Oregon Trip, Day 3: Sea Creatures
Our first real morning started early. By 8:30 AM we were off for a little beachcombing. Beach access here is limited, unlike North Carolina where every house on the shore has a private beach access, where we are staying is on top of a cliff. But our neighbors have a staircase going to the rock face and their house looked empty, so we borrowed their access for the morning. It was a nice, albeit steep, climb down to the open shore.
Accidental Tidepooling
From our cottage we can see huge rocks on the beach beneath us, so we thought we'd check them out. Turned out to be absolutely awesome tidepooling. We started by seeing one little purple starfish on one little rock, then the next thing we knew we had found dozens and dozens of them all lumped together all over the rocks. There were mussels and anemones of various colors and gobs and gobs of purplr and orange starfish.
I had planned to take a day tidepooling, so this accidental tidepooling sort of stole my thunder, but it was amazing! Then we walked up the beach to find the public beach access. Along the way the girls managed to get wet and dirty. Huh, how did that happen? By the time we found the public access point we realized we were really far from the house. We figured no problem, we'll walk home. We made it about 10 steps before Brynn informed us she had too much sand in her underpants to walk home. Apparently walking 2 miles with sand in your underpants is quite painful. So Chad, good daddy that he is, ran home to get the van. And I mean ran! The girls and I continued on, figuring we would get as far as we could by the time Dad came back for us. We made it to the top of the second hill. I think I could still see the access point from where he picked us up. Sigh. I shouldn't judge. I have no idea what it feels like to have that much sand in your underpants. :)
Aquarium
We went out for a nice lunch and then headed down the coast to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which, it turns out, is a darling little aquarium. We saw them feeding the sea otters. I've loved otters since my days living in Pebble Beach. I love how they lay on their backs and use their tiny arms to break open clams. It was fun to watch them work on getting those clam shells open and tearing the meat out with their sharp teeth. They were spinning and gliding in the water and just generally having a great otter time.
There were seals and an aviary with various local bird. NOT penguins the lady told me about 50 times. "It is not cold enough here for Penguins."
"Right, but puffins. Those are puffins right?" (PS lady, I'm reading the sign that says those are puffins.)
"NOT PENGUINS. Oregon is not cold enough for penguins. If we were to have penguins it would need to be much colder."
I then felt obligated to take each of my children by the face and look at them long and hard. Speaking with great purpose and solemnity I would then explain that there were no penguins in Oregon. As it's simply not cold enough. It would need to be A LOT colder for this to be an apprpriate place for penguins. Oregon and penguins...it's all wrong. Wrong, I tell you. NOT A PENGUIN ANYWHERE. Get it?!!?
Instead I just said, "Ok. No penguins. Thanks." The lady was quite old and it's wrong to senselessly tease old people. Hear me girls? Wrong. Even when you are 33, can read and know the basic habitat of penguins, even then, don't tease the old people.
There was lots of other cool stuff to see - sea lions, a touching tide pool (where you could touch starfish, anemones, sea cucumbers, crabs, etc), a shark tunnel (where you walk beneath the water and see sharks swim on all sides of you, giant Japanese spider crabs (that grow to have a leg span of 13 feet. shudder), and a giant octopus. Turns out Brynn has a very low octopus tolerance. She was in there about 30 seconds before she had to run away. "Sorry mom," she said, "that is disgusting me out."
Sandcastles and Sunsets
Back at the beach house I made a yummy spaghetti dinner and then we hit the beach for sandcastles and the sunset. It was lovely to watch the moon rise over the ocean and the light, breezy blue fade into a warm, rosy pink and then again to a clear, dark night sky.
After the girls were long tucked in and the dinner dishes were done, I laid in bed talking about to Chad about the day. We had our bedroom window open and a cold wind blew in off the water. We talked about all the crazy things we had seen at the aquarium. The 13 foot Japanese spider crab got a lot of discussion. So many sea creatures are so weird and we wondered why we some of that stuff was even created. Because, a Chad so aptly put it, if we didn't have fish, we'd just eat something else. (ha!) So true.
