06-10-2015 Visiting Judy at Harris Beach and something new

Current Location: Rocky Point Oregon 80 degrees F at 7pm  Nice

I didn’t take my computer with me to the beach on this trip.  Didn’t even take the MiFi for internet, and instead depended on the LTE Verizon signal on the iPad and the 3 bars of AT&T on my phone.  Sometimes I get a bit tired of all the cords and devices and packing up all that stuff.  No photo processing, no writing, nothing completed on the blog while we were playing at the beach.  In fact, some of the photos in this blog were…gasp…taken with my iPhone. Judy said to me that she prefers blogs that are at least somewhat close to “real time”, otherwise what is the point.

I suppose I could agree in some respects, but then again one of my favorite bloggers is currently writing about her Antarctic adventures that took place months ago, and I wouldn’t miss a paragraph.  To me it is every bit as exciting as if it were in real time, probably better, because she has time to flesh out the posts properly.  If I tried to blog with the iPad using Blogsy, I have a feeling it would be more like a hit and miss thing…and of course, no photos.  Can’t get RAW photos from the camera to the iPad without something to process them.

I am sure you don’t care a whit about all this anyway…you came here to see Judy.  So I am slipping back in my mind to a few days ago, and with a little help from my photos, I will recreate our moments as close to real time as I can manage.

After all the hoopla with the tire thing, we were happy to slip into our site at Harris Beach and settle in for the evening with tasty leftovers for supper.  After walking up to Judy’s site to let her know we had arrived, Mo and I enjoyed the beautiful warm evening. 

In spite of my plans for Tuesday, I somehow lost 24 hours to who knows what that knocked me flat.  With the surgery thing recent enough that I am watching for infection, I was glad that I didn’t have a fever.  Whatever.  The whole thing was frustrating and boring and I hate to even talk about it, but needed to explain since Judy already gave away that we missed her fabulous planned chicken supper.  I think Mo enjoyed my down day, and did not much of anything except truly relax and read and enjoy the gorgeous sunshine, something we don’t often get at the coast. I think this is the part where Judy is thinking Mattie is a puny pipsqueak.

By Wednesday morning I was fine, although the gorgeous sunlight and warmth of the previous day had returned to June gloom and fog usually expected at the coast before noon. 

We waited till afternoon and then met Judy for a beach walk and then went back to the overlook where Judy set up her scope.  We enjoyed listening to her stories about the birds of Goat/Bird Island, and she even solved a mystery for us.  Last fall when we visited, we saw something that looked like humans on the island where no humans are supposed to be.  Judy trained her scope over there and showed us the regularly spaced wildlife cameras set up to try to document a very rare bird that only comes out at night.  As Judy says, Cool Beans.

I also learned there is no such thing as a “seagull”.  That bird on the post is a “western gull”. 

Supper at Judy’s site was great, although we did decide to leave Mattie at home.  Emma is nothing if not exuberant, and Mattie is about the size of a big cat, and we do remember how Emma got along with Jeremy the first time we met her.  Ha!  I am sure Emma would be fine eventually, but Mattie is still new enough to us that we aren’t exactly sure how she is with other dogs, so it was better to wait for that meeting.  Maybe next time.

The New York chicken was wonderful.  I found out why Judy’s is so much better than mine, even though I followed her recipe.  All except for the poultry seasoning, which somehow didn’t make it to my copy of the marinade.  No Wonder. We had so much fun talking about Judy’s new home base in Jojoba Hills, and our tire adventures, and eating great food, that both Judy and I forgot to take any photos.  I think that is a good thing.

Thursday morning Mo and I drove to town to pick up a new tire and buy a few groceries. The day was again sunny and gorgeous, without a trace of fog and very little wind.  Amazing!  Leaving Fred Meyer, we just sort of ambled down the road and found a brand new place we had never visited before. You must realize that Mo and I have spent no less than a dozen years visiting Brookings, we even spent a good year looking for property to buy there until we decided on Grants Pass instead for MoHo winter storage. So it was crazy to me that we found not only one, but two brand new places we had never seen in all our explorations of this very small town.  Our first discovery was Mill Beach, which on a Wednesday morning was quiet and peaceful with only a few folks ambling around.  There was no leash requirement for dogs, so we walked to a deserted portion of the beach and turned Mattie loose.  Oh My!  You have never seen such a frenzy in your life.  That little dog was like a bullet train, loving the soft sand, and running in circles in such happiness and joy it make my heart just sing.

