Whalers Rest/Newport OR 9/17 -- 9/23

After getting back from being home in Emmett, we moved the next day and went to our Whaler's Rest Park near Newport, Or. We had been to this park many years ago when we had a Howard Family Reunion there in 1986. It has changed a lot since then, but some is still the same. I don't know if it was in Thousand Trails Park system then or not. The most rememberable thing I remember is Sarah riding a bike down one of the graveled road hills and we ended up in the hospital with her where she had to get gravel scraped out of her face and hands. Her eye swelled shut and she was a real mess!
Now, the park has expanded to across a County road. That is where we were camped, down this road and to the right. There were activity centers on both sides, with a nice laundromat that we used in the one on our side. One evening we went to entertainment by a guitar player in the other center.

Most of our parks have rental sites. Some are trailers and some are these cute little cabins. We get to use one of these for a week out of each year at no cost. I am not sure when we will do this because we have always traveled with our 5th wheel. We will have to see.

My brother, Bill, came from the Portland area to visit with us for a couple of days. He said he was coming, but I was still surprised when he really came! He is a workaholic so I hope his couple of days with us was kind of relaxing, even though we kept him pretty busy. The first day we tried to go crabbing but where we went, they were out of crab rings to rent. So, we came back to the park, ate dinner there, and then went and listened to the guitar player. The next morning we walked around the park and then ended up at the beach.

There were some really neat caves in the cliffs along the beach. It was a little scary sitting in them because the rock was kind of soft and water was dripping through them. But, I was brave and sat in this one long enough for a picture. Bill takes almost as many pictures as I do and sometimes we share them. This is a big washed out area in the side of the bank. It washed away all of the soil around some of the roots of the trees above us and they just hang in mid-air. (This is one of Bill's pics. His has dates on them, which is a good idea until you want to blow one up for a copy of it.)
We found lots of fun things on the beach, crab shells, little muscle shells, a large muscle shell, and fossil shells. I put some of them in this candy dish and it makes a nice decoration in the Condo!

After walking the beach and finding lots of "treasures" we went into Newport and visited the Yaquina Bay lighthouse. It was built in 1871 and is the oldest building in Newport and was the first of four buildings in Oregon that housed both the light and the keeper's quarters. The Lighthouse Board hired Charles Pierce at a salary of $1000 per year. He and his wife Sarah lived in the lighthouse with 7 children. There was, of course, no electricity. Rainwater was collected in a cistern and then pumped into the kitchen by hand. It soon became apparent that the light was not as visible as needed, so the government decommissioned it in 1874. In 1934, it was scheduled for demolition, but local residents formed together and preserved it. It was re-lit in 1996 and is used by the Coast Guard. (Thank goodness for pamphlets!)
The Yaquina Bay Bridge (in Newport) is a really cool bridge. I think it is really pretty the way it is built with all of the curves. I took this picture from the parking lot of the Yaquina Bay lighthouse.
We later went to the Newport bay area. Lots of fishing boats come in with their catch and take the fish to the canneries there. Also, the customers from the charter fishing boats end up here and there are crews who clean and fillet their fish for them. Because of this, there are a lot of seal lions (I called them "seals" and was promptly corrected by someone standing near me.) They are so noisy. Bill took pictures of me while . . .

. . . I took pictures of him. He is much more photogenic than I am! Maybe I just take better pictures than he does!
Here are some of the seal lions. They are very possessive of their spot. If one tried to jump up and claim a spot, there was usually a fight. I took a video with my camera and tried to load it on the blog, but my Internet is too slow. Maybe I will load it later, although I know that some of you do not have fast enough Internet to watch the videos.
This is a place where the charter boats came in. There were two women who were cleaning and filleting the fish. They were amazing. I took a video of the lady in the bottom of the picture filleting one of these halibut. It was over 30" long and it took her a little over 2 minutes. She charged the guy $10 for filleting two of them. They were nice fillets!
Most people go to Mo's to eat clam chowder, but we were told years ago that the Chowder Bowl in Newport was at least as good as Mo's clam chowder. We tried it back then (about 20 years ago) and agreed. So, we took Bill to eat there. We all ordered slumgullion, which is clam chowder heaped on the top with little shrimp. It was just as good as we remembered it. I asked one of the people waiting in line outside to take our picture!
I said that we had eaten at the Chowder Bowl 20 years ago. Well, this is the house we rented for five days back then, on Nye Beach. We took my Mom, Sarah & Jill, and our niece Danielle with us and my sister Lorrie and her three kids followed us there. So, there were 10 of us and there would have been plenty of room for more. Back then, the house was old and musty and we were not sure we wanted to stay there at first. But, by the time we left, we really liked that old house. We could see the ocean from the porch balcony and especially sitting on the window seat upstairs in the bay window. They have put new windows and siding on it since we stayed there.

After Bill left (we had a great time with him--hope he had fun), the next day we rented a crab ring from the Park (we should have done that with Bill) and Terry got a shell fish permit and we went crabbing. You have to be very patient when you crab because all there is to do is sit there and pull your crab ring up about every 15 minutes (some say leave it in longer, but we were too impatient!)
But, sometimes, your patience is rewarded with CRAB! They have to be a certain size, color, and sex to keep them, so we ended up throwing most of them back in, although we usually got some with every pull.
Terry said he wore gloves because pulling the crab ring up with the rough rope is hard on his hands. But, I think he didn't want to get pinched. A crab pinched him through the glove and I am sure he was really glad he had the gloves. You notice there are no pictures of me holding one of those crabs! My work came later! We took the live crabs home and plopped them into a pot of boiling water (nothing like being boiled alive!) After they turned bright red (that is how you tell when they are done), I had to pull the shells off and clean out all of the innards. By the time I did that, I wasn't sure I wanted to eat the meat (Terry doesn't care for crab meat). But, it was really pretty good. We may try our luck again before we leave the coast.