The middle agers group. (Upper 30s,40s & 50ish folks)

My buddy called me Saturday evening. I was enjoying a pint with some friends. He said he and his wife were going to do the drift dive at Florence at 08:00. I told him I sure wasn't going to make THAT dive. They like to do two dives with the drift first as the flood tide comes to a halt and the crab hole at slack. I have one of my two bottles in the shop for hydrostatic testing and visual inspection, so I could only do one dive. If my buddy had called earlier, he probably could have gone to pick up my other bottle... Oh well. I'm so glad he called, because I haven't dove the crab hole in quite some time.

The Crab Hole is the second dive park in Oregon. Or the first. There's another in Woahink Lake a few miles away that's pretty shallow but has some interesting features underwater to navigate to. The entry for the Crab Hole used to be a fish ladder for a hatchery. It was revamped to make an easy entry.



A fun thing happened on the way over. Something I've only ever experienced once before on my truck. All the numbers on the odometer matched! I'm a palindrome junkie....



Visibility wasn't terrible. It was crab-tacular! It was maybe eight feet... maybe a little less. It didn't help that there was an open water class going out to the crab hole to stir things up. I found a nice stainless steel gaff as well as a nice piece of fishing tackle -- a flasher on a spreader with a nice drop weight. It was pretty recently lost, and I gave it to my buddy who can use it when he trolls for salmon. I kept the gaff.



I also got two crabs. Even that was a bonus since there were quite a few folks diving plus boats throwing pots. I hate crab pots falling on me.... There were some big females and lots of small crabs. I found one nice big legal male, but it was too soft, so I let it go home. I got a couple legals, one pretty big and one just a little bigger than legal.

I'm glad I remembered to fill my 5-gallon water cooler jug with HOT water before driving over. Nothing like having five gallons of hot, FRESH water when you get out of 46-degree sea water! Warm your hands, rinse your regulator, and even get some crud off your suit when you take it off. Then... fill with fresh seawater to cook your crabs! Only thing better would have been if I packed my cooker with me and cooked 'em right there by the sea.

I ~REALLY~ thought after last week's rain the lobster mushrooms would be up along with the porcini. So I went on a side trip through the coast range on a foray. I didn't find a single lobster. I did find one russula, but it wasn't "lobsterized." What did surprise me was seeing a chanterelle cap through the moss. Ummm... it's too early for that. I got a handful and headed back to the truck. I made a couple more stops and got a couple more handfuls. I didn't even carry a collecting bag, and in fact was just wearing shorts and Keen sandals. So it's not like I was really pounding the trail, but I did spend about two hours and covered two hilly miles. Then at my last stop I found WHITE chanterelles. I find them occasionally in the Cascades, but usually not in the Coast Range. A bonus -- the mushrooms were dense and dry since it's still August! That will be a bonus the next few days.



I cooked my crabs last night and ate the little one. It was really delicious. I also had some avocados that were absolutely perfect, so I had some of those. I guess stomping up and down the hills and schlepping my dive gear around did burn some calories! And I can't eat while I'm diving or on a foray. Some neighbors came by while I was cooking because the kids were super curious. That's fun because those neighbors don't generally come to talk, so I'm glad to foster better relationships with others in my little part of our village.

I took a short detour on the way home -- about six miles. I go through a town that has decent men's clothes at Goodwill. The local thrift shops get really picked over since we're a college town. I found some shirts, and.... believe it or not, a SPG (pressure gauge) for diving! There were three very old regulator sets for like nine bucks. None were even rated for the pressure bottle I use. There was also a console boot that only had one gauge in it -- an SPG. I gave the staff my driver license, went out to my air bottle, an tested the gauge. Holy Cats! It works. That means if I sell my old regulator set, it can go with all the gauges it needs, and I can still have a spare SPG in case my console computer fails on a long trip.

I need more weekends like this! So glad I got to sleep in Saturday and then get so many chores done I could take the day on Sunday to go dive/hike and spend the last day off finishing up chores and shopping. Yay!