Day # 22 - Oregon Coast

"Okay…we only have a month left to go in our trip." That was what Missy told me this morning when we woke up. Only 30 days left. In some ways that feels like a V E R Y long time. And in some ways I cannot believe that is all we have left. In any event, it was an interesting realization.

I got to pick the activity today. And I wanted to go to a beach called Seal Rock about 20 minutes down the coast. I like this beach because it is the kind of beach I picture in my mind when I think of Oregon. Lots of big haystack rocks all along the beach and jutting out of the water, a wide open stretch of sand, and lots of tide pools for finding starfish and other marine life. Seal Rock has all these things and I recommend it as a great beach to visit.

So after a big breakfast we loaded in the car and headed down the 101 to Seal Rock Beach. The morning low tide is at 10:35AM today and we got there around 11:00. The parking lot was busy and like many of the beaches, the walkway from the parking lot ends in a pretty steep drop to the beach. I carried AJ and all our supplies down the rocks while Missy made her way gingerly down. I love my wife, but no one would describe her as “surefooted”. In any event, the beach was very uncrowded despite all the cars and we picked out a spot about 50 yards away from anyone else.

Once we got settled on the beach, Sarah and I headed out to the rocks to find some “critters” in the tide pools. Abby tagged along for a while, but she got bored and headed back to the beach to play in the sand with Missy and AJ. Sarah has really been into “nature” during this trip and she had asked me yesterday if she and I could go out on the rocks and look in the tide pools. At first we didn’t see much besides the normal anemones, but once we got out past the first line of rocks, we started seeing a lot of Starfish (my daughter would correct me here and tell that the right name for them is “sea stars”, but they were starfish when I was a kid and that is what I am going to call them!) We found several tucked under the backs of some of the rocks. Mostly the orange and red kind with 5 arms but we did see a black webbed one also. Sarah told me that “John, the teenage boy at the Aquarium” said that the black once were called “Bat Sea Stars”. She took great pleasure in teaching me that little fact. I googled it when we got back and sure enough…she is right. In addition to the Starfish we also saw a big horseshoe crab swimming around in one of the shallow pools. Seal Rock also has several very large mussels’ beds. This explains the large number of starfish since they use their arms to pry open the mussel’s shells so they can eat them. Find a bunch of broken mussels shells in a tide pool and there are starfish nearby.

After an hour or so, the tide was starting to come back in and Abby and AJ wanted to join us, so Sarah and I went back to the rocks closest to the shore and hung with the rest of the family. That is when Missy noticed a seal lying on one of the rocks about 50 yards off the shore. As we watched it sunning itself, Sarah noticed another seal swimming in the water around the same rock. After circling around for a few minutes, the second seal tried to get up on the rock also, but the tide was pretty low and he was not having much success. He would make it about a third of the way up the rock and fall back into the water. Finally he timed a wave just right and literally threw himself onto the rock. If was very fun to watch. After digging in the sand for a while (and once AJ had packed several pounds of sand into his pants and other personal places by rolling down the beach) we decided to head back to the camper.

We grilled hamburgers and hotdogs at the camper for lunch and then all 5 of us went down for a nap. After naps we played at the camper for a while and the girls and I walked up to the campground’s visitors center and looked at some of the displays of the fossils and shells that had been found on the beach over the years. Then we all got a bag of the free popcorn they give out (did I tell you that Oregon campgrounds rock or what!?!?!) and walked back to the camper. After dinner we built a big campfire and roasted marshmallows. Well, actually I roasted marshmallows and the girls just ate them. AJ likes the cooked ones, but is usually in too big a rush to pack the marshmallows into his mouth to wait for them to be cooked. Missy brought out some chocolate chip cookies that we used to make s’mores.

After the sugar buzz wore off, we put the kids to bed and Missy and I hung around the campfire for a while. Tomorrow is our last day in Oregon and Abby has been bugging me about flying our kite at the beach. It is supposed to be pretty windy tomorrow so it should be a good day for kite flying.