Last Week In Charleston

Wednesday 7/3 Charleston, OR

Lovely morning and a beautiful, sunny day in the 60’s. Northern and Eastern Oregon have been getting thunderstorms and rain (we get Portland TV here with our dish), we have had very pleasant weather here on the coast, much like last year. 

Nice walk around the harbor this morning. Negative low tide so I was able to get a pretty good picture looking down onto the piers.

As you can see, this is a working fishing port. All of those upright  verticals are folded outriggers for baited lines and nets. The second pic is another area that has more of a mix of smaller private boats, but most are fishing boats, very few pleasure craft. 

First thing this morning we headed into Coos Bay proper to the Coos Bay Farmers Market. Pretty decent market for this early in the season, but we spent less than an hour there. Stopped at Fred Meyer for beer, the hardware store for some caulk to put around the bathroom sink, and Walmart for some other things and then back home. Much to my amazement the smart just turned into Crabby Cakes Bakery all of it’s own accord! Just as surprising, the cinnamon rolls were just coming out of the oven, what a coincidence! 

Later in the afternoon Nancy walked over to Chuck’s Seafood and picked up some crab meat and bay shrimp for dinner. Bay shrimp are ubiquitous around here. Order a shrimp salad and it comes with a couple of cups of tiny bay shrimp in it. A couple of times on our morning walks we have stopped to watch them unloading bins of bay shrimp out of the holds of a trawler. Large stainless steel bins, probably three feet square, hoisted out of the hold and then manually dumped into large plastic bins at the Bandon Pacific Seafood facility just off the dock.

Thursday 7/4 Charleston, OR

The good weather just keeps coming, high fifties and not a cloud in the sky this morning, high in mid-sixties. After our morning walk around the harbor we drove a few miles up the road to the Charleston Volunteer Fire Dept. for their Pancake Feed. Good pancakes, scrambled eggs, and sausage for seven bucks apiece! (plus  small donation) Can’t beat it.

After eating we drove back west to Bastendorff Beach, one we had not been to before. Very pretty spot with only a few people around, although when we drove through a little later the crowd was starting to build up. Sat on a log and watched the surf for a while, quite a wide beach at low tide. 

Then we backtracked a bit to Coos Head above the entrance to the harbor. There is a small Coast Guard Tower there overlooking the entrance to the harbor, no cars in the lot, so we assumed the tower was unmanned. Then I heard the radio in the tower and noticed the window was open, sure enough there was a young looking Coast Guardsman in there! He was using pair of floor mounted binoculars which must have been close to three feet long! Of course the tower was surrounded by chain link fence and barbed wire with “NO TRESPASSING” signs all over it, just like all of our paranoid government installations these days. I saw later that the tower is manned from dawn to dusk year round.

Back through Bastendorff Beach County Park, past the campground and out to Simpson Reef overlook. Very low tide just coming back in so a lot of the reef was exposed, a few sea lions and an elephant seal basking on the beach. Most of the sea lions and harbor seals were further out in the water. 

On to Cape Arago, one of our favorite spots, but so far this year the surf has been less than spectacular, needs a good stiff on-shore breeze I guess. Saw on the weather tonight that there is a hurricane moving west towards Hawaii, meaning they will be experiencing higher surf, maybe that is making ours less?

Back home late in the morning. This afternoon, against our better judgement, we watched the President’s “Salute to America” and actually it was done pretty well, have to give him credit for a pretty good non-political presentation.

Friday 7/5 Charleston, OR

Clouded over this morning, 60 degrees when we took our walk around the harbor. No activity at all on the boat ramp, yesterday they were lined up (even with five ramps) waiting to get in the water! Sun burned through later in the morning.

Quiet morning, planning and making reservations for the Eastbound leg of our trip, through Montana and North Dakota. There were nine nights that I had not made reservations for. Two stops for four more nights left to figure out.

Shortly after noon, after a stop at Charleytown Marketplace (which is a weird name for a small gift/antique/collectible shop), we drove into Coos Bay and had lunch at 7 Devils Brewery, then took a short walk around town and then back home.

Saturday 7/6 Charleston, OR

Partly cloudy today, but still in the low 60s. Temps stay pretty stable here do to the proximity to the ocean. Regular walk around the harbor, then a slow start to the morning. I paid a few bills and we listened to NPR like we do most every morning. We pay for a Sirius subscription all year round just to assure that we have NPR available in the truck and the trailer.

About 11:30 we walked over to the harbor post office. There were three groups of young men baiting hooks. Wash tubs full of lines with hooks every foot or so and they were unspooling the line, baiting the hooks, and winding the lines into another washtub. Nancy talked  to one of the guys and he said halibut were going to be in season on Wednesday. He said the fourth Wednesday in June and every two weeks after until they stop, and only ten hours. I looked it up after we got home and there was an open day for halibut on 6/26 and one scheduled for 7/10 from 8 AM to 6 PM. No more scheduled so far. There are weight limits for each boat based on the length of the boat. So it looks like a lot of boats will be out fishing for halibut on Wednesday.

Then we walked over to the Cape Cafe - two doors down from the High Tide Cafe - which is only open for breakfast and lunch, for a second breakfast. After lunch we walked back over down to the Charleston Marine life Center, a really neat small aquarium/museum right next to the harbor and spent an hour or so there. We visited it last year when we were here, but it’s always worth another visit.

