We had a short 47-mile drive today through beautiful winding coastline covered with wind-blown trees. Everything green was bent or sloped to the east. The winds here must be tremendous. Got set up at the park and got everyone parked in short order. The manager here at the park was amazed how easy it went. I told her it was because she was working with the best wagonmaster team Adventure Caravans has. Almost everyone scattered for some sightseeing before going out to the Waterfront Depot for a LEO. This time I had the lamb shank with an outstanding dark brown sauce. Again, delicious. Claudia had the same crab encrusted halibut and it was even better than last week. Back at the rig, we had to eat some of the ice cream stored in the freezer to make room for more food. The top layer of ice cream in any container must be removed regularly to prevent “freezer burn”. One must not waste!
Monday brought the threat of ominous weather. We are facing the possibility of rain for the next few days. Unfortunately, Tuesday looks worse…about an 80% chance of rain. That is the day we are doing a sand dune tour in an open sand buggy. We can only wait and see. We carpooled to the Sea Lion Caves
and the Heceta Head Lighthouse
in the morning. The lighthouse looks MUCH better from a distance. After the tour, we returned home for work. We really need to work ahead on this trip to make sure everything is set up correctly. We had a 5:00 pm social and I brought out the beanbag baseball game. It didn’t take long before everyone was into it big-time! Unfortunately, through the biggest pile of beginner’s luck I have ever seen, the women beat the men 13-3. I went to bed early but was awakened twice by heavy rain.
After the rain, the sky cleared and it looks like we will be going on the sand dunes tour after all. Even Gizmo has extra bounce in his prance this morning! We carpooled down to the dunes at 9:30 and got all set up for the trip. The weather looked a little like rain so, as an afterthought, I put on my caravan windbreaker over my fuzzy caravan jacket. We all loaded the sand buggies and headed out through the trees. When we cleared the trees, there were the dunes!
They were huge and rolling and steep and rolling and very steep and rolling. We started off but shortly stopped at a huge drop-off for some pictures. The sky was getting darker. From where we started the tour, you couldn’t see the sky because of the trees. Now, at the dunes, we saw the sky…and it didn’t look good.
There was one nice, big, beautiful patch of blue up there but, unfortunately, it wasn’t over us. We got hammered! It wasn’t a frog-strangler, not even a gully-washer, but it did soak us pretty good. There was even a little hail mixed in. After the tour, we returned to the rig for a long, hot shower and a change of clothes.
Five of us took off just after noon. What for? Food, of course! This time we went to ICM, the International C-food Market. I had a bowl of chowder and a veggie salad. Claudia had fish & chips and we split the dinners. The chowder was good, better than Mo’s, but not as good as the Chowder Hut. After lunch, we walked around that part of the town. I picked up a leather Western-style hat for $20 and we returned to the park via Dairy Queen for a couple of chocolate dipped ice cream comes.
We met with the group at five o‘clock for a travel briefing with explicit and comprehensive directions on driving the 48.4 miles to the Mill Casino RV Park in Coos Bay. The directions are: “TURN LEFT out of the Pacific Pines RV Park, drive 48.4 miles and TURN LEFT into the Mill Casino RV Park”. I will probably embellish on those directions slightly, just to earn my pay and further establish myself as the amazingly knowledgeable and charismatic leader of this group. After the briefing, we returned to the rig to get some stuff put away in preparation for tomorrow’s journey. I have three geocache locations that are very close to the RV park entered into a GPS unit. I’ll probably search them out tomorrow afternoon after all the chickens have come to roost.
We are now back at the Mill Casino for two nights. We have been here two hours and Claudia hasn’t made it to the casino…yet! She and Linda are out shopping so I’m holding down the fort. We all have beautiful sites, right on the river where tugboats run up and down with barges loaded with whatever. The weather is still 50-50 and we’re hoping it holds. Tomorrow, we lead a carpool to the Myrtlewood Factory and out to Cape Arago via a couple of scenic overlooks. After the tour, I will pick up some oysters for an oyster barbecue.
Thursday, November 1st – The weather couldn’t be better! We carpooled to the Myrtlewood Factory at 10
Turning a bowl
Myrtlewood chest
and then headed for Cape Arago at 11, stopping at the lighthouse overlook, the sea lion overlook (there were about 2500 of the varmints there today-the guests loved it-I was doing a shark dance to get some Great White’s in to play with them) and finally Cape Arago. The weather was great, but no whales. We had lunch and then headed back to the rig. I picked up the bag of oysters at the store (60 oysters for $27.00) and we got ready for tonight’s festivities. On the way home, Larry and Linda had a damn deer jump out in front of them and they drilled it. They weren’t hurt but the car has a screwed up bumper and the hood was tweaked backwards and to one side. What a bummer!
We had a Travel Briefing at 5:00 followed by the oyster barbecue. We had three barbecues going.
Larry and I did the honors. We were magnificent! We got kudo’s from everyone.
For those few non-imbibers, Claudia made her world famous meat balls. Tomorrow, we continue to eat our way down the coast, headed for Gold Beach and an authentic German Octoberfest dinner.
