What do you do when your day looks black? You pick blackberries!

It's day #2 sitting here in Port Orford in a motor home that can't move on its own. The people that work at The Crazy Norwegian's Fish and Chips aren't appreciating the fact that we are taking up prime parking spots for their customers. But we're supposed to be out of here before they open at 11:00. In the meantime, the outlook for this day looks pretty black to us in many ways. When the tow truck doesn't show up at 7 a.m. like promised, we wait . . . and wait . . . and Mark finally calls. There was been a mis-communication between Coach-net (who is paying for the tow) and the tow truck company. Once we got that cleared up, they promised to be on their way. 

So we wait . . . and wait . . . Now Mark is having to tell restaurant customers that try to park in front of us that a tow truck is on its way. It's not a fun morning. The day is feeling darker. Finally, at 11:30 the tow truck arrives. That should be really good news, but when he starts the process of hooking up, his hydraulics aren't working. Mark drives him all over Port Orford looking for hydraulic fluid. They finally find 15 gallons at a local store, and the tow truck driver empties that into his hydraulic tank. But still it isn't working properly. We're not sure we want him towing our home at this point. The day is looking blacker.

He finally concedes that he won't be able to tow us until he can fix his truck, so he makes the one-hour drive back to Coos Bay leaving us stranded for another day. What can we do when the day looks so black? We pick blackberries!

Denisa has been prowling around town while we waited for a tow, and she has found lots of wild blackberry bushes. At first she was just snacking as she picked. But she has found so many and they are just now starting to ripen, so she took a container to pick more.

Another day at Port Orford also means another walk on their very nice beach.

That means another low tide, when the sea creatures are exposed in the tidal pools. She likes taking pictures of the sea stars hugging on to the rocks in their strange shapes.

It was obvious that the motor home wasn't going anywhere here on Day #2, so we decided to make another road trip along the coast. This time we drove south. We found ourselves overlooking the grand bridge over the Rogue River outside of Gold Beach.

We remember this as one of our favorite communities from our time on the coast four years ago. So we stopped in at the beach where the waves were pounding.

There are no sea shells, but we remember the colorful rocks that get washed ashore here.

On this black day, Denisa had fun collecting and placing the many-colored rocks on Gold Beach.

This extra day gave us the opportunity to re-visit some local landmarks like Gold Beach's Kissing Rock . . .

and Turtle Rock. This "turtle" has to count as our wildlife picture of the day on this black day.

The golden wildflowers on Gold Beach count as our flower picture of the day.

We continue our drive south on the beautiful Oregon coast, with stops at random beaches for pictures of sea arches . . .

and huge sea stacks. We see this black day as another opportunity to wander more of God's wonders on this beautiful Oregon coast.

The sun is getting lower in the sky, and the orange color is reflected in the water this evening.

Our original plan for today was spending time in the Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor. That was before our plans changed when our serpentine belt broke on the motor home and were stuck in Port Orford. But we finally made it all the way to this particularly scenic section of coast to get a picture of "Arch Rock,"

and "Natural Bridges."

The state park brochure explained that there are actually seven arched rocks and blowholes at this viewpoint.

It's about bed time on this particularly black day, and we see that other RVers are bedding down in the pull-outs along this section of Highway 101.

On this black day, we see that the blackberries further south are not ripe yet. They are still blooming and the berries are bright green instead of the tasty black color when they are ripe.

So we see that sometimes black days can be good days, and that blackberries are the best when they are black.

 

The sun was setting over the water as we started our 45-mile trip back north up the coast towards Port Orford where our motor home sits motionless for another day.

We had to run our generator this evening, so we also did some cooking. We used the last of our free apricots and our fresh blackberries from today to make a delicious combination fruit crisp cobbler. Denisa took this colorful picture before we covered the fruit up with the crispy topping.

We also had enough blackberries to make a batch of blackberry freezer jam. It might be the freshest jam ever as it was only a couple hours from picking the fruit to eating the jam on a slice of bread. So even when the day looks black, it can turn out blackberry delicious!