Across The Fruited Plain: 7-25-2025 Garibaldi, OR Part I

In the Fun Facts Department:

1) The wing span of the Spruce Goose, wing tip-to-wing tip, is a football field plus 6 yards. Congress funded the project with $18M and Hughes threw in $7M out of his own pocket. Then, the war began to end, as it were, so Congress decided to discontinue the project. Hughes refused to quit, as he was wont to do. Congress told him that if the Spruce Goose didn’t fly, he had to pay back the $18M. Thus, on the day that the plane was scheduled for a taxi run, Ol’ Howard throttled up, took the plane 70 feet off the water for one mile. HA! He didn’t owe Congress a nickel! Later, many wanted to turn the Goose into firewood. They sold it back to Hughes for $167,000. Not a bad return on an investment. Hughes funded the maintenance of the Goose ever afterward.

2) The SR-71 was originally the RS-71, “Reconnaissance/Strike.” In a speech, LBJ screwed it up and called it the SR-71. Everybody scrambled to change its designation to save LBJ’s ass. They changed it to SR-71, “Strategic Reconnaissance.” Subsequently, Lockheed was required to make a change to 29,000 drawings and documents. Your tax dollars at work!

Tillamook Bay at sunset

We are set up in a rather nice little park called Tillamook Bay City RV Park. Tillamook Bay is up the road a mile or two and it’s big, cold and beautiful! On either side of the bay, there is a long jetty that keeps the fury of the Pacific at bay, so to speak. Our friends, Jim and Liz, who live half-time in Pahrump, come up to this area (Garibaldi) every Summer, bring the fishing boat out of hibernation and launch out to sea to catch fish and trap crabs. Yesterday, Jim and friend Steve took Rob out in the boat to drop 3 crab traps and do a bit of fishing. They sailed about five miles out past the jetties, all the while checking the depth of the water. They threw 3 crab traps containing, “bait,” into the water and marked the location, “way point,” with the GPS. Then they went out to a depth of 175 feet and did a little fishing for salmon. One big one snapped the line, stole Jim’s lure (which pissed him off) and got away. The boys were fishless. After a few hours, they sailed back to the crab traps. Altogether, the traps contained about 50 crabs and 24 were keepers. Some were thrown back because they were too small, others because they were females. (Yes, oddly, there are only two genders of crabs!) Jim was the admiral. He put Rob in charge of pulling up the second trap. Rob told me later that he had to pull it up from the depths of the Pacific, thousands of fathoms down! And then, he had to grasp these monsters! He told me afterwards with wide eyes, “I had to hold it and the crab stared at me with death in its eyes and it was trying to KILL me!” Jim was crying from laughing. Rob is a City Boy.

Rob and Jim out on the ocean

Jim's crab pot

Meanwhile, Liz and Kathy came over to Noobee to retrieve moi. We went for a fabulous lunch at JAndy’s Oyster Co. I was in Heaven with steamer clams and a glass of fine wine! Oh my God, they melted in my mouth. We also ordered up 3 dozen oysters to go for this evening’s appie. The, “medium,” size oysters were huge, the large oysters were enormous! The only other time I’ve seen oysters this big was in Key West. During happy hour, Jim shucked the mediums and some slipped into our mouths raw, others were baked like Rockefeller on the grill. But the large oysters were not having any part of being opened. It was nearly impossible, even for a pro like Jim. He put them on the grill for a few minutes until they gave up and popped open a little but they were still uncooked enough to be classified as, “raw.” Cut into bite-size pieces, each oyster provided about ten pieces! It was a completely orgasmic experience. After oysters, dinner was served: Buckets of steamed and chilled crab and barbecued butter clams piled with seasonings and cheese. God thinks I have been a good girl because I’m pretty sure this was Heaven. Heaven twice in one day. It just doesn’t get any better than this. In the end, there was so much divine seafood that this was 3 nights’ dinner for 6.