Claudia and I left at 8:30 and semi-boogied (45 mph is a semi-boogie) straight to the park. The drive was beautiful, probably the prettiest so far. It was heavy on the trees and ferns and moss-covered rocks and rocks out in the ocean and beaches and, and, and. We pulled in, got set up and the rigs started arriving. This was a “circle the wagons” type of park in that all our sites were in a circle around a central bunch of sites. Luckily, they dribbled in, as opposed to all showing up at once, and again, due to my masterful ability to direct traffic, all rigs got parked quickly and efficiently without any problems whatsoever. Gizmo got romped several times as Claudia had to do a bunch of walking outside to check things out and he went with her to show her the correct bushes for future walks. After all rigs were in, we got in a little work on the books. We are not caught up, but are getting close.
At 5:00 o’clock, we headed for the Octoberfest room. I grabbed a German beer and listened to the music…a drum and an accordion playing polkas. They started serving at 6:00. We each has some red cabbage, two potato pancakes with plum sauce, a stuffed cabbage roll and a sausage. The cabbage and potato pancakes were outstanding. The rest…so-so. After dinner and some chit-chat, we returned to the rig for more paperwork.
Saturday, October 3rd – We got up about 7:00 and carpooled to Jerry’s Rogue Jets on the Rogue River at 7:45. At 8:00 we loaded the boat.
Claudia and I left at 8:30 and semi-boogied (45 mph is a semi-boogie) straight to the park. The drive was beautiful, probably the prettiest so far. It was heavy on the trees and ferns and moss-covered rocks and rocks out in the ocean and beaches and, and, and. We pulled in, got set up and the rigs started arriving. This was a “circle the wagons” type of park in that all our sites were in a circle around a central bunch of sites. Luckily, they dribbled in, as opposed to all showing up at once, and again, due to my masterful ability to direct traffic, all rigs got parked quickly and efficiently without any problems whatsoever. Gizmo got romped several times as Claudia had to do a bunch of walking outside to check things out and he went with her to show her the correct bushes for future walks. After all rigs were in, we got in a little work on the books. We are not caught up, but are getting close.
At 5:00 o’clock, we headed for the Octoberfest room. I grabbed a German beer and listened to the music…a drum and an accordion playing polkas. They started serving at 6:00. We each has some red cabbage, two potato pancakes with plum sauce, a stuffed cabbage roll and a sausage. The cabbage and potato pancakes were outstanding. The rest…so-so. After dinner and some chit-chat, we returned to the rig for more paperwork.
Saturday, October 3rd – We got up about 7:00 and carpooled to Jerry’s Rogue Jets on the Rogue River at 7:45. At 8:00 we loaded the boat.
The Captain was Tim, a Lutheran minister and one of the funniest guys I’ve ever heard. The people at Jerry’s say his congregation is FULL! Anyway, we took off and headed up the river, passing many salmon fishing boats. One lucky guy got a 45# fish.
It was cold, but we all had heavy jackets on so it wasn’t THAT bad. The weather forcasters must have come from San Diego because they forecast rain and it was almost clear blue sky…but still cold. (It was 41.something when we got up this morning) Our first stop was a bald eagle followed by some herons and Canadian geese. We had tall tale after tall tale on the way up that kept us all in stitches. About 11:00ish, we stopped for a fabulous lunch. There was a full buffet for $14.00. They had the most delicious, moist chicken I’ve ever had (I had four pieces), roast pork, green beans, baked beans with sweet onions (delicious!), garlic potatoes with brown gravy, buttermilk biscuits, a full salad bar and several desserts. We waddled out, totally stuffed!
The boat sat much lower in the water on the way back down river. As we started down, the sky got darker and the rain started. It wasn’t too heavy but I was glad to be sitting behind Larry. He’s about 6’ 4” and provided some wonderful protection. About halfway down, we spotted a flock of wild turkeys. Claudia made some snide comment about me probably wanting to blast one with a shotgun. I replied that there was no “probably” at all! They looked delicious. We pulled into the dock at Jerry’s and walked across the parking lot to the gift shop. After the obligatory purchase of a Jerry’s Rogue River Boat Tour hat pin and a couple of not-as-necessary purchases, we came home and prepared for a travel briefing for tomorrow’s jaunt to California and Crescent City. Before we cross the border, we have to fill the fuel tank with Oregon diesel which should be far cheaper than California diesel. We are down under ¼ tank, so, let’s see…1/4 of 150 gallons is about … I’ll probably put about 120 gallons in Godzilla’s tank. Hey kids…there go your Christmas presents!
Tomorrow…back in California.
The boat sat much lower in the water on the way back down river. As we started down, the sky got darker and the rain started. It wasn’t too heavy but I was glad to be sitting behind Larry. He’s about 6’ 4” and provided some wonderful protection. About halfway down, we spotted a flock of wild turkeys. Claudia made some snide comment about me probably wanting to blast one with a shotgun. I replied that there was no “probably” at all! They looked delicious. We pulled into the dock at Jerry’s and walked across the parking lot to the gift shop. After the obligatory purchase of a Jerry’s Rogue River Boat Tour hat pin and a couple of not-as-necessary purchases, we came home and prepared for a travel briefing for tomorrow’s jaunt to California and Crescent City. Before we cross the border, we have to fill the fuel tank with Oregon diesel which should be far cheaper than California diesel. We are down under ¼ tank, so, let’s see…1/4 of 150 gallons is about … I’ll probably put about 120 gallons in Godzilla’s tank. Hey kids…there go your Christmas presents!
Tomorrow…back in California.
1 comment:
The dunes and jet boat sound like wonderful adventures! Sorry to hear about Linda and Larry's encounter with the deer - what a major bummer for sure! Looking forward to more updates on your caravan. Hope to see you before too long. Safe travels......
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