Rogue River Mail Jet Boat Tours - Day 8

At little Breakers Motel in Gold Beach, OR, I walk to the lobby this morning for breakfast. Just juice and cereal. The proprietor is unlocking the door just as I get there. We smile our good mornings, and I give him the key to the room. I say that I made a 1-800 call last night from the room to check on my book sales and ask if there is any charge for that. He tells me no and asks about my book.

I tell him MyLost Summer is about my recovery from a coma when I was a teenager He’s very interested so I leave a card, and he says he’ll ask the bookstore owner up the street to order one for him and several others for the small town—as he’ll spread the word that an author stayed the night in Gold Beach.

Until mid afternoon today Mark and I will be on a Jet Boat touring the Rogue River, 80 miles up, then back. It’s a United States Postal Service mail boat operation, and of several boats that leave this morning, ours gets stuck with the actual mail, which we drop up river with a woman who drove a USPS SUV out on a sand bar to meet our boat.

During the ride, which is pretty chilly this morning, we see blue heron, egrets, several blacktail doe—one with fawn—and four young adult black bears that look like they just left the den. We also see juvenile and adult eagles and other things I forget. We stop to watch a crew from the Oregon DNR (or whatever it’s called up there) net fish and measure them. The young woman wrangling the fish to measure holds the fish up for those of us in the boat who want to photograph it. Mark and I notice that she gives a big smile each time she does it, like we asked her to “Say Cheese!”

We take off at 8:20 a.m. and get back at 2:30 p.m., but about two hours of that is not on the boat. We stop for half-an-hour break on the way up, and on the way back we disembark for an hour and 20 minute lunch! There is a restaurant serving buffet-style meals, but Mark and I packed Chicken of the Sea tuna snacks with apples; we don’t need 25 minutes even. After our quick picnic we walk down to the dock and put our feet in the water. I nap in the sun while Mark chats with an older fellow, a local.

Once we get back and off the boat, we continue our northern route up the Oregon coast and stop at different places in Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area for some light hiking before stopping for the night in Florence. We shower quickly and head out to a Mexican restaurant, Aztlan. Mark orders a seafood burrito, and I get a Spanish omelet, which is just a Western omelet with Mexican sauce—not quite salsa and not quite mole—and sour cream on top. Mark and I both love it.