Gold Beach and Port Orford
After sitting in the motorhome yesterday all day, we were desperate to find something to do on another completely-overcast, ugly day. We drove north to Gold Beach, which is at the mouth of the Rogue River. We photographed the bridge over the Rogue River and the Mary D. Hume shipwreck. We were so desperate for something to do that we looked around the gift shop at the harbor.
We still had much of the afternoon left, so we drove another 25 miles north to Port Orford to look for something else to do. Port Orford was even smaller than Gold Beach, and we drove through it before we realized we were heading out of town. When we drove back through town, we found a viewpoint overlooking the harbor and watched the crab boats come in. What is unique about Port Orford is that the harbor is so small that there is no place for floating docks to tie up the boats. Instead, the crab boats pull up to a dock that has a 25' tall seawall with a parking lot on top. Cranes unload the crab traps, and then the boats move into position to be lifted out of the water. A large crane lowers cables that are attached to the boat, and the crane lifts the boat until the deck is even with the parking lot. The crew exits the boat and gets the trailer from the parking area. When the trailer arrives, the crane lowers the boat onto the waiting trailer. The trailer with the boat is then parked in a parking area until it will be used again. It took the crane operator and three workers about 8 minutes to get a boat out of the water, onto the trailer, and parked. It wasn't exciting, but it was very interesting to watch.
And that was our exciting day. We drove back to camp, had dinner, and watched a movie.
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