Mo had taken her to the beach the day before without me, so she knew that Mattie loved that sand.  The other thing she loved a lot was all the smelly things that she could drag around and try to eat.  Especially appetizing to her were the loose clumps of mussels wound up in dirty seaweed.  Yum.

After hiking around on the beach, we noticed there was a trail above us on the cliff, and I thought it might be the park that Russ and Donna spoke of.  Sure enough, another little drive with the iPhone led us to the parking area for Chetco Point Park just off the road by the sewage plant.  Who would have thought?!  Except I did have a memory of Russ and Donna writing about walking this trail a few years ago.Here Mattie had to be on leash, but we would have had her leashed anyway.  As good as she is, there are moments when her little dog brain gets focused on something that isn’t us and she forgets what “come” means.

The trail was easy, not to tough for ole slo-poke Sue.  Ack.  I am usually a fast walker with a long stride.  All those years in the mountains of course, but now I toddle along like an old lady, barely able to keep up with Mo, much less the dog.  At least I could walk, and that was heaven, believe me.  Especially with such gorgeous views, warm temperatures, and balmy breezes.  I spent many moments during this day just enjoying the skies and the air and the views.  It is interesting sometimes to be forced to slow down.  I see and feel more it seems.  I hope as I heal and get back to my old ways, I’ll remember to slow down and take it easy now and then.

On Thursday evening it was our turn to treat Judy to supper at our site.  Unlike Judy’s shady spot, Site A11 on the front row is wide open, with full sunlight until almost 9pm.  I had to wear sunglasses to eat and Judy made sure she was facing away from the sun so she could see. Mo had enough wood for wonderful fires every night and even in the full sunshine of a bright evening, she started up another great campfire.  I managed to eat one marshmallow with melted chocolate inside.  Couldn’t tempt either Judy or Mo to partake of the gooey sweet, neither care much for sweets. It isn’t about eating the marshmallow anyway, it is about roasting it to perfection.  Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don’t.  Fun either way.

With plans to leave early enough on Friday morning to get to Grants Pass by noon, we were all dumped and ready to roll when Mo noticed the right rear tire was flat.  Oh no…Not again?!?  This truly WAS one of the 2013 tires. We pulled down to the overlook parking area, called Brookings Les Schwab, and waited for them to come and air up the tire so we could get to town for a tire change. 

The best part of this story is yet to come.  The previous night I had received a call from my realtor saying that she may be calling me with an offer for the Klamath house in the morning.  I told her we would be without telephone for a few hours as we traveled back home and she was a bit concerned about it.  At 9:30, while we were still at Les Schwab, she called with a very good offer!  I needed to receive 15 fax pages, sign then and fax them back.

Brookings is a small town, with not much around for office stores, (remember Judy’s story about finding a place to fax her papers!).  Then my realtor suggested that I go talk to the office people inside Les Schwab.  Sure enough, they let me receive the fax, and fax everything back, all for no charge, just a “Thanks for being a Les Schwab customer”.

Another great part to this story is that it wasn’t the tire, it was the valve stem.  That always seems to be the problem.  They fixed the tire, we put the new one on in its place, and the bill for all that work, including coming out to the park to air us up was $10.50.  Amazing how things work out.

We left for home at 11:30, a bit late, but in time to stop at an icon restaurant along Highway 199 in Gasquet called She She’s.  We have driven by here a bazillion times and never stopped, but today just seemed like a day to celebrate.  Big thick blackberry milkshake, a great burger and home made fries, shared between us, was perfect for the brilliant sunshiny hot and windy day along the Smith River toward home.