The Megler bridge in Astoria that connects Oregon with Washington

It was a rather gloomy day when we set out for yet another trip to the coast last Monday.
Fall, literary, is starting to creep in, and the marine layer that covered the beaches had made it's way all the way into the Willamette valley.
Of course I wasn't complaining, I love those grey days!
This time we were on a quest to check out the northern most part of the coast from about Cannon Beach to Astoria and we started out on the US 47 all the way north to Claskenie on the Columbia River.

                                   

After driving through miles of pretty, hilly farmlands you enter the Clatsop State Forest where the road snakes its way slowly over some over the higher hills and passes ..
We took a break for some coffee, overlooking the forests and despite the cloudy day you could see forever.
After a while we reached Clatskanie where we started to follow the river towards the coast ..

There's not many places you can actually see the river, but there's this view from Bradley State Scenic Viewpoint. The state of Washington is on the left, the state of Oregon on the right, divided by the Columbia River!



On arrival at Astoria we checked out the boardwalk along the waterfront where you have a great view of the Merger bridge and the container-ships that are waiting on the tide to be piloted out to sea.
They have to navigate the infamous Columbia Bar, frequently called the Graveyard of the Pacific, which is a system of bars and shoals at the mouth of the Columbia River spanning the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington. It is known as one of the most dangerous bar crossings in the world.

        

We decided to have an early lunch at Mo's, the famous 75-year-old family-owned restaurant that specializes in Seafood and Clam Chowder.

We had a window view, it was a little too nippy to sit outside, and enjoyed a bowl of their delicious clam chowder and a dish of blackened shrimp.
I couldn't resist an oyster shooter but was very disappointed in discovering it didn't contain a drop of alcohol!

Bottoms up!

Thus reinforced we checked out two campgrounds situated just out of town which ofcourse was one of the reasons for our trip north.
One, the Lewis & Clark Golf (!) and RV Park, turned out to be rather decent with roomy, grassy sites and actual views of the golf course, so yeah .. a contender for future stays.
We left Astoria behind us and took the US 101 south to the town of Seaside, drove by several campgrounds that I'd already nixed due to bad reviews or unsuitability for one reason or another, until we came upon the Circle Creek RV Park just south of Seaside.

This one got our stamp of approval as well, nice large sites with actual trees (an oddity here on the coast) and a creek running around it's parameters.



Driving ever farther south we checked out Sea Ranch RV Park in Cannon Beach, which unfortunately turned out to be no good with very short and narrow sites, there's just no way we can get in there.
Unfortunate because look, this is Cannon Beach:

Gorgious Cannon Beach

We parked and walked through town for a little while. (Also unfortunately is the fact that in high season this place is a zoo!)

But oh, that beach!

                                                   

                                 

By now we had enough fresh ocean  breeze in our longs to last us for a while, although the marine layer had cleared up and it had been a quite beautiful sunny day, and we decided to head back home.
On our way to Tillamook, where we were going to take the US 6 inland, we unexpectedly passed two very small campgrounds at Rockaway Beach that weren't on my 'list', since on paper they looked to be not much more than fish-camps.
One of them, the no frills Jetty Fishery Marina and RV Park actually turned out to be rather nice:

Located on the waters of the Nehalem Bay, less than 10 feet to tide pools, authentic cabled docks and sandy beaches and just a 2 minute boat ride across the Nehalem Bay you’ll find yourself on the deserted beaches of the Nehalem Bay State Park.
Wow, just what I was looking for!

But of course there's a caveat .. there's no sewer hook-up ..
Which means we have to either empty our tank somewhere else twice a week or find a company that comes by every week or so to pump us out (for a fee).
I'll look into it, but this might be a problem, especially since this place is rather rural .. oh, well .. always something.

