YAQUINA BAY LIGHTHOUSE AND OLD TOWN NEWPORT

Old town Newport is called Bay Front. Remnants remain of  old rotting docks if you look hard.  A few old buildings remain to remind you of its much busier and more colorful past.  A working dock, still,  but gussied up for tourists such as we to enjoy dockside restaurants,  art galleries, quaint shops and souvenir places.  Multiple murals or bright paint cover up the old warehouse look of the place and its kitschy and fun.
We watched this very modern shrimper come in with the tasty morsels packed in ice and mechanically moved dockside.
Workers then loaded them into a refrigerated truck.
Crab rings stacked around town gave evidence that crab is still big business here. Dungeness. We spotted a crabber advertising live crabs for sale.
We walked down the ramp to buy one,  but no crabs.  Only a phone number for their other boat. Crabbing is slow right now. They were available in the store, but we forgot to stop and pick one up before we returned to the motor home.
A story board about Mo’s restaurants is on the street. Mo was a hard-working, big-hearted, chain-smoking woman,  who opened a seafood restaurant of some renown. There are now six of them up and down the coast.  We stopped in for delicious  bowl of chowder. A woman once crashed into her restaurant with her car. Mo simply covered it up with a working garage door and turned it into a sidewalk cafe in summer.
I swear this batch of seals was trained to amuse us, they posed, barked, kissed, cuddled and basked for everyone on their own little dock; methinks, waiting to be thrown a morsel of some type.

A walk around this part of town is a must if you visit. The place is full of murals. It was hard to pick a favorite.
We moved on to the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse which is the smallest lighthouse on the coast. It was one of only four built of wood with the house and the lighthouse the same structure.
Poised on a bluff on Yaquina Bay overlooking  the Yaquina River as it dumps into the ocean, the small light- 8 to 10 mile range- was invisible to ships approaching from the north. It was commissioned, built and put into service for only three years, from 1871 to 1873. It was replaced by the Yaquina Head Lighthouse we visited yesterday which has a bigger light with a 21 mile range.
The inside of this two-story “house” is charming . The Charles Pierce family of nine that lived here had to be in tight quarters even so. Cooking on a wood stove, pumping water up from rainwater in a cistern. It has four bedrooms and no indoor plumbing.
The furnishings are not original, but indicative of the times.  The chamber pot, the rope bedstead. Trunks held clothing and linens. People spent more time outside than they do now. I’ve seen a lot of lighthouses, many on the East Coast last year, but this is my favorite. I’m so thankful that the citizens of Newport rose up and protested its demolition and formed a historical and preservation society. It had several uses before it fell into disrepair. Saved in 1946, it didn’t get restored until 1976. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places. What a treasure.

AVERY ISLAND'S RICHES

 Edmund McIlhenny settled on Avery Island in the late 1800;s  and discovered a pillar of salt. It was a natural formation as deep as Mt. Everest is tall. However, a friend gave him a handful of peppers from South America. He planted them and decided to make a sauce. The result? Tabasco Sauce, a unique hot sauce no one has duplicated. It takes so little to flavor food I was amazed that 700,000 bottles a day go through the McIlhenny Plant on Avery Island, which is still operated by Edmund's decendants.

The process is pretty simple. The peppers at the peak of ripeness are ground with local salt and aged in barrels. The barrels have holes drilled in the top, covered with a thick layer of salt, and the fermentation process takes about 3 years. When its removed, the mixture is stirred for 28 days with vinegar before bottling.

One grandson,  E.A. McIlhenny, a botanist, saved egrets from extinction. The birds were slaughtered by the millions by hat making hunters for their beautiful feathers. His breeding grounds today, used by egrets and herons, attracts 10,000 birds to the nesting platforms he built for them. The bird preserve and botanical garden E.A. McIlhenny built,  hauls in tons of twigs for the birds nesting materials each year since their isn't enough natural growth to support them on the island.

The egrets recognize there is not enough food on the island to support them and their babies so they do not eat any food from the island. They range far and wide over the bayous to feed leaving the island food for the weaker hatchlings.

The Jungle Garden and bird sanctuary is open all year for tourists. Over 1,000 different specimens of camellias, many bamboos, shrubs, and plants from all over the world are kept here. Old natural oaks dominate the scene along with man made lagoons that attract much wildlife. Beauty is the result.

  

After leaving the island, we drove to Del Cambre, the jumbo shrimp capital of the United States. The shrimpers gather here at the peak of shrimp season by the hundreds. Their festival is held in August.

WANDERING BAYOU LAFORCHE

Living in small towns has its benefits and its difficulties. Raceland had no laundromat nor liquor store. People here don’t drink much except beer. Jim is a good planner and got on the internet and found where the last crossing over the Bayou was located, the drawbridge above. The internet also disclosed a Washateria in Golden Meadow, but no liquor store to be found. It was a nice drive along the Bayou Lafourche.

Both sides of the Bayou were lined with fishing rigs like the shrimp boat above, fancier than the smaller boat below. They are equipped with all kinds of electronic equipment and mechanical devices. A shrimp doesn’t have a chance. You see nets in the smallest “ponds” of shallow water. One guy told me he didn’t care whether he ever ate another shrimp. He just can’t get excited about them anymore. My impression was they are like water cockroaches. Kind of makes you wish your back yard were so infested.

The boat below brings in oysters. Looks like he has lunch everyday on board.

We found our Washateria and got our haircuts at Karen Morales shop, the only one in town. She said for entertainment, people here go to Houma events and the Casino. One of her customers was waxing enthusiastic over a “salt shower”, something I’d never heard of. You lie on a bed of salt and a hot steaming spray melts the salt and apparently makes you feel wonderful. Karen lamented the fact her kids don’t speak French and she worries that the cajun language is disappearing. Even her French is lacking, she claimed. I remember Charles Kuralt, the television personality, listening to a Cajun man voice the same worry over thirty years ago, but Cajun is still going strong, and I”m grateful.

We parked along the Bayou for the night and saw this little boat with a long history.

How innovative that the owner installed a regular old well pump to bail water. The boat is in need of some tender loving care. I hope it gets it.

Jim uses the internet so often to plan where we go, you know if the place your headed is open or not, what roads to avoid, etc. It makes me wonder how people got along without it on the road?