Chasing Whales in the Foul Weather

We have started an interesting trend. When we get situated in a little seaside town that we are enjoying, we tend to want to stay longer than planned. That happened to us again in Newport, Oregon, so we added another day to our stay at South Beach State Park. That is only possible because we are visiting in the shoulder season, staying in a section of the campground that is not yet open to reservations. We're pretty sure this wouldn't work in the summer in these very popular Oregon campgrounds. But we'll enjoy this luxury for now, as we continue to explore around our new home town of Newport.

We spent one rainy day heading further north along the coast on Highway 101. Our first stop was at the 500-foot outcropping above the Pacific Ocean called Cape Foulweather. Honest--we're not making this up. When Captain James Cook first set foot on this section of the Oregon coast in 1778, his exploration team was plummeted by gusty winds and torrential rain. In his March 7, 1778 journal entry he wrote, "At the northern extreme the land formed a point which I called Cape Foulweather from the very bad weather we soon after met with." As you can tell from Denisa's wind-swept hair, we soon after met with the same foul weather today.

This is one of the premier places to spot migrating gray whales on the Oregon coast. But with the clouds and the whitecaps in the ocean, it was almost impossible to see any of the whale spouts that are the first clue that a whale is near.

We headed on down the coast to Depoe Bay--home of the world's smallest harbor. We're not sure how they came to this distinction, but that's what the sign at the bridge said.

Across the street from the world's smallest harbor is the Whale Watching Center that is operated by Oregon State Parks and ran by helpful volunteers. With foggy views and rough seas, there hadn't been any whale sightings today. It looks like we've been skunked again in our search for a whale. But we got the advice that whales often hang out at Boiler Bay, just a few miles down the road. We drove there, where the crashing waves were putting on quite a show against the rocky shore.

We watched as two different whale-watching boats came into Boiler Bay. We obviously weren't the only ones chasing whales along this coast. With our binoculars we could see the faces of the captain and the tourists that had paid $40 each to see a whale. They were all still scanning the horizon, and there was no excited pointing or picture-taking. It looks like we've all been skunked again!

After the last whale-watching-boat left the bay, Denisa moved to a different section of the beach and struck up a conversation with a group of locals. She was pretty excited to find they had spotted a whale. We waited patiently, and it resurfaced again! No pictures, because we know that whale sighting don't make great photos. It usually includes a spout of air and water as the whale surfaces briefly, or a portion of its back breaks the surface of the ocean. It all happens so fast and lasts only a moment. We just had to enjoy it without documentation this time. But we did see the whales ten different times before they left the area. What a thrill--our first west coast whale sighting!

We continued north to Lincoln City. We are obviously getting used to nice beaches and pretty views. The only picture we took here was as we crossed the "D River" bridge. It flows from Devil's Lake all the way to the ocean. Considering that is only 440 feet, that met the Guinness Book criteria for being the World's Shortest River. It looks like we are seeing the world's smallest things this day.

Now that we are experienced whale-watchers, we made another stop at Cape Foulweather on our way home. This time the sheer drop into the ocean at the view point was completely fogged in. It looks like Captain Cook accurately named this place.

Just a few miles away, we made a stop at "Devil's Punchbowl." The tide was getting higher, filling the bowl with frothy white waves. There are entrances at the base of the bowl where waves continued to pour in.

It's hard to tell just how big Devil's Punchbowl is from the picture above. So once again, Denisa is in the picture just to give it scale. She's the tiny black dot huddled in the fog along the fence on the right hand side of the picture below. As you can see, the devil could serve up a lot of punch from a bowl that size.

These pictures prove that we have some definite foul weather in our travels. So it's nice to have some indoor activities for inclement weather days. We visited the Hatfield Marine Science Center one afternoon. We've visited lots of tide pools, but this one was indoors and out of the rain. The volunteer encouraged people to touch things in the touch tank. That's when we discovered that those fluffy anemone tentacles actually feel sticky and try to curl around our fingers when we touched them.

They had tanks of fish that we wouldn't want to touch. This wolf eel had a scary face in front of his snake-like body.

Meanwhile, the fish and coral in the decorative aquariums were beautiful to watch. Lit with black light, the coral was even glowing in neon colors.

Again, we were the only adults in the education center without children. But we enjoyed the comments from some of our younger bystanders. One little boy was excited to see these two fish as he exclaimed, "Hey, I know these guys!" They are obviously Nemo and Dory from the Disney movies.

Our timing was good, as we were just leaving when three bus-loads of students were arriving for a field trip visit. We love kids, but we probably learned more without having to share the exhibits with 90 other children.

Even in foul weather, we enjoy our travels. In spite of the weather, we wandered into chance encounters with some of the biggest and smallest things today.