Tag: Oregon Coast

July 31, 2025 – Rip It Up

July 31, 2025 /

One of the things that I take for granted living in Oregon is the coastal, sand dunes. As I understand it, it is not the only sand dunes in the United States. Apparently, there are dunes in Utah, Colorado, Michigan, Indiana, California and North Carolina at least. When I was doing a quick check on where the others were located, I was also checking to see if off-roading was allowed; that is not universal.

In Oregon at least, the dunes are off-roading heaven. They also go on for miles and miles down the central and south central coast line. All my life I have known people that aspire to spend their weekends jumping humps and drag racing up extremely steep hills. This is what my son wanted to do for his 19th birthday.

If you watch the video, you can see that he got a four wheeler. I ended up renting a Honda Talon side by side for various reasons. One of which is that my arm is still bothering me some and I thought it would be a little smoother (which I believe that it was). I felt no pain or soreness after riding around for three hours. I know that my son wanted to rent something bigger and faster but you had to be over 25 to rent and drive this vehicle.

We had a lot of fun for the majority of the time. Unfortunately, there was a small accident that cut our time short. It was no big deal but it did break the flag pole off and we were instructed to call the shop if a roll occurred. They wanted us to nurse the thing back which is why we went so slow in the video.

Right before we left, I packed my Baofeng GMRS radios. I have never used them before and I thought this might be a good place to test them. It turns out it was the perfect place to test the radios. When the accident occurred, we of course did not have any reception. So, I went down the hill to get cell signal. Once I got the instructions from the shop, I radioed to my son. We would have never been able to do that without the radios.

I would estimate that we got about 3 miles maximum of reception. It seemed 1.5 miles was reliable but beyond that things got spotty. I heard him at 3 miles but he did not hear my response. When we got back home, I realized that I actually have a longer set of antennas also in the box. It would be interesting to switch and see what the difference is. I also had a set of Midland walkie talkies that are lower power, but we didn’t really have enough time to mess with those as well.

We call it Sand Duning. It is one of those things that it seems like many out of state visitors are drawn to. Many people that I have met seem to bee-line to the sand dunes and rent a ATV. This is why I started out today saying that I just don’t think about it much. I guess it is been there, done that.

That being said, it is one of those activities that seems approachable. If you watch the video carefully, you can see the RVs on the left hand side at points. People trailer their vehicles and camp out on the sand. Then, they can just leave from their camp sites and go play. Four new quads is certainly cheaper than one new boat. I could see really getting into it. But then again, I don’t need anything else to take my time and money.

End Your Programming Routine: I think that it has been ten years or so since the last time we went Sand Duning. That was also for my son’s birthday. My wife was jealous, she wanted to go as well but she was out with her girlfriends for her birthday. I guess that is the way the cookies crumble. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have another trip in out near future.

March 21, 2022 -What is Seafoam Green?

March 21, 2022 /

When I was young enough to have a spring break, going to the beach meant Cancun, Daytona or Padre Island. At least that is what I saw on MTV, remember this is pre-internet. Of course, I was never going to spend that kind of money so we settled on the Oregon coast. Frequently, we spend a couple of days during spring break week.

As I wrote about last week, a storm was coming, but we were going to the beach anyway. The family was staying for several days but I was just spending the day and taking the dog for a long walk. The truth is, the weather wasn’t as bad as I was expecting (for a storm). The surf was rough and I ran across to big piles of foam.

I don’t think the picture did it true justice. When I saw this in person, I thought it looked yellowish rather than greenish. I would say the picture looks more brown than green or yellow. You get the point. When I hear the name, I think of a washed out green. Or maybe a better description is Kelly green with a lot of white added to it.

I once heard an interview with Sherwin Williams marketing and the person said that each color name is unique and never to be repeated or changed. That means when they come up with a new color, they have to validate that the name has not been used before. What I can’t remember was what person in my life questioned the origin of the name Seafoam Green. When I saw this pile of foam, that question popped in my mind and I took a picture and now I am writing this.

End Your Programming Routine: I am keeping it light today. I guess this is more of an anecdote rather than my typical writing, but that’s OK because I am on spring break too.

January 24, 2022 – Don’t Be Crabby, It’s a Beautiful Day

January 24, 2022 /

I have said before, my favorite kind of fishing is the one that I am doing. My boys were headed out to a campout and we had a free day. My wife wanted to go to the coast and do some crabbing.

There are some people in my family that are pretty ‘coasty’ (including my wife). Both my grandfather and uncle had houses at the beach and looked for any excuse to go, including I remember checking the mail. Me on the other hand, I want a compelling reason but crabbing seems like a good one.

People not familiar with the pacific northwest coastline may be jealous that in less than an hour we can see the ocean. Don’t get me wrong, it can be beautiful. I think where most of the disconnect between perception and reality with me is that it is a hard formula to figure out whether it is going to be nice or miserable at the coast.

One thing I know, if it is hot here where I live, it is often can be cloudy or even rainy at the coast. In the summer time, even when it is sunny the wind blows pretty stiffly to the point that it is 70 degrees and cold (or sand in your face) because of wind chill. I think many of the best days are in the off season. That happened to be Saturday.

The conventional wisdom is that crabbing is best done in months that don’t contain an ‘R’. That means May, June, July and August are out. It is not that you cannot crab, it is more that it is molting season and the meat doesn’t fit the shell and tends to be soft rather than firm.

There is also a best time of day to do it. The best time is slack tide or the time in between incoming and outgoing tide. The incoming tide pushes crabs closer to the shore and the outgoing pulls them out. I will also say, the tides can also move your gear around as well. One time, my family lost all of their pots to a strong tide and could never find them again.

The technique is pretty simple. You attach some bait to the ring, throw the ring in the water and wait. After 15-30 minutes, pull up the ring keeping tension on the rope so the crabs don’t slip out as you are pulling them up. Once the ring is on the dock, you have to check for sex and size. Males, wider than 5 3/4″ are keepers. Crabs should be kept alive until boiled. They should be immediately cooled and cleaned and they should also be kept as close to freezing as possible until eaten. And, they should be eaten within a couple of days if not frozen.

We dilly-dallied our way to the place that we were going to crab. Consequently, we got there at 2pm and they closed the dock at 3pm. It was such a nice day that we did it anyway and we got two keepers in our 45mins of fishing. I would say that this is not always the case. I have been on days where all day yielded two crabs. So, we got lucky but that is fishing.

One last thing about inexperienced crabbing. Sea lions have figured out that the crab traps contain food. They will tear your traps apart and eat your bait and crabs. Traditionally, bait is the remains of filleted rock-fish. Some people use chicken and claim that has less problems. I have even heard of people using road kill as bait as well. But, what I am trying to say is that if you see sea lions, crabbing can be pretty poor. Fortunately, we didn’t have that problem.

End Your Programming Routine: Oregon requires a separate shellfish license to crab. It is good for the calendar year and with that we can also harvest clams as well. This is also something that I have never tried. I see more trips to the beach this year to harvest the bounty of what we have available.