Look at that! I finally managed to get a few better shots of the two Quail families, although the morning light and the blah brown/yellow of the dead grass still make them hard to see.
As I predicted, the chicks are about as big as the adults already, but they're still predominantly brown and lack their parent's pretty grey tones and patterns ..

That male in the foreground of the picture above diligently stands guard over the flock while they're foraging. If there's only the smallest sign of danger he calls out and everybody scatters!
He often seeks a perch where he can oversee a larger area from above, like the cattle-panel in the raised bed below:

                                                                     


They're so much fun to watch with their constant scratching and pecking and getting all excited when somebody finds something good. I can watch them for hours!

But, there's work to be done! Now the site-permit has been approved we're working on getting all utilities ready.

   

Finding the septic tank took forever (lots of probing and digging holes that turned out to be duds) but we finally managed to hit pay-'dirt'
Hah, ha, quite literary 'dirty' it is!

Almost just as difficult to find ... the distribution box for the leach-field. But we eventually found that one as well:

The inspector will be out on Monday. Let's hope everything is fine!

In the meantime, the blackberries are ripe and we've already picked a storm. Look at all these gorgeous, plump and sweet beauties:

Photographing blackberries close-up reminds me of taking pictures of our black dog Sadie .. they never come out very well! On top of them being black they glisten as well. Oh well, you get the picture ..

        

We've eaten them by the handful already while picking of course, dumped loads on our cereal and in pancakes and I baked a buckle as well:

                                

This was a new recipe and I really like how light and fluffy the cake came out. I'm going to make an effort to save the recipe! (i'm notorious for forgetting to do that)

Blackberries are not the only thing ripening at the moment of course. There's loads of Zucchini, and 'Cuces', and our landlords are happy to share the bounty ..



They have a little orchard where the apples and pears are starting to getting ready to be harvested as well!
Unfortunately the birds have gotten most of the first batch of figs .. the buggers!

 

And there you have it. Another week went by like nothing.
I keep my fingers crossed that by next weekend we'll be able to move the RV but I'm not holding my breath.
We know from experience that things almost always go different than we think .. that's life, James says .. yeah, well, but maybe once in a while it could go like planned?

Any-who, life goes on .. whatever happens, happens .. que sera sera  .. etc.etc.

We went for an early (6.20am) morning round of golf on Thursday and were greeted by several hot-air balloons already up in the air over the golf-course.
It was a gorgeous day, still cool at that time with 58F, but without so much as a whiff of wind. Just perfect!

               

James managed to sweet-talk the groundskeeper into letting us tee off on the back nine, which meant we had nobody in front of us!
Now that's my kind of golfing, setting your own pace, not having to wait for people looking for balls or taking their sweet time choosing a club and deciding their strategy.
I mean .. hit the darn ball already! It's not like you're a pro and there's money on the line!
Although .. lot's of these guys bet a lot of money on their pathetic shots .. oh well.

Reason for this un-christian early start was the fact that the day was predicted to be another scorcher, like several others this week .. as in 96F on Tuesday!

                                                                        

It's even a little much for our AC, which, when the temps are that high, can only manage to make it about 10-12 degrees cooler inside but that is about it!
It's time we're moving to our new spot, which is covered for the most part by huge maple trees.

Fortunately we received great news this morning ... that move is a go! The county has approved our request of permanently parking an RV on the site!
We're tickled pink of course as we now can finally move forward to installing/extending all necessary hook-ups permanently, like electric/water and sewer, which we'll do before we move the RV to make work easier.




In the meantime, as I mentioned, temps are high which has caused most of the grass that is not being watered to turn brown by now. Wild flowers alongside the roads are pretty resilient though and are still flowering profusely ..

The clover in the field behind us is in full bloom and the owner has placed several bee-hives at the far end of it ..

I don't know why these frames were laying around like this in the picture below. I hope they weren't removed by some 'honey-robbers' but were left out for a purpose ..

We hear coyotes all the time in the evening and night and the prints below are proof we have raccoons around as well.
We've actually seen both during the daytime but they've been too fast for my camera.

This little guy (gall?) joins us every evening at happy hour, when we sit in the lounge chairs under the trees of our future site, overlooking the back meadows:

                                                

It's an Olive sided Flycatcher (I think) and they're very common around here. They're amazing bug-catchers (not just flies) and for that alone very good to have around!
One such evenings this adorable little Red Robin fledgling showed up as well ..

He came, literary, out of the wood-works, and hopped right up to our chairs as if to say 'do you know where my mommy went?'
Sure enough, not a minute later, both parents showed up, rather agitated, and started to guide it towards an area with a lot of overgrown Ivy, in which it quickly disappeared.
I presume it had only just left the nest and didn't quite know very well how to fly and where to go ..

I've also been trying to get some pictures of the quail and their chicks who've been hanging around here for a while, but every time they show up I have nothing but my phone or my reader/tablet at hand, none of which make even remotely decent pictures.
This is all I could manage:

One of these days I'll get them! Although by than the chicks are probably as big as the adults ..

