  We saw two nice salmon brought in, an 18 lb, and a 13 lb.  They came in off the fishing boats that continually wander past, and a group are anchored just up around the bend.  In the afternoon, we saw another one brought in, about 25 lbs. 

He was quite intrigued with the whole process, and walked down the dock to look over their gear.

There are a couple of harbor seals who regularly patrol this area right in front of our dock.  We've seen them several times.  They probably don't help the salmon fishing.

The guys cleaning the second one were very talkative, and Joe had lots of questions.  He even took a bite of the fresh salmon (which stayed with him all day).  He finally asked permission to board their boat and check out their gear, so I guess he became "authorized personnel."  We spent most of the day debating about whether to try to fish here tomorrow, looked at tackle at the office here at the campground, talked to folks.  Ultimately, we decided we would probably be wasting our money so we didn't make a plan to fish.  Hot salmon fishing on this river apparently is in September, so we will just watch the other folks.

We decided to drive into town and get the laundry taken care of.  The campground only has one washer and one dryer, so that would be an all-day process here.  We had breakfast at the Pig N Pancake, which apparently didn't settle well with me because I had a stomach ache after that which lasted the rest of the day.  Traffic in Lincoln City is awful.  There is one section that narrows down to one lane for each side, and traffic really gets backed up.   But we did find a statue of Abraham Lincoln reading the bible on a horse.

We drove down to one rocky beach, but it was windy and chilly, so we didn't get out to walk it.

Back at the campground, we decided to rest for a while.  They have a glassed-in patio here that would have been great for playing cards, but again, our card-playing buddies aren't with us now.

We really have a premiere campsite -- No. 2, right in front of the dock and the river.

We had seen signs in town for Moe's, the best clam chowder in town.  And it was on our end of town, so we decided to have dinner there. Parking was a problem, but after our second pass, we did find a spot.  And the line for dinner stretched way out the door, but it was only about a 20-minute wait.

Joe had his seafood dinner, cabbage salad with shrimp, clam chowder, and fried oysters.  (I had chicken alfredo).  He said the chowder was good, but not as good as he had in Chinook at the Roadhouse.

We drove south along the coast as evening set in, drove into some pull-offs, and got to see a great sunset.

We got back to camp about 8:30, and I decided to go to bed pretty quickly, still with my stomach ache.  After our naps in the afternoon, neither of us slept well, but this morning I'm fine so whatever I ate must have passed on through.  Today we are going to drive south in the car and explore that area before we move south tomorrow in the motorhome.

825/2017 = Driving to Lincoln City

Friday - Not an early start again this morning. It was 55 degrees when I got up, a good morning to stay under the blankets.   By the time we got moving, it was 10:30, and about 11:00 when we crossed the bridge, which took about 10 minutes because we got stopped for bridgework.  But that was ok, it gave us a last chance to get good views of the mighty Columbia, and we watched two barges coming at us. We also saw that big blue ship again, the one that went past us when we were parked right on the river in Cathlamet.

We drove 130 "Oregon miles" today – "Oregon miles" can be defined as very slow, hard miles that seem twice the distance as the mileage signs say.  The 101, the “Pacific Coast Scenic Byway,”  although very scenic from time to time, is hilly, curvy, lots of small towns with slow speed limits and/or stop lights.  And we made a few stops.  The first one was in Warrenton, at Costco to fuel.  When Joe opened the RV door, the step broke as it came out.  So he got our little step out to use until he can get that fixed, but we have to take the little one in and out every time we stop, and try to carefully drop it on the ground before we take a step.

.Joy texted that we might hit traffic in Seaside because the Hood to Coast race is underway, and it ends in Seaside, so they would be setting up for the party on the beach.  Traffic was a little heavier through there, but then Joe decided we needed to drive down to the beach here, right down Broadway, with lots of cars parked along both sides, pedestrians on the sidewalks.  We couldn’t make it all the way to the water, so we finally turned onto a side street and headed back to the main road.  But that was probably a 30-minute detour.  One shop was ready for the race crowd with bike trolleys ready to haul you to the beach.

Then we went past a fruit market in Garibaldi selling cherries, so of course, he had to stop there.

Our next stop was at a viewpoint, with Tillamook Rock in the distance.  There is a lighthouse on it, but it is no longer in use.  It was a little far, so I didn't take a picture of it, but there were two more rocks right in front of the viewpoint.

Then as we came through Tillamook, we passed an RV parts store, so we turned around and went back to it in case they had the piece for the step.  Well, the counterman was just leaving to go to Les Schwab and he didn’t have time for Joe, so that was a wasted stop.  There was a thrift store right beside the parts store, so I did walk through it but didn’t buy anything.  And just out of town we saw the Tilllamook Air Museum that Collins had told us about, but it didn’t look like anything was going on there, so it might not have been open today.  This museum is “housed in an old U.S. Navy blimp hangar called Hangar B and is the largest clear-span structure in the world,” constructed during WWII and the building itself covers over 7 acres.

We finally reached Lincoln City, a very slow town to drive through.  It was just before 4:00 and traffic was pretty heavy, and the stop lights are certainly not in sync.  Our campground is actually a little bit out of town, right on the Siletz River, and we arrived about 4:15, but it seemed like we had put in a long day.  Joe rigged up the step to work while we are here by putting a block of wood between the bottom step and our little step to stabilize it.

The good news, though, is that our site is right on the river.  We may even have to go fishing here, it’s pretty inviting, although it’s a little chilly. 

After we got all situated and I fixed dinner, Joe took me to the Chinook Winds casino in Lincoln City, and I actually won a little tonight.  I won about $180 and Joe lost about $40, so we finally had a net gain, and I was the winner.  We found our way back to the campground in the dark, and finally called it a day.

I'm having trouble with the internet signal here, even though I am using the hot spot on my phone.  I finally got this blog to load, but I may have to wait until our next stop to get the next ones posted.