Highway 101 - Southern Oregon... (Day 5 - The day after Thanksgiving)

We woke up early this morning, before dark. We wanted to get all of our things packed up and ready to roll. Today was our last day in Charleston, OR and our last day on the coast. We were heading to River Bend Ranch in Days Creek OR to pick up our new St. Croix hair sheep, but not before one more sunrise on the coast...

We left the horse trailer parked in the large parking lot at the Inn and headed back up the Cape Arago Highway to Sunset Bay.

We stopped at Davey Jones Locker in Charleston to get coffee on the way and 'The Man-Child' grabbed us a sausage and egg biscuit. They were homemade and piping hot and yummy~!

Of course, it was STILL raining...
I was feeling like a wet dog. Pretty sure, I sort of smelled like one too with all this wet hair...

We took some time here at Sunset Bay to just goof around on the beach with nobody around, but us...

The tide was going out and then, it would come right back in and it was getting darker, instead of lighter. The 'Man-Child' told me a bigger storm was coming in, the way the ocean was acting.

The 'Man-Child' finally found me a sea shell. Well, a clam shell. It was the only shell we found through this whole trip! It washed in with the tide right before we left Sunset Bay. I felt special when he handed it to me and you could tell where a sea lion had taken a bite out of it, to eat the clam that was inside.

Swarms of seagulls were starting to fly in and land on the beach and in a protected part of the bay.

As I was getting a picture of them, it started to pour like no other. It was raining HARD~!

We tried to get one more pic, but it was futile. It was like someone was holding a fire hose over the top of us... Every ounce of clothing I brought with me was now officially soaking wet minus one shawl I threw in at the last moment for some strange reason.

It was time to run back to the pickup, wrap myself in my warm shawl and try and warm up~!

As we drove back toward Charleston, we decided to turn and make a quick trip to Bastendorf Beach. The wind was howling and it was still raining hard and the waves were just crashing over the south jetty and into the cliffs at the Coos Head U.S. Coast Guard lookout.  Some of the waves looked higher than we were tall  heading for Charleston harbor.  I'm sure they've seen worse storms, but for me it was another personality of the Pacific Ocean to experience.

As we came back into Charleston, I had the 'Man-Child' circle close to the East side, so I could see if a little shop I wanted to go to was open. the "Charleytown Marketplace". But, it was still closed - boo...

We went back to the Inn and loaded our things and hooked onto the horse trailer to head toward Days Creek to get our sheep. 

As we pulled onto main street, a gentleman was opening Charleytown Market - yay. I just had to stop. It was part of my plan and it was an antique store too~ You know I brake for antiques.

If you ever get to Coos Bay, take a short trip to Charleston and visit the Charletown Market. It's an awesome antique / gift shop and the people that own it are wonderful. They even made us a fresh pot of real coffee. We struggled finding real coffee on this trip, everything was new wave latte's and such - yuck. 

The owners of Charleytown Market are from Boise and the lady spent some time in Salmon, ID on a sheep ranch in her earlier years. She had a local artist paint a little card for all of her visitors and you can see, in the right hand corner, she painted in a few sheep. See, everybody loves sheep~!

And yes, we bought some antiques. We bought a little black, antique shave brush and cup. And, an antique curling iron for our bathroom collection. She said they used to heat the antique curling irons by balancing them on the top of an oil lamp. I always wondered how they got those little ringlets around the sides of their face.

And, a set of brass bent neck type cavalry spurs. The rowels of the spurs have been replaced with an 1858 and an 1848 coin. I have a spur collection in the living room and these will be my show piece. They're awesome!

We had a great visit with the owners of the Charleytown Market. They said the locals call Charleston, OR "Charleytown." And they also told us that all the scuttle going on in the harbor was due to the crab season opening 2 days after Thanksgiving. Everybody was in the process of getting their crab pots loaded so they would be ready. He also told us a story about some tourists that visited inquiring about what beach to visit. He told them how to get to one of his favorite. Later that afternoon, they came in carrying something heavy wrapped up in a blanket. When they unwrapped the loot, it was an old, old, sword covered in barnacles and such. He said it weighed about 10 pounds. They found it on the beach. He said there had been many shipwrecks in the early years of settlement of the area off the coast around here and lots of neat stuff had washed ashore over time.

It rained all the way to Days Creek. Poured at times to where we had to pull over and wait it out. We're used to driving in the snow, but the rain was awful to navigate. We were about an hour late to arrive at the ranch where we were purchasing our sheep, but my charger for the cell phones had broke and wouldn't charge neither. We just had to wing it to get there - sorry for our delay folks. 

The sheep were beautiful, healthy and ready to roll. We didn't pause long at River Bend Ranch. We still had to make it from Days Creek, OR to Lakeview, OR (by Klamath Falls) and with all the bad weather, we knew we would run into snow~!

Just one more blog post left - stick around for our finale coming soon...