We had dinner at the Sportsman's Cannery in Winchester Bay. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, they have a barbecue where you can order lots of yummy seafood, including oysters that aren't breaded and deep fried (which is sometimes hard to come by).

This isn't a fancy restaurant...seating is strictly outside (which makes it inconvenient in inclement weather), and food is served on paper plates with plastic "silverware." But the food is very good!

This picture is of the oyster growing area in Winchester Bay:

Coos Bay

We drove down to Coos Bay to look at Bigfoot camper at Gibbs RV. They only had the 2500 series in stocks. While nice, they are much narrower than the 3000 series, and don't have as much insulation.

We noted that there were no MSRPs inside any of the rigs...just a dealer-prepared sheet that had only the price on it...unlike George Sutton RV in Eugene, which had MSRPs in each rig. In our opinion, and from personal experience, not having MSRPs inside each and every rig, is just an invitation for the dealer to play games with the price. We've seen instances where the so-called MSRP on a dealer-prepared sheet was $10,000 more than what we'd seen in an identical rig that had the MSRP in it. I'm not saying that that's what is happening at Gibbs, but we'd be reluctant to buy from a dealer who wasn't upfront about matters such as this from the very start.

Right now, George Sutton is #1 on our list of dealers from which to buy a camper when the time comes. Not only because they carry all 3 brands in which we are interested, but also because they are an Excel dealer, so we can have work done on it if the need arises.

We stopped in North Bend on our way back to purchase a new pair of binoculars from Big 5 Sporting Goods to replace the pair we'd run over (long story!). The ones we bought aren't quite as nice as the pair it replaces, but the price was right: an $80-something pair on sale for $30!

Umpqua Discovery Center

We drove into Reedsport and had lunch at The Schooner, next to the Umpqua Discovery Center. After lunch, we walked over to the Center to take a tour. In one section, "Pathways to Discovery -- Exploring Tidewater Country" (to the right as you walk in) there are many beautiful full-wall murals (click on the "Next" button at the bottom of the page to see more murals) painted by Peggy O'Neal (click on "Murals" to see more murals in the Umpqua Discovery Center). I highly recommend visiting the Center...the murals, all by themselves, are worth the price of admission!

Earl's Birthday

Today is Earl's 69th birthday. We drove into Reedsport to have dinner at The Landing Mexican Restaurant along the Umpqua River. We both had shrimp dishes which were excellent!

Winchester Bay

We left Timber Valley early, stopping by the office to pay the electric (we are now #78 on the list for a lot), and then heading to the Les Schwab Tire Center in Sutherlin to have one of the tires on the fifth wheel repaired (it's had a slow leak for some time now). Turns out there was a screw in it.

It took them only a little while to have the tire repaired, so we were on our way and arrived at Salmon Harbor RV Park in Winchester Bay, where we will spend the next month, before noon.

Miles driven: 69.7
GPS coordinates: N 43° 40.463' / W 124° 10.335'

New Window Awnings (Almost)

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed a van across the street with the name of Tom's RV Express on it. They were installing awnings on an RV, and since we'd been discussing having window awnings installed, Earl walked across the street to ask them to give us a quote. Because the price they quoted was within the range we were considering, we had them measure the windows and order the awnings.

Well, today they came out to install the awnings. Out of the 3 we'd ordered (one large one to cover the two windows on the big downstairs slide, one for the window in the opposite slide, and one for the bedroom window), we only had one installed! The big awning was *too* big because, apparently, the guy who measured the window wrote down only the size of the awning needed, but not also the size of the window, so when the size was given to the place where the awnings are made, they thought the size was the window size instead of the awning size. And the bedroom awning was the wrong color (doesn't the shipping department check before sending them out?).

Tom will have to reorder the other two awnings, but he said he'd come out to Winchester Bay (at no cost to us, of course), to install them.

Eugene

We decided to take a trip up to Eugene to do some shopping at Costco before heading out to the Coast on Thursday.

One of the campers we are interested in, the Bigfoot 30C1001, has a dealer in Eugene, George M. Sutton, so before heading to Costco, we stopped by to check out this camper, which they had in stock (I'd checked their inventory online). We were really impressed with this camper. Even though it doesn't have a slide and has smaller tanks than the other two brands in which we are interested, it's quite roomy inside and the quality is very good.

Sutton also carries the other two brands in which we're interested (the Eagle Cap 955 and the Host Rainier), plus they are also an Excel dealer, so they are #1 on our list of dealer from which to purchase a camper.

By the time we were through at Sutton, it was lunch time, so we had lunch at Burger King before shopping at Costco.

Smoke from the fires in California is making its way north to this part of Oregon. It's not thick enough to smell, but the view of the mountains has been obscured and in the afternoon when the sun starts getting low in the sky, it's been obscured enough that you can actually look at it.

This picture doesn't really do the sight justice since the sun's actual color is much redder!