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Depoe Bay, a Foggy Town on the Oregon Coast

It’s dang chilly here. At this point, we’ve been here almost three weeks, and we’ve driven up and down this stretch of coast, plus gone over the coastal range to the valley to Corvallis and to Salem for various things like doors, fencing, plywood, hardware, and more, and it’s always 20 to 40 degrees cooler in Depoe Bay than in the Willamette Valley. I even think it’s cooler here than in other coastal cities, Newport south of us and Lincoln City north of us. The temperatures range from about 50 degrees overnight to 60 degrees during the day. It hit 68 degrees as I’m writing, and that was about the warmest it’s been out here.


A foggy evening on the Depoe Bay oceanfront

It was really a beautiful day today after the fog burned off, and when it’s sunny and warm(ish) we tend to want to sit in the sun and just soak it in—we don’t get a lot done. But there are plenty of cool foggy days, so we are indeed getting a lot done around the new homestead here.

We’ve been to many Habitat for Humanity Resource/Reuse centers, plus other hardware and lumber places, Goodwill and other thrift stores, and a couple of grocery stores as well. I know where to find things on the coast and surrounding areas by now. We’ve been working on the yard, which has a lot of stones and ferns, both of which are hard to remove from where they have settled in. But there are clear spaces where there weren’t before, which is good. Although the temperate rain forest is always encroaching. I remember when I learned there were temperate rain forests in the United States, and I thought that was fascinating. Who knew I’d be camping in the midst of one this summer.


Our first meal with a table (now the sewing table),
a great find at the Habitat for Humanity in Corvallis

Last week we really went all in on the yard. Cy rented a wood chipper, and we hauled all the brush that the previous owner had piled up/let pile up, and Cy figured we wound up with about 10 cubic yards of wood chips. Those got spread on the area that will be fenced in for Chloe the dog in the backyard. That area needed a lot of work—we’ll call it a midden, but it really should be called is a dump. They dumped a LOT of garbage back there. And as we got to the bottom of some of the brush piles, we found an old flat screen tv and a bin full of gallons of used motor oil. Lovely. Fortunately the dump is not too far away.

The big brush pile next to
the Backyard Buddha has
now been cleared away!

We have the camper set up just a few steps from Cyrus and Amanda’s front door, and I should explain at this point that we went a little off the Oregon Trail itself the last few days, because the actual Oregon Trail ended in Oregon City, up near Portland and Mt. Hood, but Cyrus and his girlfriend Amanda bought a house in Depoe Bay last month, so we’re here for awhile helping with some renovations at the new place.


Cy and Amanda’s new house in Depoe Bay, 
with our camper parked close by.

Depoe Bay is a nice little town, with the smallest harbor (they claim) in the world. It is small, and it’s also only a couple of blocks from the house, so we’ve walked down there, and on down into the town, which is a touristy place that is also a major whale watching center. We haven’t seen any whales yet on this trip, but the first night we were here we were on the top floor of a restaurant near the harbor and saw about a half dozen river otters having a grand time in the water, as well as sneaking around a dock where there was a barrel of fish offal that they were helping themselves to. We also saw some harbor seals sunning on the rocks under the Depoe Bay bridge. I hope the sun was warming them up in this chilly town—but I guess seals are fairly used to cold weather and cold water.


Walking down to the world’s smallest harbor

We had to go to Salem on the Fourth of July to pick up some doors, and we stopped on the way at the nearby town of Dallas, Oregon, for some chain link fence and hardware that Cy found on Craigslist. That was quite an adventure; the place we were looking for turned out to be a gated compound with a huge house and many outbuildings, including a large greenhouse, garages, maybe a small subsidiary house, and who knows what else. The man selling the fencing was a Romanian fellow who Cy discovered is an evangelist; he also keeps bees and sells honey. But in any event he sold Cy the amount of fence he needed, along with all the hardware to extend the fence in the backyard for Chloe the dog to enjoy whenever she wants, and he (the Romanian) also gave Cy diagrams and advice on how to set the fence posts and attach the length of fencing to them. A good deal all around, and an interesting adventure. Mike and Chloe and I walked around the property, and it just went on and on into the woods.


A fenced space for Chloe in the backyard,
looking better every day, with a lot of hard work

After we got the fencing and then the doors in Salem, we went to visit the Kerby-Simon household, where we had a Fourth of July feast that couldn’t be beat. My sister Amy and niece Jesse grilled sausages and salmon and potatoes and corn on the cob, and we had honeydew melon and guacamole and chips, with chocolate muffins and Mountain Blackberry Revel ice cream for dessert. It was all delicious, and a nice visit as well. Amanda had to work at Pelican Brewery on Siletz Bay in south Lincoln City. Lincoln City is a very long town, stretching along the coast for miles. It was pretty busy at the restaurant because there was a drone show (instead of fireworks) over the bay right alongside the brewery when it got dark.

We got home just as dark was falling, and arrived at the same time as Amanda. We decided not to go see the drones but to stay home and watch a movie on the new projector and screen that Jesse gave Cyrus while we were in Salem—it was taking up space in their storage space, and Cy will put it to good use. We’ve already watched The French Connection on it, and they have plans to make the spare room a theatre room as well as a guest room, so the projector will be great for that.

And, just to stop on a high note, one day it was clear and sunny at sunset, and we went down to a small, rocky park on the north end of town to see a beautiful sunset over the Pacific Ocean!


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