Monster Crabs and Happy Birthday, Tammi

Volunteers are not paid – not because they are worthless but because they are priceless.

There’s another birthday happening in our family today.  This time of year there’s just one of those right after another.  Today just happens to be the birthday of our youngest.  Now I’m not saying she’s young.  It’s just our youngest!   Happy Birthday, Tammi.

Happy Birthday to you.

Dungeness Crab

Guess what we did Saturday?  You’re right.  We went crabbing again.  It was another gorgeous day on the coast.  We had no choice.  We actually heard the crab calling to us.

The first plan of action was to get another 3-day crab license and bait.  Neither of those are sold at the park we are at.  We had to run down to Jetty Fishery again to do that.  We came back with fish heads and our licenses.  Thus, we were ready to go.

The difference between being on the water Saturday and earlier in the week when we had been in the area was that there were lot more boats and a lot more crab rings.  However, the weather was absolutely gorgeous and no huge swells like last time we made the trek in this direction.

We ended up with some nice sized crab this time.  There’s a lot of difference between crabbing off the dock and in a boat.  The ones off the dock were mainly female and small.  In the boat we got our share of small ones but we also saw some nice sized keepers.

Park crab cooker

Jerry learned to pull those crab pots up fast.  We sorted them on the bottom of the boat and tossed those back that weren’t legal.  Seagulls swarmed us for rejects.  We also had a couple Bald Eagles soaring over the trees.  It was definitely a nice day.

The park has a propane crab cooker.  We had it lit and waited and waited.  It was pretty slow in heating.  After about 45 minutes, it still wasn’t close to a boil.

Crabs are cooking!

Finally one of the other RV’ers parked next to the cooker set up his own crab cooker for us.  He has a nifty little burner for outside cooking and it heated up in no time.  If we were going to do much more of this, we’d certainly have our own little cooker.

The cleaning station

The park also has a fish and crab cleaning station down on the dock.  That was nice since it meant no mess at our site.

Our appetizer

We certainly had a mess of crab with enough left over for a crab salad the next day.

Clam for our neighbors

Our neighbors at the park brought over some samples of their day’s find.  We thought that was super nice.  First of all, we each had a large clam they had fixed for each of us,

They also brought seaweed they had collected and prepared Asian style.  I normally totally dislike seaweed.  I think I’ve had enough of that in my mouth over the years and not by choice.  The idea of eating it was never an option.  However, I felt compelled to be polite and try it.  Actually, I would have to admit that the way they had it fixed wasn’t bad at all.  At least I had a bite and tried it.  You realize, of course, that I still have no intention of having more in the future though.  It’s one of those mental things I guess.

Seaweed

This is how they dried the seaweed.  They hung it on their clothesline.  We’d never seen that before.  It was definitely interesting.


Events of Saturday, July 31st

Crabbing for Dungeness Crabs on the Oregon Coast

A hug is a great gift – one size fits all, and it’s easy to exchange.

Justin at work setting up the crab pots.  He’s so good at this and just loves crabbing!

Okay, okay, I didn’t know how to title this one but I guess it really doesn’t matter.  I know we went crabbing and I know the crabs we caught are of the  Dungeness variety … thank goodness.  Well, I’m pretty fond of Alaska King Crabs too.

Jordie's idea of crabbing was texting.  She loves to eat the crabs but wasn't too fond of the idea of handling any of them.

Our crabbing started out a little rough but keep in mind two things.  One is we hadn’t used the boat since last year.  We hadn’t even gone crabbing with the equipment since then.  We had a few bugs to work out but we weren’t surprised.  We kind of figured Friday would be our trial and error day.  Believe me when I say it most definitely was.

Regardless of the activity around this little one, he wasn't going to let go of his new-found food!

Friday was a minus tide day and much of the bay is not under water during minus tides.  We decided to wait until the tide was coming in because getting stuck on a sand bar wasn’t something we wanted to do and there are quite a few sand bars out there.   However, the actual best time to throw our pots in is closer to low tide.  Oh well … we already knew that.  Not that it really mattered but we did know.

This was the first one to  find his new very temporary home in our boat's live well.

First of all, we knew we should be down by buoy 6 but we dwaddled (is that a word?) around buoy 20 and then around buoy 12 before we arrived where we first intended to be.  Buoy 6 is very close to the bar – aka where the bay meets the ocean.

This one was hiding from us but he didn’t hide for long!  Every crab pot you pull up has lots of crabs in it.  Jordan got pretty excited at times when the crabs were running around on the bottom of the boat.   Picking up live crabs isn't her thing.  She may like to go crabbing and watch others, but having them cooked and ready to eat is really her thing.  Just don't get too close to her with those pinchers.  Even though you might pull up a lot of crabs, you can only keep the large males.  We have a measure and we definitely don't cheat with that.  The fine is $300 per illegal crab.  It wouldn't take many to have a hefty fine. 

These are all the little ones that we throw back after taking the big keepers out!  I use gloves.  Justin just picks them up.  That was our job.

We also had a little trouble with idling down either of the motors but finally worked out a system around this when pulling in the pots.  However, by the time we had the issues worked out, Jordan was definitely needing to find a restroom.  That was it for the day.  We cooked our crab and got everything ready for the next day

Saturday we were going out again.  We had our gas tanks full, new bait and were ready to go.  This is absolutely so much fun!!

