Wednesday April Fools day turned out to be a laid back day at our rental house. It started out with Hailey filling her Mom's and my swimming suits with shave cream... "April Fools!!!". After breakfast we headed down to the beach for a walk. It was breezy, with mixed skies. It alternated between rain showers, and the sun popping out. We all spent a few hours down on the beach below the house. I was out with the view camera and took a bunch of photographs. The girls were mostly just playing in the sand dunes and collecting a few shells. By about lunch time we headed back up to the house. I spread out my camera gear to dry off... and the girls hit the hot tub.
We decided to head into town and have something for lunch. We found a nice little restaurant overlooking the beach and for a change, the food was pretty good. Quite an improvement from the fast food that we have "enjoyed" in recent days... After lunch we headed over to Yaquina Head State Park. This is the park I visited by myself a couple nights ago, and my three day pass was still good. We went down the stairs to Cobble Beach. This is a "Marine Garden" and is carefully monitored by park staff. We saw a harbour seal pup on the beach that had been born earlier that day. Apparently the mother leaves the pup alone on the beach at low tide, and then returns at high tide.
This beach consists of millions of round pepples ranging from marble size to baseball size. These were formed by eons of waves polishing and tumbling them, but the rock itself was originally created when an inland lava flow found it's way to the sea millions of years ago. There are some really cool tide pools here that are accessible at low tide. Aside from the harbor seals we also saw sea anemones, starfish, sea urchins, crabs, hermit crabs, mussels, barnicles and sculpins. The girls had a blast wandering around and exploring. We checked out the Yaquina Head Lighthouse briefly before heading back to our rented house. The girls hit the hot tub for a while and we just stretched out to relax. No one was hungry for supper as we were all still full from the big lunch.
The skies cleared during the afternoon and the sun came out. Tomorrow is forecast to be the best day of the week so we plan on getting up early and getting out while we can.
We decided to head into town and have something for lunch. We found a nice little restaurant overlooking the beach and for a change, the food was pretty good. Quite an improvement from the fast food that we have "enjoyed" in recent days... After lunch we headed over to Yaquina Head State Park. This is the park I visited by myself a couple nights ago, and my three day pass was still good. We went down the stairs to Cobble Beach. This is a "Marine Garden" and is carefully monitored by park staff. We saw a harbour seal pup on the beach that had been born earlier that day. Apparently the mother leaves the pup alone on the beach at low tide, and then returns at high tide.
This beach consists of millions of round pepples ranging from marble size to baseball size. These were formed by eons of waves polishing and tumbling them, but the rock itself was originally created when an inland lava flow found it's way to the sea millions of years ago. There are some really cool tide pools here that are accessible at low tide. Aside from the harbor seals we also saw sea anemones, starfish, sea urchins, crabs, hermit crabs, mussels, barnicles and sculpins. The girls had a blast wandering around and exploring. We checked out the Yaquina Head Lighthouse briefly before heading back to our rented house. The girls hit the hot tub for a while and we just stretched out to relax. No one was hungry for supper as we were all still full from the big lunch.
The skies cleared during the afternoon and the sun came out. Tomorrow is forecast to be the best day of the week so we plan on getting up early and getting out while we can.
These first few shots were taken down on Agate Beach, the one right below our rental house. We found a really cool dead Sea Lion which of course I had to photgraph...
Then we headed over to Yaquina Head State Park. Here are a bunch of shots taken at the Lighthouse, and overviews of the beach and tide pools down below...
Lots of Harbor Seals were lounging about on the offshore rocks.
These next images were all taken down below the Yaquina Head Lighthouse, down at Cobble Beach and in amongst the tide pools.
Last shot of the day was the sun setting out over the Pacific, as seen from the deck of our rental house
No comments:
Post a Comment