We've also added some more pics to our photo album.
We stayed a couple of days in Fort Bragg. Monday morning we drove south down the coast to the town of Mendocino. What a beautiful setting this town is in. Lots of cool shops etc, including a fabulous lumber place which stocks natural edge slabs of redwood. Something to keep in mind for another time when a natural edge table project gets underway. All in all, a great place to wander around. Had a picnic lunch in a park overlooking the Pacific. Another one of those "... a table with the best view in the house". Ok so a sea gull tried to walk on our feet!...
Returning to Fort Bragg in the afternoon we checked out the famous "Glass Beach". A bit tricky to walk down to but the beach is literally that... littered with glass. Apparently in "olden times" the townsfolk would dump/throw trash, including glass bottles etc over one specific cliff. Over time the bottles all broke and got tossed around in the surf. To this day, the small beach is covered with small glass pieces that have been put through the best tumbler in the world, the surf. You can dig it with a shovel if you wanted to. It was fun to walk along the top of the beach and see what each wave turned up. We collected a bunch of colorful pieces of glass. We don't know what we'll do with them but someday, after we're gone, somebody will look through our stuff and wonder... a bag of glass pieces???... these folks were weird!
Tuesday we drove up the coast to Eureka, California. Even in the heavy fog the scenery is spectacular. We even stopped at the drive through tree, although neither our car nor our wee trailer, let alone the two of them together.
We stopped in Garberville for a lunch break and while walking down the main street we saw a sign which made our heads turn...
HUH?.. There had to be a story behind the "Absolutely No Patchouli Oil"! We asked in a local store, which is owned by a lady who has been there since the golden age of Aquarius ("old hippy" for those of you not old enough to get the Aquarius reference ;-) ), if there was a story. The lady laughed and said "... let's just say, the bar is owned by some good old boys..." and hinted that it was their way of saying "no hippies" in a town full of hippies from way back! We had a good laugh about that one.
We took the time to drive through the "Avenue of the Giants" where you drive through a series of Redwood tree groves. WOW!
Wednesday morning and afternoon was a wander around Eureka' old town day. Over the last couple of decades the town has slowly reclaimed old rundown parts of the city and it is transforming into a cool funky area with small local artisan shops, restaurants etc. The performing arts center has a fabulous mural painted on it's exterior back wall.
The dancer appears to have jumped and is floating in space, and the windows are just paintings as well.
Wednesday evening we drove a bit north to Arcata to watch the Humboldt Crabs play a baseball game against the California Glory. The Crabs are the longest continuous operated summer collegiate program baseball team in the country. This year they are celebrating their 66th straight season. It's actually a lot more fun going to a community based team's game than to the "bigs". The young fellow who was the game announcer also was the anthem singer, and although his voice cracked a few times, he did an admirable job of it and the home town crowd cheered loudly. Even the local "hair farmers" came out to cheer on the Crabs...
Once again, our "home team mojo magic" came through for the Crabs as they overcame a two run deficit late in the game and went on to win 6-4 in extra innings finishing off the Glory with a mammoth two run walk off homer.
Eureka was also the place where our wee trailer finally found a soul mate...
Leaving Eureka, we headed north into Oregon. We stayed one night at the Bandon KOA which is a beautiful forested spot with nice large spaces and a very friendy white cat. . Continuing north from the KOA, we stopped in the old town part of Bandon for a walk around town and along the boardwalk by the bay. Lunch was shrimp cocktails and fish/shrimp tacos at a little foodie/fishing tackle place on the boardwalk. Wonderful little setting. Continuing on to Winchester Bay we had planned to stay at the Umpqua State Park just south of the bay, but they only had one spot with electrical at 20 amp service. We didn't have a converter plug, and besides, with all the rain they have had in this area, there were more than enough mosquitoes to go around. We decided to give the state park a miss and continue on. After stopping at the dock in Winchester Bay to stock up on tinned salmon (at our favorite - the Fishermen's Cannery), a chunk of smoked salmon and the most delicious salmon spread you have ever tasted, we ended up at a RV park at Lake Woahink about a half hour north of Winchester Bay. Lovely spot and only 4 miles or so south of Florence. A path at the back of the park leads up onto huge sand dunes... magical...
This was definitely at least a two nighter and it has a couple of crazy cats, with many mandatory hugs and pets....
After setting up the trailer, we drove up to Florence for dinner and sat in a nice little cantina in the Florence "old town", overlooking the Siuslaw River, and had .... you guessed it ... fish tacos... and some nice local wine for dinner. It seems that many of the towns on the coast have picked up on the theme of reclaiming older parts of the town and transforming them into lovely tourist friendly spots showcasing great local artists and culinary delights. It is a real pleasure to stop in these places and just wander around. They all have built great boardwalks and marinas along the shore of the bay or river wherever they are. Really pleasant.
On Saturday we drove back down to Winchester Bay as the Fishermen's Cannery puts on a Fish BBQ on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the summer. We $22 each we had two combo dinners, each including a chunk of Salmon, a chunk of Tuna and 10 prawns. Any one of those would likely have cost over $20 at home. This is the best!!! We couldn't eat it all so off it went with us to be Sunday's lunch on the road.
After lunch we went up to the Umpqua Lighthouse and visited their museum. Very interesting pictures and artifacts about life in the early lighthouse years.
In the early evening it was back to Florence for another nice sit down for a glass of wine overlooking the river. No fish tacos this time. Too full from that BBQ lunch....
On Sunday we continued north along the Oregon coast. Our target stop for the day was Tillamook. We stopped at a few places along the way including a state park for a picnic lunch to finish off that salmon and tuna we had left over. Nice visitors center in Newport and decent factory outlet stores in Lincoln City. After getting set up in a nice RV park just south of Tillamook we drove in and went to the famous Tillamook Cheese Factory. On our drive around town we spotted the home field of the Tillamook High School football team... "Blessed are the Cheesemakers"
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