MUDDSCAPE

We’re closing in on 3 months for our stay in the Northwest. It started on the Oregon coast in Florence back in mid-November, took us to Portland for a short visit with cousins Sue and Larry (where we also visited with an early season blizzard), then up to Thanksgiving with the family at Julie and Glenn’s in Kent, Washington, from there to the Olympic Peninsula for 2 months. On the last day of January, after many snowy and freezing days, and lots of warm and beautiful ones too, we packed it up and spent the day on ferries and roads moving up to brother Jimmy’s property on Orcas Island in Puget Sound. We’re having a great time here, in spite of the mishap with electrical service.  Amazon.com did a great job of finding us great prices on replacement appliances and shipping them to us for free, and we’re back up to full strength. And thanks to Peter for his help with the installation of a new 50 amp electrical service that we can safely plug into, he’s our hero!

We plan to stay through the President’s Day weekend, then we’re off back to the mainland to begin our migration south. We plan to spend the month of April in the LA area to visit with family prior to our drive east for the remainder of the year. And here is a map of our planned itinerary to get there, for those of you who might wonder where we will be passing through, and when that will be. Remember, this is the PLAN, no guarantees!

Our PLANNED trip!

As many of you already know, Wendy and I have included “Gelato Quest” in the many activities of our nationwide RV tour. And while we are here on Orcas Island (see the previous installment dealing with the eChaos) we stumbled upon a delightful Italian deli that also has a gelato bar. Enzo’s, in downtown Eastsound (pretty much the only “downtown” on the Island) has some of the best we’ve had. Enzo, the owner, is Swiss but spent much of his younger years in Italy as well. He handcrafts the batches to suit his fancy, and also to suit the season.

Its winter here on “The Rock” as the island is known to the locals. It’s known as that as much for the fact that everything around here is rock, but also for the fact that most of the islands in the San Juan’s have Lime Kilns. In their heyday these large wood-burning stacks were built at the base of large limestone cliffs, abundant in the San Juan’s because these islands are all just huge chunks of it. Workers would blast slabs out of the cliffs which would crash down to the cliff base, and other workers with air hammers would chisel them to smaller pieces, which would then be carted off to the hoppers at the top of the kilns.

Rocks, lots of fire, and voila! Quicklime!

Lime Kilns at Roche Harbor, San Juan Island

Large chunks of wood, mostly clear cut from nearby islands and then barged over to the kiln site, would be loaded into the burn box at the bottom and the fire would generate up to 2800F, hot enough to burn the rock down to a sooty powder we know as lime. It was primarily used to make concrete or to put on crops. There was a man named John McMillin who made an enormous amount of money when he founded Roche Harbor (on San Juan Island) as a “company store” town which operated his lime kilns 24 hours a day, paying the workers in “scrip” that was redeemable at the company store and for paying rent in the company bungalows. We sometimes think OUR jobs are tough, but there were 100’s of men who worked up to 16 hours a day lifting and moving 100 lb. sacks of lime, and they didn’t even get paid in cash!

Friends Joe, Barbara, Frankie and Wally and The McMillin story

Wendy in the "Adit", where the Quicklime poured out

Anyway, when we discovered Enzo’s gelato here on The Rock, it was quite a delight. Rich, creamy, smooth, and perfectly flavored. He gets his ingredients from Italy, and it shows in the finished product. And the prices are right. On The Rock where it can cost upward of $6 to wash and dry a load of laundry, the gelato was very affordable at a total cost of $7.50 for 2 servings, including the tip!

Here’s Tippy with a touring tip!

One part of living in an RV, or even camping in one for that matter, is the constant need for maintenance. Much of the time it’s small things: I have a jar full of screws that have been found on the floor after a bumpy stretch of road and I’m clueless where they came from. But there are also the “big ticket items”, those things that either take more than just a screwdriver, more than just a few minutes of labor, or more than just a few bucks at the cash register in the local Tru-Value. It helps to have a great selection of tools on hand when these pop up, because inevitably they are the types of repairs that aren’t right out in the open. They frequently require lying on my back and looking up, getting under the rig on cold and/or wet gravel, and often reaching into dark and inaccessible spots behind a cabinet or fixture.

