Monday, April 19 Deaths 2,460 (+0) New cases 473
This is the second day in a row of zero reported COVID deaths in Oregon. We will be making a new chart tomorrow. We’re expecting that it will show an improvement over the previous one. But the positive test ratio is creeping up lately. After having been fairly steady at around 3% for a long time, it has been over 5% three times in the past week.
Not too much grocery shopping today as we are planning to be away for a few days. But some worrisome medical news is casting a pall on things. The radiologist says that the MRI of E’s foot has raised an issue. So we’ll have to deal with that as soon as we get back, perhaps returning a day early.
The weather is very nice today. M watered the blueberries. It seems very early in the year to be doing that.
Tuesday, April 20 Deaths 2,460 (+0) New cases 580
Eve talked to her doctor and was reassured to learn that the issue is not as urgent as she had feared. She gets to take a week off from medical work.
Our plan is to spend three nights in Bandon, on Oregon’s south central coast. We’ve booked a kitchenette room and plan to cook one supper there. We also plan to go to Alloro’s wine bar for a meal. (Hopefully it’s still there. We haven’t actually checked.) This morning we packed up the Mazda and left home at 11:00 or so. Our first stop was the Vietnamese Baguette to get a couple of sandwiches for the road. Then we headed down 99 to Monroe, took the old Applegate Trail route to Cheshire, and then followed 36 and 126 to the coast. We stopped for a picnic lunch at the boat ramp in Triangle Lake. Nice weather for it. We got into our motel room around 4:00.
When we thought about cooking our dinner…oops, kuçuk problem varda. Strange kitchen. There was a stove and a fridge; and there were two saucepans, four settings of really cheap flatware, four plates, four bowls and a spatula. But that was all. Tava yoktu. Paring knife yoktu. Cutting board yoktu. And no cups or glassware either. We’d kind been counting on having those things. It turns out that the motel’s response to COVID had been to remove most–but not all–of the kitchen utensils from the kitchen units so as to “minimize touch points”. An odd choice, it seemed to us, and very annoying of them not to have mentioned it on their booking site.
While pondering all this, we happened to check to see if Alloro still existed. Indeed they did and were open that very day. Also, they were not open on Wednesday. Hm. Off we went to get take-out from Alloro. We could always cook our own stuff tomorrow. We got Cacciuco fish stew for E and flat noodle Bolognese for M. They were both really, really good.
Today is the 390th day of Pandemic Diary record keeping, and thus time for another chart. Over the last ten days, the Oregon COVID death rate was just two per day, down from almost six in the previous period.
Wednesday, April 21 Deaths 2,466 (+6) New cases 989
Got the free grab and go motel breakfast: granola bar, Otis Spunkmeyer banana muffin, orange juice, small yoplait, and a fruit cup thingy. We made our own espresso. After breakfast, M made sandwiches for our lunch and then we headed back north up 101. We were aiming for the southern arm of Coos Bay, which is known locally as the South Slough. The South Slough Reserve is one of 29 areas in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.
We started at the interpretive center, which was closed, and hiked down the North Creek Trail, a beautiful walk which descends 300 feet through very steep coastal rain forest.
Down at sea level you can see what the Estuarine Reserve is all about. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hundreds of estuary salt marshes were converted to agricultural use by building dikes to wall them off from the sea. This area was farmland for about 100 years. Fortunately, dikes can be breached, and natural habitat can be restored. In the South Slough Reserve, restoration work began in 1975.
The two photos above and the video below were taken from a trail that leads across an old dike. The photographer was on a bridge that spans a fifty-foot long breach in the dike, which was created as part of the restoration project. The video below begins with the view inland and then pans around to show the view toward the sea. In the middle of the video you can see how the trail goes across the top of the remaining part of the dike.
We ate our lunch on an observation deck overlooking the main body of the South Slough. The hike back up to our car included a one-third mile section called the Tunnel Trail.
For dinner we cooked and ate our things brought from home. The front desk was able to provide us with a skillet (tava), which was our most pressing need. So we managed. The biggest challenge was slicing the tomato without a paring knife. E managed that part, even though it was M’s night to cook.
Thursday, April 22 Deaths 2,467 (+1) New cases 993
We went out to the Bandon North Jetty this morning, which was fairly complicated since the town of Bandon is on the south side of the Coquille River and the North Jetty is not. There is a U.S. 101 bridge over the Coquille, but it’s several miles from town, so it’s a long roundabout trip. Anyway, the north jetty is pretty awesome. There was a cold wind, of course, as there so often is here, but otherwise the day was fine. The surf was noisy and there were several sorts of birds to be watched.