By far the funniest animal-encounter this week was the following:



That's James, thinking he could out-wait and scoop-up the gopher who has been destroying the meadow for months now, and who so far has evaded every attempt to catch him.
I was watching from inside the RV, and just when I was thinking it would be really funny if the little bugger would show up out of  a hole somewhere behind him ... it actually happened!
I grabbed the camera and managed to sneak behind the gopher for this shot:

                       

It's hard to see, I know, but the gopher is that brown little thing there in the very bottom-left of the picture.
Here's a close-up:

                                             

In hindsight a video would have been better since you would see it move, but believe me it was hilarious! Of course the movie 'Caddyshack' came to mind immediately!

And so the summer is slowly moving along ... it's mostly warm, even hot, and dry with occasionally a a few cooler days in between.
They're predicting showers for Monday-morning and actually a stretch of cooler days after that, but I'll only believe it when I see it .. so much can (and does) change in a few days.

                              

For now, we're enjoying the warm evenings by having dinner outside.
A ham-and-leek quiche and a fresh-from-the-garden salad. Perfect summer fare!

It had been a while since we went for a little sight-seeing and since James was all caught up with work and we were a little tired of fighting black-berrries, we decided it was time to take a day off and go for a hike.
We chose the Drift Creek Falls Trail, which descends through the Coast Range Forest about 15 miles inland from Lincoln City and ends at the Drift Creek Falls, an impressive 75-foot waterfall.

                                                                             

This trail had been on our list for a while and came highly recommended by our landlords as well.
So, early on a nice, cool (it was actually rather cold at 58F for a change!) Saturday morning we drove the 1.5 hours to the trailhead. The last 16 miles are part dirt-road and very windy and take you deep into the beautiful coastal forest.

 
                    

The well-designed trail with gentle changes in grade over the entire route is 1.25 miles and leads you through second-growth coastal woodland with Douglas firs and Sitka spruce ..                                                     

The undergrowth is lush with western hemlock, sword ferns, salmon-berries, huckleberries, vine maples, and salal bushes. There are a variety of wildflowers and mushrooms on the route too.

After a mile, the trail passes Drift Creek over a footbridge and the remaining quarter-mile path runs along the creek ..

              

                                                    

Eventually we arrived at the largest pedestrian suspension bridge in Oregon and Washington (240 feet).

                        

              

Extending 100 feet above the canyon floor, the bridge is anchored in the rock on one side by ties and cables and firmly cemented on the opposite side.

We made it to the other side .. me right on James' heels, holding tight to the handrail and looking straight ahead .. yeah, I'm not too keen on heights!

The view of the falls is worth it though and a well-deserved cup of coffee restored me enough that I could face the way back as well ..                             

                                                      

This brave little chipmunk was very happy to score some peanut-butter cookie crumbs ... yeah, yeah, I know .. don't feed the wildlife ..
 

There is an alternate 1.5-mile loop connecting the main trail known as the Northern Loop, that starts and ends at the bridge over Drift Creek Trail, which we decided to take on the way back.

         

This part of the forest is much older and the trees are huge, gnarly, moss-covered and very impressive!




By the time we arrived back at the trailhead it was almost lunch-time and we decided to take a slightly different road out of the forest towards the coast and Lincoln City.
One of the first restaurants we came across was Shucker's Oyster Bar .. oysters .. count us in!

                                                         

Apparently the only oyster bar on the Oregon Coast (how's that possible?), they also offer a full menu including seafood, steaks, hamburgers, and a full bar.
This place is almost the poster child for a dive bar with a rather broken down appearance, but it was full of locals, the staff were friendly and the food was amazing.

We had some oysters on the half-shell, which were very fresh and a decent seize (for Pacific oysters that is, which are a lot smaller and more triangle-shaped than the larger and rounder 'European flats' that we're used to).

           

But the clincher were these oysters in a white wine, garlic and butter (lots of butter) sauce!
Oh, my god, I've never had them served this way and they were soooo delicious!

               

OK, thus properly fortified, we drove to the beach. We turned out to be in the Taft Historical District, a part of Lincoln City near the mouth of the Siletz Bay where Schooner Creek empties in the ocean.

Prior to settlement it provided a gathering place for the local Salish Indians for centuries until it became an Euro-American trading community in the early 1900s.

   

By shear luck, this being a nice Saturday morning and all, we managed to snatch up a parking spot at the tiny parking-lot right at the beach!
By this time it had warmed up to a perfect 72F and people started to show up ..

We weren't planning to do any sun-bathing but we walked along the flood-line for a little while, checking out all the driftwood ..



And people fishing and crabbing:

                                                           

Instead of putting out pots they were throwing these triangle-shaped traps, attached to a long rope which were baited with chicken-legs of all things!
After a 5-10 minute wait they would haul them back in. Nobody had much luck, but they had fun trying.

The bay is home to a large group of sea-lions who live on a kind of refuge/island across from the bay, especially in the winter months.

Just before we turned around we noticed this strange phenomenon in the air just a little away from us in the near distance ..



It appeared to be some sort of haze, like a small fog-bank, hanging above the sand. People disappeared into it for a couple of minutes and appeared again on the other site .. sort of eerie almost .. very odd!

                                 

But for the most part the ocean and beach looked like they should on a beautiful, sunny, summer afternoon on the Oregon coast!

It was a great day all around and we agreed to repeat it soon.
Life is good!