This is the deck at Brighton Marina … there’s a little store, a dock to crab from, and full hookup RV sites right at the water’s edge.  Similar deck chairs are at Jetty Fishery.  That's our favorite spot to get supplies, walk on the dock and just plain hang out.

Eventually, I'll be caught up with my blogs. They have been coming daily, fast and furious.  Daily blog titles are listed on the right side of the blog for the month they were posted in.  It's easy to track that way.

Little Coastal Town of Wheeler, Oregon

The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground!

Tuesday it rained and showered and rained some more.  If it’s nasty outside, I don’t want to be in it.  When you’re either on the Oregon coast or the Washington coast, these things can happen any time.  However, the ocean itself is amazing to watch in any kind of weather.  That is, if you can see it.

The clouds were so low at times we could hardly see the water right in front of us.  It was how most of the day was to be.  The good thing is that eventually this would go away.  As long as we stayed inside, it didn’t bother us and we didn’t get wet.  Other folks were still outside fishing and crabbing off of the dock.  Occasionally, Duchess needed to take her walk.  That, of course, meant someone else was going to get wet with her.

The little “squall” played havoc with our satellite.  Sometimes we were getting signal and other times we weren’t. There is a lot of difference with the weather on the western side of the Coastal Range and on the eastern side of it. Actually the weather wasn’t really too bad but after sitting around for a while, we decided to take a little ride into the town of Wheeler.

Wheeler has a population of 375.  My high school graduation class was almost that large.  The surprising thing about Wheeler was the size of a couple of the stores we walked into.  First of all, we visited Creative Fabrics.  For such a small town, you normally wouldn’t expect much.  We didn’t and we were really fooled.  This was a fantastic store with loads of bolts of fabric.  I commented to one of the sales clerks how shocked we were.  She indicated with winter weather on the coast there isn’t much for folks to do but quilt or sew.  You can bet I’ll be going back.

Next door was an antique alley.  Again, it was huge!  We walked through the store and checked out a few of the antiques.  However, we weren’t tempted to purchase any.  Where we would put them anyway?   There isn’t much room in our motorhome for anything else.

The town has a few little cafes that are only open for breakfast and lunch.  In addition there is also the Tsunami Bar and Grill.  We thought about grabbing dinner there but it was a little early.  Instead we headed to the town of Mohler and the Nehalem Bay Winery.  We didn’t do any tasting but just looking and scouting.  Across the road is a pretty good sized little grocery store but since we were heading into the Portland area the next day, didn’t figure we needed to stock up on anything.

Nehalem is only a couple miles from Wheeler.  Like most of these little beach towns, finding a café or a restaurant open for dinner during the week can be a little difficult.  However, pizza is always good and our pizza from the Pizza Garden proved just that.  

That was about it for the day.  By the time we got back to the motorhome, our neighbors were building a campfire and the rain had moved on elsewhere.

I don't normally want to post every day but when we're so busy doing things, I need to post daily to keep up.  Sometimes I really need to post twice a day but I don't like to do that.  This is my Friday post so you know that I'm behind.

Wednesday it's off to Portland!!

Oregon Coast and Gifts For Friends

How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us.

The coast can be so beautiful during every season.  Sometimes the waves are crashing down and other times they just gently flow to the shore.  Sometimes the ocean appears gray under threatening clouds.  Other times it’s a bright blue as it reflects a gorgeous sunny day.  In just the few days we’ve been at the coast, we’ve seen it both ways.

We took a little drive down the coast on Thursday.  We didn’t go far.  It was a little cloudy in the morning but by afternoon the skies were just about as blue as they can get.  It was a gorgeous day.

Driving on Hwy 101 there are many places to pull off and just enjoy the view or even walk along the beach.

This is Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, a very popular spot.  We definitely have no plans whatsoever about being here over the 4th of July.  It will be packed.

The Pacific from a viewpoint along Hwy 101.

The beach is a great place to plant yourself for a while and enjoy the sounds of the waves while dangling your toes in the water.

Jetty Fishery offers boats for rent at Nehalem Bay.  It’s a great place to throw in those crab pots and fishing lines.  We’ve spent many hours crabbing in this location.  There are several quaint beach towns close to the Fishery that we enjoy.  Nehalem is small and on the Nehalem River and Bay as is Wheeler.  Rockaway Beach is the town to be if you are looking for a place to spend some time on a gorgeous beach.  However, again, we have no plans of being there over the 4th of July.

Little town of Nehalem

Now, I bet you’re wondering what in the world we are posting a photo of goats for.  Actually, we’re sending these goats to Lee just in case he finds another RV park where he’s required to mow just like the other one he was at.  The goats will take care of that for him.  He’ll have  more time for Bejeweled  (is that the right one?) !  It’s our gift to Lee.

And, now what are these fries all about?  These fries are for Sandie.  I know how much she loves French fries.  I've seen her eat them in Arizona.  We had the most fantastic fries in Seaside the other day.   Being the friend that I am, these fries are being sent to her in Montana so we can share.  It’s just another gift we’re sending today.  Enjoy, Sandie. We did.

Happy 4th of July everyone.  There is a great fireworks show on the beach at Seaside.  Thousands of folks will gather on the beach to view it. Since it doesn't start getting dark until after 10:00 PM around here,  the display probably won't start until at least then.  If you're going, I would suggest you save your spot on the beach early. If we had a window view, we'd love to see the show.  However, we won't be fighting anyone for a spot on the beach and most especially, a place to park.  Have a great evening.


God Bless America!