Touring America 2023

Good start for the weekend..! Another day of sunshine...most of it anyway. It started out looking rather dreary but cleared up around 10AM and was nice most of the day. Mid 70s but with a little breeze. Without the wind it would have been a perfect day. We started out with an extremely low tide this morning so we decided to try some clamming. What a fun day it was! We walked from the coach to the pier and dug through the sand and muck looking for some clams. We were rewarded with four of the critters along with one very upset crab about 6 1/2" across. Josh found a hermit crab so he will visit with us for a couple of days until we are ready to leave. We finished off the day with the campground owners. They had everyone in the park over for s'mores and some evening entertainment provided by a world renowned American Indian flute player.

We decided to do some clamming this morning. The low tide was extreme, exposing much of Tillamook Bay. This was taken from the pier towards our coach as Josh and Jasmine were making their way to the clam beds.

You can see how low the tide really was. That's the pier and the boathouse.

We found several nice sized clams. These are called Heart Clams or Cockles. They can be steamed or fried. Some like them ground into fritters. Their shells are really hard. Clamming is easy, as you simply dig in the soft sand and pull them out. These guys are quick though, as they can move about a foot in a few seconds. We needed to boil them for a couple minutes to open them up as they are tightly closed. Once open, the meat can be breaded and fried in Canola or Olive Oil.

Once fried, they are served with rice and either red cocktail sauce or tarter sauce depending on your tastes.  They were good with no fishy aftertaste. Debi made homemade cocktail sauce.

A short walk to the docks to watch as a fishing trawler arrived with it's day's bounty. These guys went out at 5:30AM and returned around 4PM with their load of crabs. Here they use an electric hoist to move the crabs to the dock.

Once on the docks, the crabs are off loaded into large plastic tubs where they will be cleaned, counted and tagged to be sent to markets. Many of the crabs are sent live so their claws have to be secured so they do not fight with each other. Each one of these tubs hold about 1000 crabs.

Later this afternoon, we were excited to see this guy cruising the campground. As we watched, another beautiful bird, assuming his mate,  joined him and they circled for about 15 minutes before flying off towards the mountains.

We love to see the Bald Eagles in flight. They are so graceful and fly so effortlessly. The seagulls sure put up a racket when one or more comes near their territory. This one returned about 8PM and circled for about 10 minutes before diving for a fish. He was successful and flew off towards Rockaway Beach.