Rockaway Beach and Wheeler, OR

Friday 8/3/2012

This is Joe I'm helping Diane with this blog. Today we drove back south to check out Rockaway Beach which we just south of the Paradise Cove Resort.

We arrive and parked at the beach parking lot. We parked the car and walked up to the beach. The morning fog was hanging tight and so we were disappointed that we couldn't see that much. Kind of gloomy.

We decided to wander around the small town. This is a coffee and sweets shop.

As you can see the town is trying to have a beach fun look with it's colors and style. This shop sold home made bird houses and other artistic creations and antiques.

This is one big bird house.

While we wondered around, this huge group of probably 50 motorcycles roared by. Notice it is so foggy you can barely see the mountains behind the buildings.

I found this smokehouse advertising smoked fish, unfortunately it was closed. His loss, my savings.

There is a tourist train that runs from a town called Garibaldi, south of Rockaway Beach, to Wheeler, which is just a mile north of out resort.

While we were in Rockaway, the train rolled into town.

This is an original steam train. They pull an open air car you see here. Then a open air with a roof, the second car, then a closed car. It stops in town so the passengers can wonder around.

This is the vintage closed car.

We never found time to ride and being an old railroad man, I didn't have much interest.

I have to admit the locomotive was pretty cool.

We left foggy Rockaway and headed north past our RV park to the small town of Wheeler, which is just 1 mile from our park. This is a really small but cute clean town. It has a railroad station for the train.

This is across the street from the train station and is the nicest looking old historic building in town. It is the Hotel. It is a restored historic hotel.

There is a nice small cafe and other small shops on the ground floor and the hotel is up on the second floor.

We checked out the cafe/bakery. They serve homemade clam chowder on Fridays, and it was Friday, so we shared a bowl of it and Diane got an oatmeal and raisin cookie. The chowder was very good and we picked up two bowls to go for tomorrow's lunch.

Diane could resist the other shops.

This shops really intrigued her and she purchased a similar piece of art like this one.

This items caught her eye. If only we had places to put them.

We came to the Hotel entrance.

We decided to go in and check it out.

This is the very small lobby. There is a old fashioned phone that says pick this up for assistance. When you pick it up, the operator asks you what you need. We tell her we want to look around, they invite us upstairs.

So up we go.

The place is really nice and neat as a pin. This is the game and dining room. They were happy to show us around. We were very impressed.

All their bedrooms are different, this is just one example that was empty so they let us take a peak.

Now we head home to our park. This is a view of the river as we drive the mile home from Wheeler.

We arrive home.

We parked and I went down to the docks to throw in my crab pot (that I bought from our neighbor who had it next to his rig with a "For Sale" sign on it) to see what I can catch.

Diane came down later to see how I was doing.

I pull up my trap.

There are a few crabs inside but none legal size to keep. These youngsters check it out.

I shake out the small ones, back to grow up.

This little guy needs a push back into the sea.

This is a crab that is big enough to keep. It was caught by our neighbor who sold me the crap trap. He had 3 traps which is the most traps you can use at one time. He named it Harry because it has hair growing on it.