Wednesday, November 20, 2019

#61 - Coveys Great Adventure - Oct 2019 - Nehalem OR


October 2019 – Nehalem OR


I don’t think we had finished setting up camp after moving from site D17 to site A2 on September 30 before the first camper showed up looking for help with something. The 30 th is the last work day for most of the seasonal Rangers, so the “professional” staff was reduced by over 75% that day. The ranger station closed until May, and several large signs went up directing campers to site A2 for questions and assistance with reservations, yurts, checking in, etc. At the same time, the firewood cart stopped operating on weekdays, making our site the main source of firewood for the campground. Luckily, one of the other hosts kept running the wood cart whenever demand was high, which took some of the pressure off of us.


Another squirrel!
Despite the 10-hour days, we really enjoy being in site A2 once the campground is essentially turned over to the hosts. We are the first thing that folks see when they turn into the campground, so most of them, especially first-time campers usually stop to ask a question or to register. The few remaining rangers have their hands full with maintenance projects, training sessions and paperwork. The host crew in the Fall and Winter tend to be experienced and pretty self-reliant; none of our co-hosts were rookies and everyone got along well.





The Queen of Millennium Park 
We haven’t spent a night out of the coach in a long time and were looking for any excuse to take off for a night or two. Kayeanne discovered that Bob’s Red Mill company headquarters was near Portland, and they gave tours! A plan was soon hatched: we found a hotel in Lake Oswego that liked dogs and that was all we needed. I don’t think Lucy and Schroeder were too thrilled about this venture, but we had a great time. The hotel was close to a section of town called Millennium Park that combined apartments, shops, restaurants and green spaces right along the lake shore. Lunch at the St. Honorè Bakery and dinner at Bamboo Sushi were both memorable.

Bob's first millstones
Unfortunately, the Red Mill tour wasn’t. Keeping in mind that we had just spent two months giving tours of an historic flour mill, we were probably a tough audience. The tour basically consisted of looking through windows at folks doing stuff while the guide tried to explain what was or was not happening. The narration didn’t match what we were seeing because the group was so large that everyone was looking into different windows. More than 40 people were on our tour, including a local school group, several young housewives pushing kids in strollers, a small clutch of foreign tourists and a few old fogies like us. The guide tried, but the situation was just not going to work. Luckily it didn’t last too long and we were able to head down the road a mile or so to the company store, which was actually much more interesting!


Despite the years we have been visiting Nehalem, we realized that we hadn’t really explored Cannon Beach, an upscale seasonal community on the coast just north of Manzanita. Named for a cannon that washed ashore from the wreck of the USN schooner Shark, it’s is a very popular seaside destination. While it certainly is a tourist area, it has avoided becoming tacky. We had a fine lunch at Ecola Seafood and then spent a few hours wandering through several nice arts and crafts galleries. A number of places were

closed during the week, probably recovering from the Summer season frenzy. We enjoyed the day and will certainly return next year.

Until six years ago, Nehalem Bay State Park attendance really dropped off after Labor Day. It dropped so much that they closed half the campground for the “winter” season. If the weather was good, the weekends were busier, but midweek was very quiet. Last year the park was sold out through September and busy throughout most of October, often selling out on weekends. This year surprised everyone, more resembling 2015: very quiet during the week and busy when the weather cooperated on the weekends. By the end of the month even the weekends weren’t too busy. We didn’t complain, because after six months of camp hosting we were ready to start to wind down a little.

Endless driftwood piles in Nehalem Bay
As usual, we planned our annual pilgrimage to Eugene to get Riley looked over at Kaiser Brake.  We pulled out of Nehalem on October 30th and headed south. We hope that they don’t find anything serious, but it always turns out to be more expensive than not. Riley seems to be aging more quickly than expected. Kaiser discovered that the drag link was shot, a critical component of the steering system. There are no spare parts available for this chassis, so they had to make one. <sigh>

From Eugene we went to Bend OR to have a new starter installed on the engine. Truck repair shops are much cheaper than RV service locales, but finding one that will work on RVs can be a challenge. We hope that’s the solution to no-start problems we had in August on the way to Washington. For a change, that went according to plan and by late morning we were on the road to Salt Lake City to see Liesa.

A couple of books that I really enjoyed recently are Why We Live with Animals by Alvin Greenberg, and Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser. I seem to be on a poetry kick lately.

Wines we liked this month include Maryhill Winemakers Red, Columbia Winery Cabernet 2016 and Willamette Valley Vineyard Founders Reserve Pinot Noir 2017.

More soon,

Bob

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