Fish n'Chips in Charleston

Finally we are back over on the Oregon Coast having a true summer coastal experience of moist, misty, cold, dense fog throughout the night and day accompanied by the mournful dirge of the foghorn. The good news is that we are only about 500 yards from our favorite fish n'chips place where we placed an order for halibut and chips not 15 minutes after we back up, pull forward, push back, tweak forward, twist backward, creep forward, curl backward, straighten forward, and inch back into our space at the Charleston Marina.


Since we would have had to move 5 days into the stay, we decided to move down to Bandon for 2 nights after we leave here, before ending our summer vacation in Brookings. After leaving Portland, we stayed 2 nights in Eugene at the Deerwood RV Park, where we stayed last year with Rose and Mike. While we were there, we managed to visit the farmers market where we loaded up on produce and baked goods. Then we drove over to Smith's Family Bookstore where we found more literary treasures to add to the growing pile in the rv. Smith's has so many books that they have given up putting them on shelves and all of the recent arrivals are just stacked in the aisles in front of the bookshelves where they should be if there weren't already numerous books on those shelves already. It is hard to envision how the new electronic books could replace the visual and tactile pleasure of searching through old books, finding a hidden volume on some subject that you previously hadn't given much thought about, and now finding that someone in the past had written something that stimulates your interest here in the present. For both of us, a used bookstore is more than just reading the books, it is all about the discovery of a book of which we were previously unaware. Here in Coos Bay we also found a used book store where Allan found several personal war accounts, of which he is so fond.


Yesterday however, we went down the coast to visit the sea lions and get some more ocean photos. We were lucky, the sun came out sporadically for about an hour. Today we went to the Coos Bay farmers market and found a man selling iris rhizomes. What luck. We had been looking for iris plants in nurseries and had not found very many to choose from. And how often do you see an iris rhizome seller at a farmers market? Well never, until today. It must be our lucky day, so we celebrated by going to our favorite fish n'chips place for lunch.