September 5, Salmon Harbor Marina, Winchester Bay

Today has really been one of two halves. The morning started off very grey and by mid morning there was thunder and lightning and then the rain came for a number of hours, but by the time we got to Winchester Bay at 4 this afternoon the sun was shining. The forecast looks brighter so here’s hoping.

We continued meandering south, briefly stopping at Newport, before taking a walk on the beach by Seal Rock, there were a bunch of leopard seals in the water and pelicans all over the rocks.

By the time we got to the quaint little town of Yachats the rain had started pouring down. Saw a gallery so while Ian sat in the van and read, I had a great time meeting the photographer Bob Keller and having a look at his wonderful work. www.bobkellerphoto.com Bob is a landscape photographer and he has won several major awards, and a really nice guy as well. I was very inspired by his work, especially his 9 x 5 format.

It was still raining so stopped at a nice café in town for lunch before continuing south. It was such a shame with the weather, as this area of coastline is really dramatic, with rocky outcrops and quite wild sea and had planned walking a bit in the Cape Perpetua park but that was out of the question. Managed to get some shots when there were breaks in the weather, just loved the mist hanging around the rocks. 

We had now reached the part of the coast that we had travelled north on 2 years ago, but it all looked different travelling on the other side of the road.

On that trip we had stayed at Winchester Bay in a campground, but this year we realized that there was RV camping right on the marina at $14 a night, no facilites but that doesn’t worry us and love looking out over the boats, it has a really good atmosphere.

Went for a walk and checked out the people down the end of a jetty fishing for crabs. Jerry had been there all day and had only managed to get one of legal size, needs to measure 5 ½’’ across the shell which is quite a decent size, he had put large numbers of smaller ones back. Jerry had been in the navy and served in Vietnam, then had been a fireman until retirement. Quite a character, another for my collection!

Down at the wharf they were unloading Chinook salmon from a commercial fishing boat, and just like in NZ they were complaining about the quotas. It had been closed and just reopened yesterday, their limit was 100 for the week, which they had got in a day and a half. A fish buyer from Newport was weighing them and packing in ice, ready for China and Japan, the fisherman was paid $5.75/pound. The biggest we saw weighed in at 21 pound, gutted and gilled, but they probably averaged about 12 pound. My mouth was watering!!!

The rain came back in again at dinner time, Ian had to put the awning up so that he could barbecue the steak in the dry. Our neighbouring campers, Steve, Tim and Derek arrived back in from a day out salmon fishing with 3 really nice salmon, we were impressed.