Day 3 Favorite Road Sign - LIMBO UNLIMITED. I'm not kidding. Apparently, in OR you can limbo as much as you want without fear of reprisal. What freedom. (It's actually the name of the company who "adopted" a certain stretch of highway, but that's not nearly as much fun.)
Accidental Tidepooling
From our cottage we can see huge rocks on the beach beneath us, so we thought we'd check them out. Turned out to be absolutely awesome tidepooling. We started by seeing one little purple starfish on one little rock, then the next thing we knew we had found dozens and dozens of them all lumped together all over the rocks. There were mussels and anemones of various colors and gobs and gobs of purplr and orange starfish.
I had planned to take a day tidepooling, so this accidental tidepooling sort of stole my thunder, but it was amazing! Then we walked up the beach to find the public beach access. Along the way the girls managed to get wet and dirty. Huh, how did that happen? By the time we found the public access point we realized we were really far from the house. We figured no problem, we'll walk home. We made it about 10 steps before Brynn informed us she had too much sand in her underpants to walk home. Apparently walking 2 miles with sand in your underpants is quite painful. So Chad, good daddy that he is, ran home to get the van. And I mean ran! The girls and I continued on, figuring we would get as far as we could by the time Dad came back for us. We made it to the top of the second hill. I think I could still see the access point from where he picked us up. Sigh. I shouldn't judge. I have no idea what it feels like to have that much sand in your underpants. :)
Aquarium
We went out for a nice lunch and then headed down the coast to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which, it turns out, is a darling little aquarium. We saw them feeding the sea otters. I've loved otters since my days living in Pebble Beach. I love how they lay on their backs and use their tiny arms to break open clams. It was fun to watch them work on getting those clam shells open and tearing the meat out with their sharp teeth. They were spinning and gliding in the water and just generally having a great otter time.
There were seals and an aviary with various local bird. NOT penguins the lady told me about 50 times. "It is not cold enough here for Penguins."
"Right, but puffins. Those are puffins right?" (PS lady, I'm reading the sign that says those are puffins.)
"NOT PENGUINS. Oregon is not cold enough for penguins. If we were to have penguins it would need to be much colder."
I then felt obligated to take each of my children by the face and look at them long and hard. Speaking with great purpose and solemnity I would then explain that there were no penguins in Oregon. As it's simply not cold enough. It would need to be A LOT colder for this to be an apprpriate place for penguins. Oregon and penguins...it's all wrong. Wrong, I tell you. NOT A PENGUIN ANYWHERE. Get it?!!?
Instead I just said, "Ok. No penguins. Thanks." The lady was quite old and it's wrong to senselessly tease old people. Hear me girls? Wrong. Even when you are 33, can read and know the basic habitat of penguins, even then, don't tease the old people.
There was lots of other cool stuff to see - sea lions, a touching tide pool (where you could touch starfish, anemones, sea cucumbers, crabs, etc), a shark tunnel (where you walk beneath the water and see sharks swim on all sides of you, giant Japanese spider crabs (that grow to have a leg span of 13 feet. shudder), and a giant octopus. Turns out Brynn has a very low octopus tolerance. She was in there about 30 seconds before she had to run away. "Sorry mom," she said, "that is disgusting me out."
Sandcastles and Sunsets
Back at the beach house I made a yummy spaghetti dinner and then we hit the beach for sandcastles and the sunset. It was lovely to watch the moon rise over the ocean and the light, breezy blue fade into a warm, rosy pink and then again to a clear, dark night sky.
After the girls were long tucked in and the dinner dishes were done, I laid in bed talking about to Chad about the day. We had our bedroom window open and a cold wind blew in off the water. We talked about all the crazy things we had seen at the aquarium. The 13 foot Japanese spider crab got a lot of discussion. So many sea creatures are so weird and we wondered why we some of that stuff was even created. Because, a Chad so aptly put it, if we didn't have fish, we'd just eat something else. (ha!) So true.
Day 3 Favorite Road Sign - LIMBO UNLIMITED. I'm not kidding. Apparently, in OR you can limbo as much as you want without fear of reprisal. What freedom. (It's actually the name of the company who "adopted" a certain stretch of highway, but that's not nearly as much fun.)
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