Gold Beach, OR 5/29 - 30/00

Another short day today as we drove into Oregon and stopped at Gold Beach which is on the ocean about 40 miles North of the border. We are staying at Indian Creek Recreation Park.

Before we left Crescent City this morning I struck up a conversation with one of our neighbors in the RV park. The conversation got around to dungeness crabs and the fact that we had never eaten them. He told me another neighbor had just come back with four crabs and I should go over to see them. So I did and the people with the crabs were amazed that we had never tasted them. So she told me to come back in about 20 minutes after she the crabs were cooked and she would give us two of them. Not being one to turn down food, Susan and I went over and the neighbor showed us how to clean them and did give us two crabs as promised. We had them for dinner tonight and they were excellent. The meat is very much like lobster with the same sweet taste.(1 of 5)


The coast line on the way to Gold Beach was just spectacular. The picture on the left shows two natural bridges with water flowing through them. Do you know the difference between a natural bridge and an natural arch? (Answer below) The picture on the right was just a view that caught my eye. (2 of 5)

*A beach pano at a beautiful little state park on the way to Gold Beach.(3 of 5)*
Answer: A natural bridge is formed by the action of moving water creating the bridge, whereas a natural arch is created by the effects of wind, rain, and erosion.

The reason we stopped at Gold Beach was to take a jet-boat ride up the Rogue River. We had a choice of two trips, a 64 mile round trip that was all flatwater or a 104 mile round trip that went into class III whitewater. Of course we chose the longer trip so we could see more of the river and to experience going upstream in rapids. There were only 12 people on the trip so it was a small group.
The sky was clear when we woke up at 6:30 am, but by the time we got to the dock at 7:30 it had started to rain lightly. We left right on time at 8:00 and it was intermittently sunny and cloudy all day long. The air temperature was in the lower 60's, but the wind chill made it seem cooler. We stopped for lunch at a town of 100 people, spent an hour there and then headed back. We arrived back at the dock around 3:00.
It was a fun day. We saw Deer with fawns, Eagles, Merganser ducks with chicks, Turkey Vultures, Blue Herons, Cormorants, Hawks, fishermen catching Coho Salmon, etc. (4 of 5)

The left is the beginning of the trip and the right is one of the smaller rapids as we got further up the river. . (5 of 5)