Every trip has a "I wish I hadn't wasted time and money there" moment and lunch, dinner and the Umpqua Discovery Center were all shoved into one big horror for us on the same day.
When we couldn't find one of those wonderful bistros in Gardiner, we headed back to Reedsport and stopped for a bowl of clam chowder. If we could have picked a worse restaurant, I can't imagine that the seats would have been anywhere else besides the dumpster. It took over 45 minutes to get two bowls of clam chowder in an empty restaurant. The soup was old and a bit curdled. It had been heated a few too many times. Both of us spent the rest of the afternoon feeling like we had eaten a raw loaf of bread.
After lunch, we went to the Umpqua Discovery Center. This beautiful building sits along the river and has a magnificent view from the tower. Ready to learn about the history of the area, we were stunned by the exorbitant cost for the value, the rude and disinterested staff and the very tacky rooms. We were dismayed by the day glow plastic lizards and snakes encased in glass on the floor. I cannot recommend it to anyone.
We wandered back down the highway to Campbell's. We wanted to change and get ready for a nice dinner out. We had chosen The Portside Restaurant. When we pulled up to the restaurant, the owner met us with an apology - they had had a kitchen fire and would be closed for at least a week. The other nice restaurants in town were closed on Mondays. So, we made the enormous error of going to the Fisherman's Grotto. We were there almost two hours. We had to wait to be seated, wait to be waited on, wait to get our dinner and wait to pay so we could leave. By the time we were served, we were too hungry and too tired to much care about the crap they called food (all fried) and ate it anyway - sad.
The second half of the day was just a disaster in the food department. Somehow, getting fresh seafood seemed to be out of the question.
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