The biggest “big ticket” item we’ve been confronted with was actually the easiest to deal with. When we bought the rig, which was about 5 years old, there were plenty of cosmetic fixes to make but one we couldn’t ignore was the fact that the stove was shot. It functioned, but was pretty ugly, had rust spots, and rattled when you walked through the kitchen. First problem, where can we get a new one without busting the bank? Why, CampingWorld of course! Although their price was great (less than $500 for a top of the line replacement), the shipping was going to eat up the savings. However, my new BFF Victor at Ideal RV and Trailer in Redwood City, pulled a rabbit out of his hat. Victor’s store has never failed to cough up any single obscure part I’ve needed, seriously. But when it came to finding a stove to exactly replace ours I had started to have my doubts. I pulled the old one out (a simple job, undo the gas line, remove four screws and pull) and took it down to him (he’s conveniently located just 1 mile from where the rig was in temporary storage). He disappears for a few minutes and happily returns with the exact same stove, brand new and still in a crate. It was buried under a zillion other appliances in a dark corner of his storeroom. It was even the right color, black! And it made my day when he agreed to a discount that brought it down to the CampingWorld price! The whole job, from removal, to purchase, to re-installation took less than one hour. Pricey, but easy, and we’ll get years of great use out of it.

There have been other repairs, a new bathroom sink (thanks again to Victor! we got the last one he had), a new faucet for the bathroom sink, extending the bed platform to accommodate a new queen sized mattress, and most recently fixing the shower door so that Wendy didn’t get trapped inside every time she used it. That was actually one of those “small cost, lots of labor” repairs. She had the genius thought that since it was rubbing and catching on the bottom of the door frame why didn’t we just figure out how to raise it up a bit? We were able to buy a small nylon spacer for the bottom hinge (20 cents) but it took a complete disassembly and reassembly of the door to install it. The result, however,  is extremely gratifying. It works like a charm.

What doesn’t work like a charm is the forced air propane furnace. Sometimes it works  (usually when you don’t really need it) and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a complicated thing, of course installed deep into the bowels of the rig, and my initial research into troubleshooting the problem yielded at least a dozen things that could be wrong. Most of them had “low gas pressure” as one of the causes, so my first step was to figure out if the propane gas regulator was working correctly or not. Of course, you can’t tell by just looking at it or giving it a sniff or anything. Also, to my eye, it looked way way too much like plumbing, my least favorite type of repair. So, I turned to Al Gore’s Internet. There is plenty of advice on how to determine if the regulator is delivering the right amount of gas pressure online, and virtually every commentator recommended using a manometer, a device to determine how much pressure is in a gas line. If you want to buy one, the best place is at the factory where they make the furnaces, and you better bring your checkbook. However, while researching the what’s and where’s of manometers, I came across an article on how they are calibrated for accuracy. Even the furnace manufacturer, Atwood, mentions in the Furnace Troubleshooting Guide (found online, thanks again Al Gore!) to “make sure to calibrate your Gauge Manometer with a U-Tube Manometer to ensure accuracy of the measurements”. It turns out that it costs less than $5 to actually make a U-Tube manometer, and only about another $1.50 to buy the fittings to connect it to your gas piping. So why not just use the calibrator directly to measure the pressure? Here’s what the “extremely accurate” calibration device ends up looking like ($6.50 to buy the parts, less than an hour to construct it):

A Simple U-Tube Manometer

It takes about 5 minutes to hook it up to the piping by disconnecting the stove (something I’m already very familiar with, right?), turn the gas back on, measure the “static” gas pressure, then to measure and chart the “operating” gas pressure as the heater cycles on and off. Pretty cool! And the best part, it eliminates about 10 of the 12 potential problems. Here are some pix of the hookup, and the manometer in use.

Standard 3/8" gas fittings to hook it up

Hooked onto the stove gas feed pipe

13 "inches of water column" (WC) is the static gas pressure

11 inches of WC is the operating pressure

Now, the heater isn’t fixed yet. That will, thanks to our diagnosis, require disassembly of the major components to remove and replace both the burner and the heat sensor, about $75 in parts and probably a few hours of labor. But at least we know the parts store down the street (Sonny’s RV in Chimacum, a place that nearly rivals Victor’s store in Redwood City) has those in stock. By this time a few days from now we will hopefully be prepared for the “blast of cold arctic air” that’s headed our way again before the New Year.

Tippy, of course, has some repair advice of his own.

The Bandy's have some strange quirks.

It’s a short drive, just west of Port Townsend in the little town of Gardiner. Gardiner sits on the edge of Discovery Bay and in view of Vancouver Island (Canada), and on a clear evening you can see the lights of Victoria. But even on a cloudy and rainy day, just like when we went, you can’t miss the trolls. They’re everywhere, and doing everything. Fenceposts are carved like trolls, they sit in gardens, they are framed by gates, and they even hold up a livestock barn!