OK, since Doug and Brenda (our 'bosses') were out of town for 2 weeks this time around, we had a little more free time on our hands than usual, so we went for a second outing this week .. yeah, wow!
I'd found an event in Canby, only about 20 minutes away from us, on the 'other' side of the Willamette Valley.
It's an area we have not yet been since we arrived here, so when I read about their yearly Dahlia Fall Festival I was eager to check it out.
We almost didn't though because, due to the wildfires in Northern Oregon of lately, we woke up to this:

An eerie sunrise, followed by a weird yellow glow in the sky and bad air quality made us hesitate to go out, but we decided to give it try. We could always go back ..
Upon arriving in Canby we first had coffee at Gwynn's Coffeehouse:

With some pastries of course:

After which we drove to Swan Island Dahlias, just out of town:



Each August & September this farm with it's 40 acres of beautiful dahlias in more than 370 varieties open for the public to stroll through.



Bouquets are available for purchase and you can order your favorite dahlias for delivery and planting in the spring.
There's a gift shop full of other treasures you may want to take home.

                     

                     

On weekends, classes ranging from painting to gardening to photoshoots to flower arranging to body care products to yoga are offered and musicians perform on Saturdays and Sundays from 12-4 p.m.

Due to Covid the event was cancelled for 2 years in a row but this year they were back in business, and we enjoyed walking through the fields seeing the amazing variety in a rainbow of colors of these well loved old-fashioned flowers that are all 'in-vogue' again!



For such beautiful, elegant flowers, the dahlias have some pretty funny and quirky names.

How about 'Awe Shucks', 'Bed Head' (this one has wild, carefree petals), 'Hokey Pokey', 'Sugar Daddy',
'Pooh', 'Blah Blah Blah' (a pretty interesting looking dahlia, despite it’s name) and even one named after my Mom 'Nettie'!

 

How about this one .. I'd call it 'Perfection' :

Or this one .. Flowerchild?

And with that I'll end this post! Until next time!

 

Summer is slowly coming to an end here in the Willamette Hills .. very slowly ..
Flowers are 'over their top' but the vineyards are still very green, probably due to the very late start of the summer.

It's hard to remember how cold and rainy and late the Spring was this year when we're (still) in the 90's (30's C) right now!

                                                                           

But the mornings are definitely having a hint of crispiness in them and it looks like we finally might have a cooler week coming up in the forecast.
Except for the coming weekend .. 98!!! on Saturday! Yikes!

          

Labor Day was very warm as well, but we went for a potluck-BBQ get-together to Sheridan, about 45 minutes away from us toward the coast, where it is usually about 10 degrees cooler, and were the weather turned out to be just perfect!
So, Labor Day .. like Snoopy says, get your grill on .. which we did:

                                          

Serena, our land-lady, cooked us some perfect burgers on the Traeger, while the rest of us were 'shooting the breeze' ..

As usual I didn't make any more pictures, but we had a great day with, also as usual at a potluck, loads of food .. I'd made an overnight salad and a blueberry-peach cobbler, someone brought a terrific potato salad and besides all the hamburger fixings there was corn-on-the-cob, watermelon and some very good cookies!

Talking about food, these were the dishes of this week's meal-plan 'Work those thighs' (as in: chicken-thighs) of the Washington post I wrote about last week.
Momo Yakitori With Spicy Smashed Cukes and Chicken Schnitzel With German Potato Salad:

There was a third dish, but due to the long weekend it didn't quite fit in our schedule so I'll save it (Hot Chicken Lettuce Wraps) for another time. Lord knows I (somehow?) have enough chicken ..

It looks like my vegetable garden is really not going to grow anything more than it has done so far, which is pathetically little ..



I grew a few handfuls of strawberries, a little more wax-beans and pole beans, one ear of corn, one green bell-pepper and one hot pepper, a couple of teeny, tiny carrots, two zucchinis and three cherry tomatoes .. so far.

As I mentioned before in Doug's yard we didn't have many Blueberries this year but we had some more success with the red and yellow Raspberries and the blackberries on the edge of the orchard were actually better and bigger than last year!

 

Well, I cannot come up with much else for this week, I'm still a little bit in that summer-funk, but it's September now, so things are starting to look up.
The days are getting shorter and there are some fall festivities in the near future.
Fall is just around the corner!

Here's a sliver of a moon from a week or so ago, which made me think of a dutch Sinterklaas-song ('zie de maan schijnt door de bomen') which event takes place in December

... only 3 months away!

 Look at that handsome fella!

