Some Days are Simply "Wild"

After a couple of long days of fishing (if you can even call it fishing when we didn't really catch anything), we spent a day playing tourists.  How could we possibly be 30 miles from "America's Largest Wild Animal Petting Park" and not check it out?!

When was the last time you got to pet a baby black bear!

The caged animals at this petting park are not real active.  But, if you lived in an 10' x 10' cage would you be real active?

They were beautiful animals to look at.

We made it back over to the petting part just in time for the cute animals to come out.  This little guy lived up to his look.  He was into everyone's business looking for something to steal.

He kept chasing this albino skunk.

Ohh, but then the baby opossums came out and my heart melted.  I need one of these little guys.  He was so snuggly!  He was also very curious.

He quickly decided he wanted to see what was under my shirt!

Not to fear, I got him detoured before we had a real incident.

It was getting close to lunchtime and the animals were settling in for their afternoon naps.

There were mating rituals going on right around us.  This peacock was showing its feathers to entice the other peacocks. 

We got to actually watch this mama baboon teach her baby baboon to walk.  She would set him down and turn around and walk a few feet.  He would stand there and scream at her.  She would turn around and look at him with a look only a mother has and he would take a few steps towards her before she would turn back around and walk a few more feet.  This went on for a while and we all just stood there in awe knowing this was not something you get to see everyday.

I love that these llamas look like they are setting Scott up for something.

Scott was traumatized by watching this bear who knew if he did this trick, the spectators would throw food to him.  It reminded Scott of all the stories and pictures we have seen about the history of the bears in the National Parks and how they became accustomed to begging tourists for food.

There, of course, were the rodents of unusual size.  (Name that movie!)

And this guy who really didn't care about performing for anyone.

The weather was so beautiful, and we definitely could have taken a nap, but we had too much to see so we continued on to the beautiful town of Bandon.  The people of Bandon have done a wonderful job of making their waterfront very clean and welcoming.  There were remains of the past, when logging was big in this community.

There were also several of these elaborate carvings all along the waterfront. 

But the highlight of the day in Bandon was visiting the Coquille River lighthouse.  This lighthouse was built in 1896 and is on the list of National Historical Landmarks.  We waited for our turn so that we could take the tour all the up to the light room at the top.  How can you go all the way to the coast and not visit a lighthouse?

We had such a great time during our five days at the coast!  Hopefully we won't let eight more years go by before we do this again.

You're Fishing in the Derby? Are You Crazy?

We specifically chose to go to Gold Beach this particular weekend so that we could fish in the annual fishing derby.  I can't tell you how many people asked if we were crazy going over to fish in the derby.  It's bumper to bumper boats; boats so thick on the river you can walk across them!  If you gonna go, go big, right!!!

I'm not sure I should tell all of you this, but the proceeds from the fishing derby, and after hours entertainment, goes to pay for the "Seal Patrol".  What is the Seal Patrol you ask?  Well let me explain this to you.  The seals and the sea lions got so abundant in this section of the river that they were stealing fish from the fishermen.  It got so bad that the animals were trained to spot a fishermen raising his net to bring in a fish and they would all swim directly over to his boat and steal the fish before he had time to actually land it in the boat.  Hence the invention of the Seal Patrol.  These guys spend all day trolling back and forth in their boat shooting at the seals and sea lions.  Don't worry, they are only shooting rubber bullets.  If things get really bad, they put a "bomb" in the water and make a large boom, which sends the animals back out to the sea.  I tell you this because all day long while your out enjoying the quiet, peaceful, "being one with nature", you hear gun fire.  You also hear everyone around you secretly cheer that another seal or sea lion is gone.

So, we got up early Saturday morning to a foggy day, which is pretty normal around these parts.

We drove over to the campground where Vic and Penny spend the entire month of August.  Their spot was pretty easy to find due to the firefighter's boat with flames painted on the side of it.

I still am not sure why we had to be the first people out on the river.  It was an early morning, but I was excited at the thought of catching that big salmon.

Soon enough the other boats started showing up.  There ended up being less boats on the river on Saturday than on a normal day (according to Penny).  We're not sure if it was the derby that kept people away, or the fact that the fisherman's almanac said this was supposed to be one of the worst fishing days of the entire season!

Vic caught a fish pretty early in the day.  Now you and I might be impressed by the size of this fish, but Vic was not.  He just wanted to bring in a fish so that we would have at least one.

After a couple hours went by with no other bites, Vic put on his "Pedro" hat.  He thought this would bring us luck.

He also let Scott drive the boat for a few minutes.  Maybe this would be the trick.

This section of the river is a high traffic area for the jet boats that go up the river.  It never fails, as soon as a jet boat full of tourists comes by, you snag a fish and the boat comes over so that everyone can see you land the big one.  We got excited every time we saw a jet boat.  That for sure would make one of us snag a fish.

All of the sudden it became like an scary Hitchcock movie.  The birds saw all the feeder fish we were in and swarmed us.  They were dive bombing into the water all around us. They practically landed on the boat.  If we were in the feeder fish, we for sure had to be near the big salmon.

We are used to white pelicans were we live so these brown pelicans were something new.

We only had until 4:00pm to weigh-in our fish in order for them to count towards the derby.  Since Vic was the only one in our boat to catch a fish by 4:00pm, he took it up for weigh-in.  His fish weighed-in at just over 15 pounds.  The winning fish for the day, 34.9 pounds.  Ummm, I don't think I could have landed a fish more than twice the size of this one.  For the entire derby, only 24 fish were caught; and one boat caught four of those fish.  We were actually one of the lucky boats who landed a fish that day.

One nice thing about only catching one fish, it makes the cleaning process go faster.

Following the fishing derby we headed back to the parking lot of our hotel where the rest of the festivities were taking place.  I may not be able to catch a fish, but I can definitely fetch some beers.