The Troll Haven House

The Troll Haven Livestock Barn

Troll Poles to hold up the Barn

Troll Haven gate - more of a dragon really

And just in case you might be staring at the scenery as you drive….

You were warned

And, a short Crabbing Update, we tried our luck off of the much larger pier in front of the Marine Sciences Center in Port Townsend. The water there is almost 50 ft. deep, which should produce larger (and more) crabs. However, whether it just wasn’t our day or the crabs were taking the day off, all we got was a very large SeaStar, a cousin to the StarFish. This isn’t what you want to catch!

Crabbing at the MSC in Port Townsend - not a crab in sight

This Sea Star won't end up on a pizza, that's for sure!

And, to top it off, Tippy has our crabbing secret.

We finally arrived in Chimacum, Washington at 11am on Nov. 28th only to find the office closed and a note directing us to find a temporary site until they opened in the morning. With temperatures in the 30s, piles of plowed snow and threatening clouds, we were very happy to find a spot with electric hookup to run our heaters. Where were we you say? Chimacum is located on the Olympic Peninsula just 9 miles south of Port Townsend. Port Townsend, back in the late 1800’s, advertised itself as “destined to become the largest shipping port on the west coast of North America”. It missed the mark somewhat, but boasts an excellent example of a preserved Victorian Seaport, really a very charming place to visit.

Port Townsend Waterfront

The Cascades from Port Townsend Marine Sciences Center

We are staying at the Evergreen COHO SKP RV Park. The SKP designates it as part of the Escapees Co-op Park Network, of which we are members, and it isn’t as bad as the parking lot we envisioned it to be when looking ahead using Google Earth.  We’re surrounded by forest out of which 43 acres was clear cut to make room for the campground. On our first Sunday (pre-checkin) we had no cable TV or internet amenities, so we played Racko (Wendy kicked Warren’s butt) went to bed early and slept really well. Wen found the exercise room in the morning and then we went to the office to find our permanent space for the next two months. Everything was going well until we found out NOBODY has cable TV and internet access is available only by dragging your laptop to the clubhouse. This is taking the pioneering and exploring America thing a little too far!

I did find out that our internal TV antenna does work for a few network channels. We can still get Wheel of Fortune, thank God.  The big problem is the internet. Trying to run several businesses and stay in touch with family and friends makes internet access MANDATORY when you’re on the road. Not ones to give up easily, this became a challenge. We realize that this is a big part of our journey: Things don’t work, or they break, and you have to put on your thinking cap to figure it out or reinvent it. This is just the sort of challenge that is frustrating but also very rewarding. We’re feeling more like pioneers everyday! Needless to say, the internet problem was solved, it wasn’t easy and we aren’t telling how, at least not in print. Maybe for a fee….

We have traveled the 9 miles or so to Port Townsend several times. Our first day was a quick trip to explore the area and see if we could find gelato. Italian Ice was as close as we got and that dog won’t hunt!  The trip was fruitful in another way since we found a small variety store that had just what we needed, new shearling wool moccasins for Warren. His old ones were so worn out they were more like ice skates than slippers. He’d been slipping and sliding all the way up here. Tuesday’s trip found us at the DOL (Dept. of Licensing) to get our WA state driver’s licenses. Wendy finally got a picture that looks like her.  We are now official residents. We attempted to get the truck and rig registered in WA but are missing some documents (which are on their way). We ended our trip at Safeway where we bought enough to restock the rig. We will now be eating in…especially if the weather continues as it has. We keep hearing that the coldest winter ever is upon us!  Looks like we picked the wrong time to go north for the winter!  We’re sure to get plenty of pioneering in at this rate!

The Olympic Mountain Range (right next door!)

We discovered a few other places in the last couple of days. Port Hadlock is literally right next door to Chimacum, and it has a very nice city dock. Especially nice because we are able to hang our crab pot off of it since the season just opened. We did just that on Friday just before lunch and got rewarded with 2 nice keeper Dungeness crabs when we pulled it just 3 hours later. Needless to say we “gave it a rebait” and set it back overnight. Check back for more crabbing reports!

At LAST! Crab! This became the crab pizza below!

Fast becoming my SECOND favorite Italian food - Crab Pizza!

Oh yeah, here’s Tippy!

Alyssa & Brian at Mangianos -what's up with Elaine?