This picture was made at Abbey Road Farm, a huge farm in the pretty country-side around Carlton, where we went last Sunday when they had their 'Silobration Days' (a play on the big old grain silos at the property) .

We had the Newberg Summer festival on our radar for the weekend and actually went out on Saturday morning for coffee in town and walked over to the park where it took place, only to find just a handful of booths, a little entertainment in the form of some jugglers and various kiddie-games to be played.
Not really what we had hoped to find, so after a walk around the parameter we bailed.



The next morning while googling around for something better to do I found this event . It so happened to be a place I already wanted to check out somewhere in the future so we gave it a try.
Much better!

There were food trucks, live music, a small classic car cruise in, wine, beer, cocktails and a huge barn full of vendors of all sorts of arts and crafts and local products.



   

That fuzziness in the last picture there is due to misters. Although not too hot of a day, it did keep the whole area quite some cooler!

After strolling through the barn for a while we bought a nice glass of Abbey Road Farm Pinot Gris (yes, of course they make their own wine, this is the Willamette Valley!), ordered a delicious steak and cheese sub at the food truck and sat down in front of the band for a while to eat, enjoy the music and look out over the beautiful rolling hills and vineyards.

(Btw, James took a picture of me in that frame as well, but I don't look half as good as he does .. oh well .. it does show you how it was set up though, I thought it was quite funny!)

                                   

Let's see, what else is there to talk about .. birds maybe?
I still have my usual culprits, who are eating me out of house and home, at my feeders and walking around the neighborhood there's always this gorgeous little falcon, a Kestrel to be precise, sitting on 'his' (her?) wire. Giving me 'the eye' ..

Here's a fun little tidbit I bet not many people know about (most) birds of prey:
"Unlike humans, birds can see ultraviolet light. This enables kestrels to make out the trails of urine that voles, a common prey mammal, leave as they run along the ground. Like neon diner signs, these bright paths may highlight the way to a meal"
Nature .. it never fails to amaze me!

One of my other heavily treed walking paths leads me down into a dip in the road, and over a little creek with large patches of Impatiens (Jewelweed/Touch-me-not) growing on both sides.
Although a pretty sight all by themselves, I noticed something even prettier .. several hummingbirds flitting among the flowers!

Like I said, nature .. it's my kryptonite, it never fails to make my day!
Actually, look what I dug up to 'see' even more of it ..

                             

These are tiny little field cameras, the left one is for inside use and the one on the right for outside.
James had bought them to keep an eye on the job-site while he was building the house in Idaho, so nobody could walk away with any tools or material without him knowing.
Since we have a problem lately with (bird) seed disappearing from our storage bay, he remembered having them stored away somewhere so we're going to install one in the bay to see who's guilty of this crime. (I'm also going to move the seeds into plastic storage boxes but just for fun I want to know).
The outside one I'd like to place facing the orchard around the RV, it will be fun to see who 'passes us in the night' ..

Here's another fun thing:

It's a meal-plan by the Washington Post (send by e-mail) meant for people like me who are a little fed up with coming up with yet another meal-idea, and the planning, and the shopping and the ... you get what I mean. 
Week one of this 12-week series was called: 'Sauce Theory.'
All the meals were made with the same basic (but super-delicious) tomato sauce, which you made on a Sunday (or whenever you wanted the week to start) and used up through the rest of the week in 3 different recipes.
Which by the way is perfect for me, because 7 day plans are always leaving me with way too much food since we often have days that we're either out and about or eating with friends or just not very hungry.

This were the recipes: Spicy Shakshuka (a sort of breakfast for dinner with eggs), Dad’s Cod and Dijon Mashed Potatoes (I had no Cod but used Tilapia) and Simple Stove Top Ratatouille (with blue cheese instead of Feta) :

                                                                  

All of the meals were absolutely delicious, mainly because of that terrific home-made tomato sauce!
I can't wait to start next weeks recipes that will all feature chicken thighs, which happen to be our favorite chicken parts. If they're anything like this first week, it's going to be great!

Alright, that's all she wrote. Another sunny and warm summer week has gone by. We're in for a few very hot days again (90+F) but it looks like Labour Day weekend is actually going to be rather 'cool' with temps in the mid-eighties!

See you next week!