A lot of people came out to support this cause.  We really got the feeling that this community comes together to support it's people and it's way of life.  The next night was another fundraiser, equal to this one, to support a local family whose mother is battling leukemia. 

Sunday was not such a nice day out on the water.  The weather was cloudy, windy, and downright cold.

We spent the day trolling the river with absolutely no bites.  So what do you do when you spend two days and don't catch a fish? Why yes, you go down to the shady docks 30 miles away in Port Orford and buy fish from the commercial boats coming back in.  These are not the touristy docks that I remember as a kid in Newport.  NO!  These are the docks where the boats come in after days of being at sea.  Many of the fishermen don't have a full set of teeth (and are probably wanted by some form of law enforcement agency).  This was not the kind of place to wander around and take photos.  I tried to not draw too much attention to myself.  But in the end, we came home with a cooler full of fish.

I can't believe how much fishing takes out of you.  We enjoyed a nice dinner and were back in our room by 6:30pm, where I promptly fell asleep by 7:00pm.  We had big plans for Monday and I needed to be ready for a long day.

40 x 40 - 28. Go to the Coast for the Weekend

Every August, our coworker (and friend) Vic spends a month at the coast fishing.  He takes off with his camper and his boat, not to be seen again for a month.  On his way out of town he always yells over his shoulder "hey, you guys should come over one weekend and we'll take you out fishing".  This year, we decided to take him up on his invitation.  

Eight years ago, right after we got married, we went to Brookings for a couple of days.  Since then, we haven't been over to the coast.  It's easily a five hour drive, from our house.  Basically, you can't get there from here.  Leaving here, we head north for 70 miles, only to make a sharp turn and head south for 100 miles, down into California, then one last turn north back into Oregon.  There is no shortcut.

Once we entered California, we decided to take a side road and drive through more of the Redwoods.

Nothing makes you realize how small you are in this world as when you stand beside these giant trees.  

If you look take a few minutes to look around, you can notice remnants of the past.  I cannot begin to imagine men standing on platforms cutting these trees down the old fashioned way 100 years ago.

On the other side of the Redwoods, we came out in Crescent City.  We spent more time then we planned in the Redwoods, and that caused us to miss the tour of this lighthouse due to the fact the tide came in and covered the path with water.

There was pretty much no way we were going to tour this lighthouse.  There was more than six miles of water between us and the lighthouse.

We put it into overdrive and made record time from Crescent City to Gold Beach.  This weekend was the annual Hospice Swap Meet.  We had bargains on our mind.  Don't worry, in a half hour, we managed to fill three plastic shopping bags and still only spend $10.50!  

Gold Beach was beautiful the first day!

We were so happy to be at the coast and excited about our big fishing adventure on Day 2!

It's Been a "Gem" of a Summer

The hot weather has finally arrived and some nights it's just miserable being inside with no air conditioning.  The perfect solution to this…spend the evening at the local ballpark.

This is Kiger Stadium.  One of only two all wood ballparks left in the United States.  It has been the place of thousands of baseball games.  I'm not exaggerating that number!  

Last summer we welcomed a new team to this field.  Our very own West Coast League wood bat team.  The Gems!

I come from a family of baseball fans.  For the past 15 years my parents have had season tickets to the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes.  After moving here, baseball in the summer was something that I truly missed.  When we heard we would be getting team, we ran out and bought season tickets.  This year was a little different in that you could actually pick  your specific seats for your season tickets.  So this is where we would spend over 30 nights this summer.

Good ol' Section B.  (Just as a bit of trivia here, Scott and I were actually the first people to purchase our tickets this year and we had full pick of any two seats in the stadium!)  We came to love our "summer family".  It took a few games to get to know each other, but in the end, we were so happy with our section.  

We quickly realized that, among our group, there was the "cheering" ringleader:

The crazy guy who you never wanted to high-five because once you did, you were stuck doing it for the rest of the game.  This was also the guy who got the whole crowd involved in things like the wave.  On a slow night, he would do just about anything to get everyone's attention:

There's of course our mascot, Tater:  

I love watching new people come to the game and try to figure out why the mascot for the Gems is a bucket of french fries.  For those of you who don't know, a Gem is a type of potato grown around these parts.  Now Tater doesn't usually dress up, he was promoting "Dinner on the Diamond", a fundraiser to help Kiger.

There were plenty of theme nights:

Foam Finger night was my personal favorite.  Everything just seems better with a foam finger.

Diamond Dig night, where for $5 you could purchase this little plastic shovel in hopes of finding the small box with a diamond in it buried somewhere in the infield.

In case your wondering, no, neither Tonja or I found it.

There was the night that I won $162 dollars on the Babe Ruth 50/50:

In case your wondering, no, I did not give my half of the money back to the Babe Ruth team.  Do you have any idea how many pairs of shoes I could buy with $162????

There was the night that we held the 1st annual Gun's and Ax's Charity softball game before the Gems game.  

Lot's of good fun between the police and fire departments.  I can say that because, of course, the fire department won!

The first half of the season didn't start out to well, but once we got all our players, and got in our groove, things started to come together.  We ended up being one win away from going to the playoffs.  I can honestly say that it's not about how well the team is doing, it's about being out at the ballpark on a warm night:

It's about watching your favorite player make another good play:

It's about getting up the courage to ask your favorite player for a photograph:

(And then completely forgetting your name when he asks.)

It's about sitting through not one but two 13 inning games.  It's about missing the first ever grand slam home run in team history the night you didn't go to the game.  It's about standing in line hoping to get your team poster signed by all the players:

But most of all, it'a about having something that you can be proud to say is your hometown team.  The Gems made us proud this season and we are already looking forward to next season!