Exploring Port Orford and Bandon Oregon

On Friday we drove down the Oregon coast on Highway 101 from Newport to Port Orford to visit John and Sue, old friends of ours. We stayed 3 nights and explored the towns of Port Orford and Bandon, just to the north. John and Sue live in a house right on an inlet from the ocean, sort of a small lake. We walked around the little town and enjoyed the quiet beauty of a seaside town.

This is the boat dock for all the small boats going out to do some fishing.

Jerry takes a break from our brisk walk to relax on a dock.

In the afternoon we went to the Langlois library's yard sale and I spotted several of these rustic benches made of large slabs of wood. They all had some of these white decorations on them from birds. This one was very comfy, though I was careful where I sat.

Then we drove into Bandon, another delightful seaside town just north of Port Orford. Sue wanted us to see a place called "The Garden Party" which a woman, her husband and her 92-year-old mother have developed over the last 17 years. She has beautiful garden walkways with flowers everywhere, a HUGE vegetable garden, and three big fields of cranberries, some of which they sell to OceanSpray, a company that specializes in cranberry sauce, cranberry juice, raw cranberries, etc. She also has a little tea (& coffee) room where you can purchase delectable baked treats such as her "Five Berry Scone," and all kinds of pies. I, of course, had to buy a piece of that 5 Berry Scone and it was fantastic. All the berries are grown on her property. Oh, and she has a gift shop with all kinds of cute little things that we girls like.

Here are some of her lovely flowers:


She also makes these mosaic-type garden decorations. She buys old china at yard sales, breaks them into usable pieces, puts them in a mold, pours concrete over them, and voila! beautiful stepping stones or just decorations for your garden

















I'm showing you one of the cranberry fields. To harvest them in October, they flood the fields and the cranberries float to the top, and then a raking machine goes through, plucking the cranberries of the plants, and then another machine goes through and collects them.

Another of 3 or 4 fields of cranberries at "The Garden Party."

Bandon's port, filled with small fishing boats.

Bandon is a charming, artsy seaside town with all kinds of art shops and other interesting shops. This lady playing a harp on one of the main streets added a lovely sound to the shopping scene.