8/27/2017 - Coastal Drive to Cape Perpetua

Sunday - We ultimately made the decision not to go fishing today, but we did get to watch them pull in a salmon in a boat right in front of our dock.  Made it tough to stick to our decision, but it was sure fun to watch the fight that fish put up!  I think it pulled the boat downstream 100 ft or so.  (I checked the next morning, and I think this salmon was about 25 lbs).

It was funny to watch other boats suddenly head this way -- catching a fish sure acted like a magnet to the other fishermen.

I dropped my camera in the sand the other day, and I've had a little trouble with it since, sometimes the lens doesn't want to move in or out, or open.  And I can hear it grind sand when I open it sometimes, but right now it's still working.  I've also had trouble with my batteries charging, don't know if the charger was loose in the plug-in or what, but today I got down the road with 2 dead batteries.  At our first overlook, my battery died after about 6 pictures, and my other one, which I had with me, also was dead.  So we turned around and came back to the RV to get the charger, which will work in the car.  We were only about 6 miles down the highway, plus our 2 mile road back to the campground, but we were sure glad we did.  And I finally got my picture of the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway that we've been driving (Hwy 101).

The Oregon coastline is beautiful, a mixture of rocks, beaches, driftwood, dunes.  We pulled into almost every viewpoint and state park along our route today, and I have lots of coastline pictures!

And the best part -- we saw whales at the first three overlooks we stopped at!!!  Wow, that was exciting. The first one was at Boiler Bay. I never got a good picture, but we did see some whale tails.  The little black dot in the middle is a whale, believe it or not.  What we saw today were all gray whales.  And they were close in.  I thought, if we were lucky enough to see any, they would be way out to sea.  But these were close, in fact, the first one I saw, I heard it blow first, and I looked down from the cliff, and there it was!  And we didn't see just one, or two.  No, we probably saw at least a dozen, maybe even more than that. 

 

We stopped at Devil's Punch Bowl and watched the waves boil into it.

And at this stopl, there was a "Mo's West," so we had lunch right there -- Joe had a Alaskan cod sandwich and a bowl of clam chowder (I had grilled cheese).

We have seen several trees decorated with "floats" or "marker buoys" or whatever they call them, but today we got another picture.

Finally we reached Newport, we had taken a side road along the coast here and missed the first part of town, but came out right at the bridge.

We could see the sea lions barking, so we went looking for them.  They are so noisy, and so funny.  They just pile on top of each other on the docks and rocks.

 We drove down to the harbor, which is a working harbor (and very smelly).  Boats were coming in.  We saw one filleting fresh-caught tuna, and they had some crabs for sale too.

Another coastal picture.  Joe took a panoramic shot here.

We made it to Yachats about 4:00, and drove on through to Cape Perpetua.  The Croxtons celebrated their 60 wedding anniversary in Yachats and Jim has talked a lot about this little town, so we checked it out, as well as the state park.

We drove up to the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center, 12 minutes before closing, but we did get to walk around to the overlook.

 Joe drove back to the campground, and to the trail to the Tall Spruce Tree but we didn't hike it.  Our last stop was Cooks Chasm.

Today we saw whales, sea lions, 2 deer, and a salmon being caught -- I would say that is a good day for us.  We drove 64 miles and it took about 6 hours -- those Oregon miles again!  But we got back to the RV about 6:00, which may be a record for us.  The temperature here is amazing -- I'm about to wear out my sweatshirt taking it off and putting it on.  One outlook will be cold and windy, the next one warm and sunny.  Very confusing.  The Pacific is about 52 degrees we are told.  We don't see any bikinis!