October in Northern Oregon

Can't believe it's 4 weeks today that we arrived in USA. Just over a couple of weeks left in our holiday.

Scott and Lucy have completed their first week in their new jobs - it was all introductory stuff with a lot of computer modules. They can't wait to get some proper patient care done. They normally work 4 day weeks - 9 hours per day with the week lengths varying. Tomorrow (Monday), Scott's at work but Lucy has a day off - she'll be child minding for part of it.

I can't quite recall everything we've done over the last week - if I don't take photos, I don't have any record to fall back on - but I do know that on Wednesday we took a drive downtown to hunt down a particular type of collagen that Jo wanted. We took Lucy's recommendation and paid a visit to Gerry Frank's "Konditorei" - a cake cafe basically - https://gerryfrankskonditorei.com/.

You'd think that by now we'd have wised up to US-sized portions, but, no - we both had a cake each:

Jo's carrot cake in particular was a real killer. We must remember to order only one of any food and share it.

I had checked the weather forecast earlier in the week to see when it would be best to take a trip to the coast and Thursday looked like the best day. The Pacific coastal climate is completely different from inland Oregon - and, incidentally, I've noticed that Salem is a fair bit cooler than Grants Pass. I've been monitoring the relative daily temperatures over the last month and I reckon Southern Oregon - the Applegate Valley - is easily 8 or 9 degrees F (5 C) warmer than this part of Northern Oregon at this time of year. That's not to say that it's cold here - far from it - it's 80 F (27 C) this weekend. The coast, however, is 20 F (7 C) cooler just now.

Anyway, Thursday it was for our coastal trip - first stop Lincoln City, which had a slightly run-down, end of season look about it, but we found a nice bakery, book shop and record store - and a lovely, huge beach:

Heading south towards Newport we made a couple of pit stops to take in the views at Rocky Creek and the Devil's Punchbowl (https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=park.profile&parkId=156). Here I am at the former and a beach view from the latter:

 

Newport, a town we last visited 10 years ago, also has huge beaches - I posted a few photos on Facebook. When we decided to loop back home we came across a problem with some extensive roadworks which Apple Maps didn't seem to know about - thankfully, Google Maps was more clued up and we made it back to NE Salem via an alternative route.

Scott and Lucy were both off on Friday and they took us to Independence for a spot of lunch in the local brewpub, quaintly called Gilgamesh. The menu explained where the name came from:

 Here we all are:

After lunch we took a stroll round the local park, leading down to the Willamette river. We had just missed the local Fresh Hop Festival which celebrates the harvest.

Yesterday (Saturday), Jo and I took a short drive to Willamette Mission State Park (https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=park.profile&parkId=99). We took a walk round one of the trails which, at one point, allowed us access in to one of the hop fields (which are numerous round here). As mentioned above we had just missed the harvest so all the tall bines were gone, leaving just their support frames:

We did find a random hop on the ground:

Here we are a bit later at the water's edge:

After leaving the park we drove over to Keizer Station mall and had a late lunch at Hops 'n' Drops:

Scott was on the barbecue again that evening - huge steaks - and they were delicious.

Today (Sunday) is a go-slow day for us - book reading, blogging, crocheting.