What started out to be just a nice friendly visit and dinner, of course, had to develop into something else altogether. Mike made a lunch date with an old friend and ended up driving 30 minutes to a great restaurant in Bellevue, Mangiano’s. This sets Elaine to clock-watching when, at 4 o’clock Mike has not yet returned from lunch, and I, of course, start with the “so what’s this stripper’s name he went to lunch with anyway?” stuff. I’m getting a lot of mileage from my gleeful sarcasm because Mike is responsible for making the Thanksgiving stuffing and he is no-where-NEAR started on it yet. Then we hear that Brian and Alyssa are fighting a flood in their kitchen with frozen pipes. Oy. Mike finally arrives home and furiously starts hacking up turkey innards and other things for the stuffing. I can’t actually tell you the recipe, not because it’s a secret but I’m not sure it’s that same recipe every time. The rest of us are in the middle of our favorite card game, “Thrashing Rob”. This is ANY card game where then entire family gangs up to beat Rob. He always wins the overall contest, of course, but great satisfaction is garnered by the one who can whip him at even ONE hand. You’ve never heard such cheering, except maybe at a South American soccer match or an Irish birthday party in a Dublin Pub.

Fast forward to the restaurant. First, let me note that this is exactly the SAME restaurant that Mike had lunch at. He has spent most of his day driving icy roads back and forth between Kent and Bellevue, go figure. While it was dead at lunch time, for dinner it’s really busy as evidenced by Mort’s observation “You’d never know there was a recession, really!” which he observed at least a dozen times while we were there. All goes pretty well until our dinner finally arrives. Mike’s soup is cold and he goes a few rounds with the waiter and the manger on that issue, and we can barely get in one bite of dinner before the alarms start going off.

Don't complain about the cold soup, ever.

Have you ever been in a restaurant when the evacuation alarm goes off? Lots of people start staring at perfect strangers all around them as if one of them is going to offer the answer to “What the heck is THAT?” After a few minutes of either trying to figure out what is going to happen, or in my case jamming food down my gullet in anticipation of the inevitable, we get asked to step outside. Here’s a great shot of Mike who has the veracity to remember to take his wine with him. Actually, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even think about taking it with him, it just stuck to his hand and went along. Cold soup, bad. Cold wine, good! For this little piece of brilliance, we are declaring Mike our Person Of Interest for this Thanksgiving blog.

Mike at the outside bar at Mangiano's

Fire engines came. I love fire engines. They take me back to my childhood when Jeffrey Liu and I burned down his garage playing with matches. So we all waved at the firemen and tried to stay warm.

Wave to the nice firemen!

And all too soon they were gone and we got re-seated.

Wave GOODBYE to the nice firemen!

 They took away all our food (I also anticipated this and ate all the large cold pieces of lobster from my Lobster Carbonara before they took it away) and replaced them with fresh hot plates. Mort made sure his would be fresh by cutting an “X” across each piece of his chicken picatta, and letting the waiter know he had done this. “Don’t you just microwave this and bring it back, I’ve marked it you see”. He’s a genius. Anyway, it turns out that it was a broken pipe somewhere in the building, and now I’m suspecting it isn’t about Mike’s cold soup after all. Shoot, we’re sitting with the King and Queen of broken pipes! AAHH! There is no way we’re inviting them to see our rig until all the bad frozen-pipe mojo has worn off.

The rest of dinner went well and we all arrived home safely. And we wish Alyssa and Brian a wonderful life together!  Oh, yeah, here’s Tippy!

This post was intended to go out yesterday (Tuesday) but the internet froze.

We’ve been enjoying Portland Oregon for the last 4 days, visiting with Cousins Sue and Larry and at last finding GELATO! While the weather had been dreary on our visit to Oregon with lots of wind and rain, there had also been some beautiful days.
For instance, the day we arrived it rained and was a little chilly but when we found the Gelato and Yogurt Lounge I completely forgot the outside weather. That wonderful Italian treat (my favorite Italian food and word) has a very different cold to it than the cold I get from a rainy day. And then, on Saturday, we took a nice long walk to Portland downtown and had lunch, then visited Powell’s Books (what a GIGANTIC place!), then had a nice return walk. While it was brisk, the sun shone and town wasn’t crowded so a good time was had by all. We were surprised by the abundance of “food carts”, just trailers turned into small walk-up restaurants really. They have proliferated greatly over the last 2 years, sort of starting in parking lots surrounding Oregon State and making their way to many of the parking lots downtown that find themselves “roomy” from our economy.
So, we’re packing this morning to drive up to Seattle for our family Thanksgiving and it’s my job to police the outside of the rig. I got good advice from Wendy yesterday to pack up as much as possible, especially since it was predicted to hard-freeze overnight. So I dumped tanks and stowed the sewer hose, and turned on the pump so I could drain and disconnect the shore-water hose and stow it as well. A darn good thing! THIS is NOT what you want to see when you open the door in the morning and head down the steps to outside!

