June 21 – Mill Hotel & Casino, Coos Bay OR 97459

Had a better sleep, in fact so good we missed out on the Coffee and Pastries between 7.00 and 8.30 this morning - oh well another day tomorrow.  Cereal and fresh berries is much healthier anyway!

We do catch the Opening Ceremonies though and Kim checks out the Tire Safety Tips for Protecting Your Investment Seminar at 10am, followed by the How to get Better Mileage & Engine Reliability but he only stayed here a few minutes as it was all about electronics and replacing your dash. So he joins me in the Cascadia Subduction Zone which is all about earthquakes in this area which is particularly prone to the nasty ones, ie the sort that moves the plate from out in the sea to in under the land.  The 2011 Christchurch quakes features in his presentation - we are famous!

We get outside and the sun is shining (yay!) and it is time to partake of the Icecream Social, this is special locally produced Umpqua icecream, French Vanilla by the taste, served with frozen strawberries.  I am coming back again for more tomorrow but will give the berries a miss and go solo with the icecream.  No queues for this, they had bowls of icecream ready to go.

We check out the vendors and purchase some new outdoor step rugs and some special silicone polish for the coach – they didn’t have the awesome stuff we got at the last rally but this new type seems pretty good too.

We head back home and I think it will be a good time to go over and use the RV Park showers (I need to wash my hair properly, you know with multiple  rinses).  The showers are open to the FMCA campers too, all several hundred of us!  I thought I would be waiting in a queue forever but when I get there all but one shower was free so I luxuriated - and they were very nice clean modern bathrooms too.

Sat outside in the sun for a half hour reading but was rudely brought back to the present when my kindle dropped on my lap!  Maybe last night was not a good a sleep as I thought.

Joy and Gary come up for an early HH.  They had selected the first sitting for dinner so need to be there for 4.30pm, we chose the late sitting and ours starts at 6.15pm.

 

We catch a trolley over together and go check out the special way the salmon is cooked for those of us who chose salmon tonight.  They open the fish out, thread it onto timber rods and secure it with sticks and cantilever it over a fire pit burning with fragrant wood.  What you see here is enough salmon for one quarter of the salmon meals tonight.  Hope there’s enough for everyone else!

Basted with huckleberry - smelt delicious

The full menu is:  Traditional Salmon (cooked at the Fire Pit)

or

Chicken with Huckleberry Buerre Blanc with Huckleberry & Pickled Red Onion Relish

Served with Tossed Green Salads, Wild Rice with Hazelnuts and Cranberries, Fry Bread with Huckleberry Butter.  Followed by Berry Cobbler and Whipped Cream.

Fry Bread with Huckleberry Butter - yum.  Salad is health though!

Some Oregon trivia for you:

Oregon contains more than 5,900 registered campsites along with 230 state parks and 13 national forests.  There are more than 6,000 lakes and 112,000 miles of rivers and streams.

Nearly half of Oregon’s total area is forested – close to 30 million acres.

There are currently 17 ghost towns in Oregon.

The pear is Oregon’s state fruit, ranking as the top selling tree fruit crop.

The Oregon hazelnut is the state’s official nut and Oregon grows 99% of the entire US commercial crop.

There are more than 700 vineyards planted on about 13,700 acres. Oregon produces more than 40 different varietals of wine grapes.

The population of Oregon is only 3.4 million, with 1.5 million living in the Portland area.  Oregon is the 10^th largest state in the union.