A blessed and peaceful part of Oregon

Eventually it stopped raining!!! Tuesday sun slowly took over and ate up the clouds. What a different perspective now! We drove out to the ocean beaches again to see them in the sun now!

At 8 am we met for breakfast with Rick from the Egyptian Theatre Preservation Association - another success story: A movie theater with egyptian decor from the beginning of the 20th century is - thanks to fundraising and private initiative - right now under restauration and will reopen in summer.

The director of the Coos Historical Museum, Frank, will probably need steady nerves until the new museum will open in January 2015. It must be a pretty tough job to bring together all the different opinions and views - industrials, workers, business people, indians etc. - to create a „people’s museum“. But Frank is a man of visions and apparently a good tactician. We got a hardhat tour in the new museum building at the waterfront and are now looking forward to see it again, once it’s opened.

It’ll sure be a great addition to the cultural scene in the city which is in the progress of „reinvention“. Lumber industry is gone, fishing industry is stable but not too enticing for younger people, tourism isn’t important yet and jobs are rare. Though the „metro area“ - consisting of Coos Bay, North BEnd and Charleston - is situated at the popular Hwy. 101, not too many visitors stop and stay. Even we passed through the area a couple of times before, not knowing that we are missing. On the other hand, thanks to not being very touristic, there are no kitschy kite/souvenirs shops or overpriced restaurants. The town is still breathing the atmosphere of a harbor/lumber/fishing town with „real people“, down to earth, hard working and hospitable.

The Shark Bites Seafood Cafe was - like the brewery - initiated by locals. Before it opened a couple of years ago there was no seafood place in Coos Bay and it would have been impossible to get such delicious Shrimp Tacos or Halibut Sandwiches like the ones we had for lunch. Oregonians in the Coos Bay Area (and in most other places) are so blessed to have fish, seafood, mushrooms, berries in abbundance, can hunt and fish, go clamming and crabbing, can brew their own beer and make their own wine.

In the afternoon we met with Don Ivy, a Tribal Elder of the Coquille Indian Tribe at the Tribe’s Community Plankhouse in a pretty remote, peaceful place a little outside town. Don is quite a character, very eloquent, prolific and intelligent. Learned a lot while talking to him and touring the „indian village“ which is (unfortunately) not open to the public.

With him and Katherine, the tourism rep of the area, we discussed later, over dinner (wine, oysters in a sauce to die for, shrimps and salmon)at the Hilltopp House Restaurant, Karl May and his influence on the Germans in regard to their perception of Indians.

"Cranberry Sweets" - in this Coos Bay shop/production site visitors can eat their fill of different samples of different goodies, many of them made with cranberries, growing in abundance in the area, but also a lot of chocolates. The House of Myrtle Woods is famous for its beautiful carved myrtlewood bowls and plates and decorative things. It was so nice of the owner to present us with a salad bowl and cutlery.

After a gorgeous sunrise and an early breakfast this morning at the Pancake Mill - huge portions of delicious pancakes of different kind - we got a tour in the Marshfield Sun Printing Museum at the waterfront.
This was a working newspaper office and print shop from 1891 to 1944 and is today essentially as it was left in 1944. All operated by volunteers it’s another well-hidden secret. Left Coos Bay late morning, would have loved to stay some longer.