Friday, 31 August

You never know what each day will bring. We left the campground looking for a beach to go to. At the first beach we came to we saw a lighthouse in the distance. So when we got to a turnoff for the lighthouse, we took it, thinking we might get a nice picture of it. We ended up spending between three and four hours there.

 
The beach below the lighthouse was black cobble, but Gene managed to collect some wet sand and a couple of pebbles (undoubtedly illegal). Jean looked for interesting stones like agates, but didn't find any.

 When we went back up the bluff we spotted whales offshore. They seemed to be working the area just beyond the surf line. They moved on after a little, but one stayed and spent a lot of time just beyond the near-shore rocks. We watched it for a long time, and it was still there when we finally left.

Jean made some lunch so we could continue to watch from the comfort of the van (out of the bugs). While she was doing that Gene looked at some pelicans through the binoculars and discovered that one of the offshore rocks had about a dozen seals on it. They were mostly just lying around, looking like rocks. But shortly before we left several of them started swimming around.



We could have stayed longer, but it was getting late and Jean had called ahead for a campsite about 60 or 75 miles down the coast. We stopped in Newport and got some things we needed, including some Frontline for YumYum.

We also stopped briefly at a place called the "Devil's Churn." It reminded us of Thunder Hole on Mt. Desert Is., ME.
 










We made it to the campground by about 7:00 after a day that (like several) went better than planned. Tomorrow, the Oregon Dunes and then off to Gene's sister in southern Oregon.