The Big Chill greets me in the morning

It’s a good thing that some fresh snow really perks up a landscape scene. This is us parked at Jantzen Beach RV Park, right across the street from some HUGE shopping, the Jantzen Beach Center. It’s on Hayden Island in the middle of the Colombia River, and also just a literal stones throw from Vancouver, Washington. There isn’t a sales tax in Oregon, but there is a pretty hefty one in WA, up to 9.1%. Sales tax is Washington’s principal source of income since they don’t have an income tax. In Oregon, there IS an income tax, and the property taxes are also quite high, but no sales tax. So, Washingtonian’s from the southern part of the state make their way to shop in Jantzen Beach. It’s not really legal to buy here and take there, but there isn’t any money for enforcement so it’s the honor system for WA residents to pay their own sales tax. I’m guessing in these parts, on this issue, there is also a pretty short supply of honor.

Jantzen Beach RV in Portland Oregon

Yes, Virginia, those ARE icicles on the outside of the rig!

Yes, it snowed. Yes it was 25F all night. Yes everything froze. It was tough stowing everything for the departure, but it all happened and no fingers fell off from frostbite. So we got it all together and hit the road.

Now, THIS is the part that was to be added today, Wednesday, so I’ll happily add it here to it’s belated sibling.

Our drive was pretty uneventful. The interstate had been deiced, so our only challenge was the surface streets we took to GET to the freeway. No big deal there, just very slow and easy. The day warmed up a tad while we drove and this is what actually became our only problem. With the deicing chemicals and a little sunshine on the asphalt, the snow melted into a slush so that any truck or car that passed us sprayed our windshield, requiring frequent squirts of the windshield washers to clear our vision. Which worked for about 5 seconds until our windshield washers also froze. It’s just fluid inside of a tiny rubber tube after all, and with the temps in the 20’s it doesn’t take much to plug them up. So we had to make 2 rest stops to pour some hot water into the washer reservoir and onto the windshield so we could clear it up. As long as we spritzed every couple of minutes the washers would stay clear, at least until a sizeable ice berg built up on the edges of the wiper blades and rendered them useless for vision assist. Another rest stop, more hot water, presto. The drive took 3 hours and when we got to Kent we had a lovely pull-through spot waiting for us.

Our big challenge on arrival was ensuring a running water supply. Our internal supply was OK, it’s got a heating pad installed on it that runs off of our 12V system. But the pump, which sits against the outside skin of the rig, froze up when there were no heaters on inside during the drive. Luckily, we had ordered a “heat tape” online and had it shipped to Julie & Glenn here in Kent. So, they dropped it by and we used electrical tape to pair it to a 25’ water hose, then covered all that with split foam pipe insulation. Hook it to the faucet and the rig, wrap the excess heat tape around the faucet, turn it on and Voila!, running water. It works great!

All is well this morning, but we will be off to the auto parts store to get a gallon of anti-freeze windshield washer fluid!

Oh yeah, as always here’s Tippy!

OMG! Is it Saturday already? Better catch up on the blogging…..

Our 10 days in Florence were delightful! We had a few gorgeous days, and we had a western Oregon version of a Nor’Easter, those fearsome gales that blow onto the New England coastline in the fall. Ours was 50-70 mph winds with a couple inches of rain, topped off by a dusting of corn snow. Corn snow is like sleet or hail, but colder and softer. Anyway, it accumulated up to about ½” on our truck and on the dock where we planted our crab trap.

Corn snow on the windshield

Oh yeah, the crab trap. We had luck with our Crab Max hand-thrown traps. Wendy got a nice keeper Dungeness off of the Winchester Bay Coast Guard Pier.

Wendy’s crab – Mongo

But while we were shopping for boots at Fred Meyer we saw some folding box traps for sale ($20, no sales tax in Oregon!) and got one. We also found really cheap turkey necks at Safeway (go figure, turkey necks at THIS time of the year!) which turned out to be great crab bait. We hauled a half dozen keepers out from under the marina dock in 3 days and have either eaten them or shucked the meat and frozen it for future consumption. Yummy!