After hiking around a bit, we went back to our little room for a lunch of whatever we could find in the fridge or in our food box. That included a little bit of leftover Cacciuco. Was it still good? Oh yeah.
In the afternoon we visited the Ni-les’tun Marsh Restoration area. It is quite near Bandon, on the east side of U.S. Highway 101, just upstream from the mouth of the Coquille river. In the photo below, the river runs along the far end of the marsh just in front of the forested hill. In the upper right, you may be able to distinguish the 101 bridge, with its two old towers for raising the drawbridge section. Much of the marsh is inundated twice a day at high tide and all of the marsh is inundated during spring tides, which occur twice per lunar month. This is only a portion of the marsh; there is more off to the left for a total size is 400 acres.
For most of the twentieth century there was a large dairy operation down on the level area just beyond the trees in the center of the photo. Restoration of the marsh began in 2009 and involved removing one and a quarter miles of dike and filling in fourteen miles of drainage ditches. Why is this important, you may ask. For one thing, the estuary is vital habitat for salmon and other sea creatures. Turns out salmon need an estuary to make the transition from fresh water, where they hatch, to salt water, where they will spend the adult phase of their lives. In the hundreds or thousands of years before the diking and draining began, there were 5,000 acres of marshland in the Coquille basin. Today, there are about 500 acres. The remainder is still in agricultural use, mainly as pasture.
Dinner this day was at another notable Bandon eatery: Pablo’s Corner. It’s difficult to describe just what Pablo’s Corner is like. This was our first visit. If we live long enough, we will surely go back.
Friday, April 23 Deaths 2,476 (+9) New cases 1,020
Time to head for home. We were on the road by ten, heading not up the coast on 101, but rather going roughly east, to meet up with I-5 at Roseburg. Remember that 4,500 acres of unrestored marsh that are still in use as pasture? We saw a good portion of it this morning as we drove through the Coquille basin.
You might say we were taking the back way home. (You know, that’s when home is 200 miles due north and you start your day by driving 40 miles southeast.) But it was worth it because I-5, once you get there, has its advantages. It’s a lot faster and straighter than 101, plus it goes directly to the hamlet of Rice Hill. It is possible that some people don’t understand the significance of Rice Hill, perhaps because they have never been there, or perhaps because they have no interest in ice cream. For the rest of us, Rice Hill means a stop at the K & R Drive In for some Umpqua ice cream. With E at the wheel, we found the place easily, just in time for lunch.
We got back to Corvallis at around 3:30 and got a start at unpacking and sorting through the junk mail. After a simple supper, we took a walk around the neighborhood and felt a few tiny drops of rain, the beginnings, we hoped, of more serious moisture to come.
Saturday, April 24 Deaths 2,484 (+8) New cases 830
Some rain last night and today, which should be good for the new plantings. We visited our friend H today. She’s rearranging things around her house to prepare for some changes ahead. It seems that her soon to be unemployed deadbeat daughter plans to move back home. Okay, okay. I guess we have to add that the daughter is actually a very successful pediatrician who is getting ready to retire, so the phrase “unemployed deadbeat” may not be strictly accurate in the technical sense. It was fun to type, though. In any case, H needs to make room by getting rid of a few pieces of furniture. First we helped her dismantle a bed and move the pieces to the garage. Then we helped her move a large sectional couch out of her TV room and onto the patio. The patio will make a good transfer point for the people who will haul it away.
Dinner was take-out from Tacovore. TV was the first episode of The Vineyard, a Spanish series set in the late 1800’s. The first episode was somewhat disjointed, but it looks promising. We are letting poor Melek languish for a while. We’ve watched 36 of her 59 episodes and we need a break. This afternoon it happened that both E and M had on fairly nice sweaters. Our house looked like a Turkish prison.
Sunday, April 25 Deaths 2,485 (+1) New cases 780
It was cloudy and cool this morning, with a bit of rain in the afternoon. M went off in the truck to explore the upper reaches of the Luckiamute River. He went onto gravel at Hoskins and got back onto pavement in Falls City. That wasn’t exactly where he intended to come out, but hey, there are a surprising number of unmarked roads out there in the forest and he was using a forty-year-old map. While he was out, he stopped at a self-service yard décor depot for some bits of wood and stone. With no staff available to help him, he was limited to items small enough for him to lift. More on that once the items are installed.
TV tonight was more of The Vineyard and more also of Atlantic Crossing. In the former, Soledad and Mauro still haven’t met, but certain wheels are in motion. In the latter, Princess Martha is busy making enemies in the White House, but FDR is not among them.
so love reading your diaries!! Beautiful Pictures!!