Sunday 7/7 Charleston, OR

Nice sunny morning, a little cooler, 53 degrees at 7 AM. Took our regular walk around the harbor then watched the Women’s World Cup soccer game. Watched some of the race from Daytona, rain delayed from last night. Nancy did some laundry. Late in the morning we went over to Crabby Cakes Bakery for cinnamon rolls and picked up a Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich to split for lunch.

Then a quiet afternoon.

Monday 7/8 Charleston, OR

During our morning walk we saw that the Coast Guard had moved a large wheeled frame out of the overhaul building onto the pier and there was a CG boat at the pier. We finished our walk and came back around to watch as they lifted the 50 foot MLB (Motor Life Boat) 47295 out of the water and prepared to put it on a frame to it move into the building. 

You can see a video of MLB 47295 in action here . Check out the 45 second point!

Back home I got on-line and filled in the last four open nights of our trip east in early August. Now we are set with reservations  through 9/1 when we leave Sycamore RV. We have 22 days to fill in September before we land at our friend John’s airplane hanger while we are visiting them at the Geneva Lakes Antique and Wooden Boat Show.

After lunch we drove out to Shore Acres State Park to look at the ocean views and stroll through the gardens. Then we stopped at Cape Arago State Park overlook and sat and watched the surf. Still nothing as spectacular as we saw here last year, guess ocean (and weather) has been too calm.

Back home I contacted Verizon about our data usage. This morning we received a text that we had 25% of our data left with 5 days to go, in good shape. Then this afternoon I realized it was only showing 7% left. Turns out the 25% notice was in error and we were close to out of our 10 gigs, so we purchased an extra gig to carry us through the rest of the week.

Walked over to Miller’s at the Cove for dinner.

Tuesday 7/9

Our first rainy day here, light drizzle most of the day, mid-60’s. We had a day of rain coming across the Cascades but that was about it.

On our morning walk we spoke with a young man who was loading washtubs of baited lines onto a fishing boat. He said those lines were 140 plus hooks (12-15 inches apart) and long lines already on the boat were over 200 hooks! We asked how far out they were going to fish and he was not sure of distance, but said it would take all day today to get to where they want to fish tomorrow! Hope they had a good size boat size the NOAA weather radio said the swells were five to eight feet this afternoon!

Drove into North Bend for lunch at The Tin Thistle - a vegan restaurant. I was apprehensive, but the burgers were actually pretty good and the BBQ mac and cheese good as well. Not much of anything else on the menu that I would even try! 

On the way over and back we stopped at five cannabis shops looking for different types of CBD lotion or ointment. We had already hit three other shops in the last week or so and picked up several different kinds. We’ve both been really happy with the CBD ointment and sticks we bought here last year. Really helps with muscle pain and arthritis discomfort.

Stopped at Chuck’s Seafood down the road for crab and bay shrimp for dinner. Quiet afternoon back home listening to the drizzle.

Wednesday 7/10 Charleston, OR

Early morning walk, rain has stopped and sun burning through the overcast. Temps are very stable here this time of year, 62 this morning. Harbor area very quiet this morning , everyone out on the halibut run? Only four trailers parked at the launching ramp, last Thursday at this time the lot was full!

Drove into Coos Bay to the Wednesday farmers market, picked up more nice blueberries. Back in Charleston we stopped at Crabby Cake Bakery hoping for a pulled pork sandwicjh, but he did not have any, so we picked up a couple of hot cinnamon rolls and walked across the street to the Cape Cafe for lunch.

Relaxed in the afternoon, I crawled under the trailer and greased the axles. Walked over to High Tide Cafe for a very nice dinner.

Thursday 7/11 Charleston, OR

Quite a bit of fog this morning, did not burn off until mid-morning. After our morning walk around the harbor we lazed around a bit and then went over to the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. A little over five miles up  Seven Devil’s Rd. from Charleston, it’s something of a hidden gem. A very interesting headquarters museum and a vast network of walking and canoeing trails. The reserve covers 4,800 acres of land and water that they refer to a a “living laboratory” for the “study of salt mashes, stream’s and tidal channels as well as the species they support.”

After some advice from the ranger as to what we wanted to do, there are trails ranging from less than 0.2 miles to 0.75 miles, with considerable elevation change on the longer trails. We were not particularly interested in having to climb all the way back up to the visitors center, so we opted to drive down closer to the mash level. We were given a key to a gate on the access road that allowed us to drive down almost to sea level were we took a lovely half mile trail down through thick pine forest to the marsh on an old RR right-of-way. A really pretty spot that we may visit again, there are very few places where one can walk for close to an hour through the woods, hear nothing other than birds, and neither hear or see any other people!  A really pretty place.

Stopped at Crabby Cakes Bakery and picked up a pretty good BBQ pork sandwich for lunch, which we split, along with some other baked goodies.

Relaxed in the afternoon. I thought about taking the truck in to see about getting it washed, but have not found a quarter wash with a tall bay and it is looking like we may have a day or two driving in the rain next week so I settled for just a quick wipe-down of the sides to make it a bit more presentable.