Going On The Road with Monte & Rose

June 8, 2013

Cape Blanco State Park

Port Orford, OR

Today was our day off and it felt good to sleep in until almost 9am.

After a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast,

we headed out to the Sixes Grange to their Saturday flea market.

The Grange is divided into two sections.

One section houses the flea market and Wednesday night Bingo.

The other section is a consignment shop.

We didn’t see anything we couldn’t live without in either section.

The consignment shop had really cute hand knitted hats but I already have three wool hats so it wouldn’t have been practical to buy another one.

Continuing on, we stopped off at the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market in Port Orford.

It wasn’t anything like I had pictured in my head. I thought there would be local farmers selling fresh vegetables.

There were only a handful of vendors and only one of them had vegetables.

I bought some lettuce and broccoli rabe. We also bought a big slab of bacon. It doesn’t have any preservatives so I guess we had better use it up fast.

There was a potter showing a group of children how to use the wheel. And there was fresh caught fish available at another booth.

We had an appointment to meet with Greg, the ranger in charge of the lighthouse program. His duties also include the Junior Ranger Program at Humbug State Park.

We still had plenty of time to kill before our appointment so we stopped at an overlook to take some pictures.

We also stopped at Arizona Beach.

Someone had mentioned there was a flea market in a town just south of Humbug State Park so we decided to look for it. NO luck. Monte stopped in at a market to ask where the flea market was and was informed that we had already passed it. HUH. Where?

Anyway, the cashier told Monte that seven miles down the road in Gold Beach there is a flea market sponsored by Hospice that is held only a couple of times a year. It was being held today.

It was getting close to our appointment time but we figured we could take a quick peek.

IT WAS HUGE. I was relying on Monte to take some pictures but he got caught up looking in the tools and electronics section and didn’t take any.

I found a lot of cute things I would have grabbed up if I were still living in a stick and bricks house. So I ended up just buying a couple of paperback books.

Monte found quite a few cables and assorted items. We were lucky to get out of there with only spending $15.

We called Greg to let him know we were running a little late and arrived at Humbug at 2pm.

Greg offered us another position for the months of July and August in his Junior Ranger Program. He gave us an overview of the program and we left off that we would let him know tomorrow if we would like to accept the position.

On our return trip through Port Orford we turned off on a road after seeing a sign for the Wetlands Interpretive Walk.

The boardwalk signs show how wetlands filter water flowing off US Highway 101 before it flows into nearby lakes.

Good thing no one else was there because there is only enough room for one car at the start of the boardwalk.

A mile or so before the turnoff for Cape Blanco we noticed a sign for a fish hatchery and decided to check it out.

The following information was taken from the website, enjoyportorford.com

The hatchery was built in 1968 and expanded in 1971. Owned and operated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, it produces salmon and steelhead smolts that return as spawning adultsm which supplement natural populations and contribute to sport and commercial fishing on the south coast.

Hatchery Production: Fall Chinook Salmon - The largest program is the annual production of fall Chinook salmon smolts: 325,000 smolts for Elk River, 150,000 smolts for Chetco River, and smaller numbers of smolts as needed for other south coast streams. The smolts are released when they are about nine months old.

Winter Steelhead: They also rear 50,000 winter steelhead smolts annually for the Chetco River. Smolts are just over one year old when they are released in April each year.

Rainbow Trout: A newcomer to Elk River Hatchery is the production of rainbow trout - 700 trout for the annual lunkers program, which is a special project to release large trout (3-6 pounds each) into Floras Lake, Garrison Lake and Libby Pond.

An important salmon habitat and fishing stream, Sixes River is one of Oregon's most pristine rivers.
It is home to late run Chinook Salmon, with fishing season beginning after the first heavy rains of fall, closing at year end. Most years, rain begins mid to late October, with a few years pushing into November. Returning fish naturally spawn in the Sixes, since there are no hatcheries.

Fishing on the Sixes is on the bank or by drift boat, with most boats taking out at Sixes Store or Sixes Day Use in the heart of Cape Blanco State Park.
Traces of gold still wash down the stream, and there are still a few miners around. Historically, gold was mined in the black sands of Cape Blanco, both on the Sixes and the Elk, since the cape is flanked by both.