Newport again

First of all, Happy Birthday to all those recent B'days. Karen & Leah last month and Moose and Mouse today!

Now that we have these commercial announcements out of the way.......

We are sitting in Yaquina Harbor, or more accurately the Marina is.....

The Yaquina were a tribe of Indians that inhabited this area until the white man screwed them like we did all the others. They called the harbour, the head, the sea and themselves the Yaquina. Here's some more history...And here's the lighthouse that it refers to. There are two of them here....



This one was "Relit" in 1999 according to local intel....

Leaving here you headed generally back north along Nye Beach and what was the original Highway 101. Could see the other lighthouse from there but it's a ways across the bay. We decided to head back over the bayfront and find some bait for lunch. We did that very thing too.


Mmmmmmmm.....good.....

After that delicious sidenote, we headed back north to the big lighthouse.....

Below this lighthouse is the most awesome beach so far. Here's a little video of what the sea does when it washes up here. Listen close to the sound as the wave washes back out.....




It's interesting as you get further down this beach, the rocks get smaller and the sound gets higher. This is supposed to be a good area for tide pools at low tide also. We are going to check that out in the morning. Low tide tonite is at about 9:30pm and they close the gates on you.

There were also a few harbor seals playing out in the bay, not close enough to get good pics of them though. But in this same state park is a place called quarry cove. Yep, it was an old rock quarry, but now it houses some of these guys.....


The commercial harbor has a bunch of sea lions, instead of these "harbor seals". We can hear them barking at night after the wind calms down some.


Here's a shot of the harbor from the other side of the bridge looking back towards where we are staying...



Time to fire up the grill. Tomorrow we are heading up to Depoe bay to look around. They are supposed to have a year round local group of gray whales that inhabit their area. Hopefully we will get a look at them....