Next Sarah spent a few minutes drying our towels in the laundry and then we hit the road. We’ve a pretty long haul today, but are intent on stopping at anything interesting and not just hauling A to the next overnight.
First stop was in Eureka, CA, a town Sarah lived in for three winters during the time she and her then husband were logging. She knew just where the St Vincent DePaul secondhand store was, but it was closed until 10 and it was not yet 9. We met a street vendor setting up her jewelry, and since Sarah had forgotten to bring earrings, she bought two pair from this tiny woman wearing skin-tight jeans, a greasy felt hat, and black boots with 3-inch heels.
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| Sarah buying a pair of earrings from a street vendor |
Still having some time to kill, we decided to have a second breakfast and stopped at an upscale bagel shop where we each had a scrambagel, only $4.00 each, and coffee. Then we walked to the Eureka Coop and bought our wine for the evening, more miso soup for Sarah, and asparagus for our planned evening meal of salmon and tossed salad. When we returned to the car, St Vincent’s was open. The only thing we bought was a tin lid for our camp frying pan, on which we spent a whopping fifty cents.
When we got back to the car, Sarah took the strawberries out of the snack sack. I said, “Those are delicious but like all the fruit we bought on the way home from Yosemite, they are spoiling fast. I had to throw out a handful before packing them.” Sarah’s reply: “That’s rotten.”
Our next stop was at the Klamath River, another spot familiar to Sarah. Sarah used to go with her Yurok friends and families when they came from way up the Klamath River down to its mouth for eels. The Yurok had sticks with a big dull hook on the end with which they’d snare an eel from the frothy water near shore, twirl it over their heads, and then throw it back onto the shore where the women would gather, clean, and cook it. Sarah says that the Yurok were in competition with the seals which were also in the frothy boil trying to get the eels too.
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| This Internet photo shows where the Klamath River meets the Pacific; the next two photos were taken from the hill top left in the photo above |
After our detour to the Klamath River, we stopped with other tourists to catch photos of ourselves with Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe, near the Klamath bridge with it’s gold bears at either end. Go here to find out why the bears are gold.
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| Paul, Babe, and Susan |
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| Paul, Babe, and Sarah |
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| This photo was taken at the old Klamath Bridge--where only the bear and some pilings were left of the original |
Suddenly I was craving clam chowder. We decided to wait until Coos Bay to search some out. Just before leaving Coos Bay we came upon Shark Bites Café and had the most delicious clam bisque as the soup course to our soon to be prepared meal of fish and chips.
The northern California and the Oregon coasts are really spectacular with many sea stacks (several looking to us like giant shark fins), deep green forests, redwoods, sand dunes, and roadside flowers. Today the foxglove and lupine were gorgeous. In several places the road was lined with Scotch broom in several shades of yellow ranging from pale yellow to red gold. Also in one place, I stopped the car to get a photo of some California poppies. A woman, whose house sat back from the area came out and told me I was taking a photo of the wrong poppies. The poppies five feet farther down the roadside were more impressive she said. And they were.
Our cabin at Umpqua Lighthouse SP is wonderful, sits nearly by itself overlooking a pond fringed with pink and light purple rhododendron. We can hear the lighthouse mournfully sounding its horn in the distance.
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| Our cabin and picnic area. This is an Internet photo. It was not this wet when we arrived but sifted rain soon after and rained into the night. |
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| We lugged the picnic table closer to our porch to make cooking in the misting rain more comfortable |
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| But we brought our meal into the cabin to eat in the warmth and dryness |
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| Rhododendrons from our cabin porch |
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| View from our cabin porch |
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