It is now almost 10:00 pm and I am between trying to finish paperwork and exhaustion. The days are running from 6:00 to 7:00 am to at least 11:00 pm, sometimes midnight. We have 15 rigs in the park as of tonight with three more coming in tomorrow for sure. The last will be in tomorrow or Tuesday morning. That’s pushing it close.
We spent the first two days running around Tillamook, pre-running tours, checking out prospective spots for future caravans and tours, and hitting the various stores to buy for the caravan lunch and parties. We hit the Tillamook Cheese Factory to get “Squeeky Cheese” and a bowl of ice cream. Their new flavor, “Sticky Bun” is to die for! I would show you a picture of the bowl but it didn’t last long enough for a picture. We then went to the Blue Heron for brie. I’m not a brie fan but this was GOOD, especially the smoked brie. We then went to Debbie D’s Sausage Factory and got four or five different sausages. After that, it was Fred Myers for two shopping carts and $190 worth of “stuff”. Get the picture?
After collecting most of the stuff we need to get started, we started greeting the guests that were here, inspecting their rigs and getting their paperwork started and in order. The trip is coming together but there are still a lot of “holes” that need to be plugged. Right now, I’m waiting on a phone call from a restaurant to confirm a reservation. I hope they call soon. I want to go to bed. Tick, tock…tick, tock…(time is passing). They didn’t call back. I went to bed!
Monday, Monday! It’s coming together! We booked the boat in Newport for the crabbing trip on Friday and got the reservations at the Waterfront Depot for the LEO (Let’s Eat Out!) on Sunday. The crab encrusted halibut was just outstanding when we ate there on the way up. I’m debating whether to stay with it or get something else. It will probably be a last-second decision.
Tomorrow is “Start Day” and we are doing a continental breakfast for the group. Claudia has been baking lots of mini-muffins this morning. Unfortunately, there were almost no ugly muffins for me to eat. She is also defrosting several large bags of ham and turkey we cooked and de-boned back at home. This will be for the sandwiches we are serving for the orientation meeting at noon. All rigs are scheduled to be in today. Things are lookin’ good!
Tuesday, September 22nd – The day went great…coffee in the morning, orientation and welcome around noon. They all ate so much in the morning that we postponed lunch until dinner. Everyone was waddling when they left!
Wednesday we went to the Air Museum, the Tillamook Cheese Factory where we did a self-guided tour followed by a double ice cream…Sticky Bun and Tillamook Mudslide. Sticky Bun won again! We then went north to Bay City to the Pacific Oyster Company to watch the oyster shuckers in action. They get paid by the bucket so they really move. However, for unknown reasons, they were given the day off today and weren’t working. Shucks! We had lunch…grilled oysters and a cup of clam chowder. Delicious! We then returned for a travel briefing and to get the rig ready to roll in the morning.
We rolled at 8:30 in the morning and headed for McMinnville, the home of Evergreen Aviation and the “Spruce Goose”.
Amazingly, the Spruce Goose is neither a goose nor is it made of spruce. It is about 90% yellow birch. We had a tour of the museum where there were bunches of other planes, actually several bunches, about half of which were warbirds, my favorite type of plane. One of the docents was a World War II vet who actually flew P-38’s in combat.
When he returned from the war, he had flown six different types of combat aircraft but couldn’t drive a car. He didn’t have a driver’s license because he left for the war before he was old enough to drive. Interesting guy!
After the Evergreen Museum, we headed back to the coast and down to Newport. The weather was pretty blowy and the ocean was really kicking up, as in huge waves and lots of wind-driven spray. After getting everyone settled into their assigned spaces, Claudia and the Camp Host led an area briefing about Newport. We then adjourned to “Fishtails”, a highly recommended restaurant around the corner from the park. I had Slumgullion, a bowl of clam chowder baked with shrimp and white cheeses and served with garlic bread. I was hungry and had a second piece of bread and a salad. Claudia had fish and chips which she split with Linda, who had the shrimp basket. Larry made a comment that this trip should be called “Eating Your Way Down the West Coast”. Claudia and I have physicals lined up as soon as we return. We may want to re-think that. Tomorrow is a tour of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse and Visitor Center followed by a three-hour crabbing trip and a dinner at the Rogue Brewery.
The Yaquina Head Lighthouse is a really beautiful light.
It is sort of unusual in that the light doesn’t turn. It’s a static flashing light with a “signature” of 2 seconds on, two off, two on and fourteen off. Every lighthouse has a different signature so, if mariners were lost and saw a light, they would know where they are by the signature of the light. The only thing “bad” about the light is the flies. This time of the year must be the breeding season for the kelp flies. They are everywhere! Some of them won’t be breeding anymore. I removed several from the gene pool. After the tour, we returned to the park to get ready for the crabbing trip.
Eleven of us headed to the boat
and went out into the main channel of Yaquina Harbor on the crab trip. We started the trip by getting our hands dirty by baiting all the traps.
When we got to the harbor entrance, we started dropping the pots. After waiting about 30 minutes, we started picking up the traps. The boat moved slowly toward a buoy and the “hooker” grabbed the buoy floats with a long hook.
The floats were then brought on board and the line was fed through a pulley on a short boom.
The “puller” then hauled on the line and brought the trap to the surface and up to the pulley.
The trap was then grabbed by the “grabber” (me)
who swung the trap, loaded with crabs, to a large tub on the boat.
The grabber lowered the sides of the trap and shook the crabs into the tub. The trap was then passed to the stern of the boat where the buoys were then thrown overboard and, when the buoy line was all the way out, the now-empty trap was returned to the water.
It was a really quick and efficient system. The crabs in the tub were then
checked for size and sex. The legal crabs were put in a fish box and the undersized and female crabs were put in another bin to be returned to the bay later on. It was constant work, but fun. We ended the day with 71 crabs to be split between 11 crabbers. Not a bad day! When we got to the dock, we turned the crabs over to the cookers where they were cooked and cleaned for a buck apiece. I will pick them up in the morning and distribute them to the crabbers.
After the crab trip and a quick shower, we went to the Rogue Brewery for a wonderful tour and dinner. I settled on the Dead Guy Ale as a liquid refreshment. They first served an absolutely delicious garlic-cheesy bread. The entrees were your choice of rockfish (delicious) or a chicken with a delicious whiskey barbecue sauce. The chicken was good but slightly overcooked. The experience overall was very good and everyone seemed to enjoy it royally. On the way back to the rig, I took a slight side trip and did a little geocaching, finding two caches. This makes a total of three for the trip. Tomorrow, the aquarium.
The first thing we did was to watch the otters being fed.
After that it was the Passages of the Deep,
a tank with me inside it,
seahorses,
sea nettles,
Japanese Spider Crabs
and Lionfish.
Beautiful aquarium!
I snuck in an hour or so to find three more geocaches and then slimed back to help Claudia. The rest of the day was spent on paperwork, a travel briefing, doing laundry and getting ready to head for Florence. There are many great things about this trip, but the best is that we are heading south…toward home.
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