We also found a great little burger joint in Florence. We don’t eat out much on the road; we prefer to make our meals. We couldn’t resist The Hot Rod Grill however, complete with a full line of ’53 to ’63 Chevies (at least the front ends) and an authentic Bob’s Big Boy statue that was bought at auction in California. Yup, that’s a car crashing out of the left side. Andyou can’t see it from here, but there are 2 booths inside made out of ’55 Chevies.

The Hod Rod Grill in Florence OR

We did make a few sightseeing trips. We went south to Coos Bay, but didn’t like it much. Very industrial, which shows off it’s past as the largest timber shipping port in the world until the spotted owl did in the timber industry. And we obviously stopped into Winchester Bay, which was quite small but very picturesque. Most of the harbor seems to be RV park, which we are finding is very common all over Oregon. While we know of only 3 RV parks in the LA area, there were at least 10 in Florence alone. And nearly every highway exit has at least one RV park advertized. It’s kind of strange that we had such a tough time finding one for our stay in Kent WA for Thanksgiving. We far and away prefer the Central Oregon coast, but will have to save our appraisal of the North Coast for another time.

We also dug a few, make that 2, butter clams on the Siuslaw River banks near the marina. Although they were good size, we had to resort to buying a can of chopped clams to make our clam chowder. Wendy added a bunch of lump crab meat (from our keepers) and it was fabulous! It helped that the outside temperature was hovering around 41F most of the time.

We are now in Portland, camped at Jantzen Beach RV on Hayden Island. This place is very nice and clean, with a great staff. It’s also surrounded by the Jantzen Beach Center, a HUGE shopping mall. Since we’re in the market for some warm clothes and an amped-up electric space heater, we will be patronizing this later. We’re here to visit cousin Sue and hubby Larry for a couple of days, and hoping to connect with Wendy’s old buddy Grace from her La Leche League days. Then we’re off to Seattle (Kent) for Thanksgiving with the fam! We’re just a little leery since the weather forecast for the next 4 days has snow in 3 of them, and below freezing temps at night every night. We will get some practice on freeze-proofing the water hose. Thank God our rig is winterized with heated tanks and internally protected water lines. We have also invested in some 1” foam sheets to insulate the roof vents, and are thinking about making some insulated covers for the windows to cover them at night. Every little bit helps!

Speaking of stitchery, Wendy is finding all kinds of novel ways to sew in small spaces. She efficiently uses 3 rooms of our house on wheels for her projects.

Cutting patterns in the Kitchen

Ironing pieces in the Bedroom

Sewing in the Dining Room

The Kitchen and Dining Room also serve as our Bakery!

We’re off to shop and visit, but not before Tippy gets his $.02 in!

We had a beautiful sunny day today in Oregon. We made yet another pass at the crab fishing off of the local dock in the marina attached to our campground.

The Crab Max weapon!

1 hour of casting and retrieving our Crab Max traps brought in over 200 crabs, but no keepers!

Lots of crabs, but no keepers

Wendy's BFF fishing buddy

So we packed it in, showered, lunched, and took off on an exploration to the south. We found out that the Central Coast has lots more to offer than the South Coast, except for Winchester Bay. There we found “the old Coast Guard pier”, the best non-boat crabbing in Oregon. We had only about 15 minutes until sundown but that still gave us 3 casts of one Crab Max. The tide was also running, so we had everything going against us and yet we still pulled up a half dozen Dungeness. No keepers, but we have decided that one sunny day next week we are going to return with more bait, a picnic, and the Crab Max weapons. Stay tuned, there might be “film at 11”!

Sundown at the Old Coast Guard Pier - crab fishing is done!

No keepers today - but we'll be back

Meanwhile, we also discovered Clausen Oysters in Coos Bay. Harvested daily, $6 per dozen, sweet and tasty! 2 dozen of them became our dinner accompanied by fresh sourdough bread from Reedsport and a fresh acorn squash from just up the road. Yummy! Oh yeah, forgot to mention that our neighbors, who have a boat and 3 large crab pots, pulled their pots this morning and had 60 keeper Dungeness. They graciously contributed 3 of those bad boys to our stash, and we will very likely dine on them tomorrow! We did trade them the location of Clausen’s, so it worked out pretty even.

A Northwest Dinner at it's finest!

Anyway, there’s fishing, and there’s catching fish. Or crabs. So, with rain predicted for much of the weekend, we will likely get some serious reading and internet work done, and set our sights on crabbing for a sunny day next week!

But wait, Tippy’s knocking!