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Published: September 5th 2007
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Continuing along the Oregon Coast after breakfast at the campsite, we saw more beautiful and stunning coastline. We watched boaters launching their boats off the sandy beach. One I saw, had three men that pushed it out every time a wave came in. Took them at good 4 or 5 waves to get it deep enough for them to get into boat.
We found that the Oregon coast is mostly public and free. The governor at the turn of the century had the foresight to pass legislation to keep the coastline open to everyone. As you drive the 300 plus miles along the coast, a minimum of every 15-20 miles (a lot of times only 5 miles) there is a state park, a picnic area and or public beach access.
We saw lots of horses riding on the beach. We stopped at an overlook in the morning and saw a whale. First you see the spout and then you see a little bit of the back. Grey whales seldom breach the surface, sometimes they will roll over and you will see a side fin, but just seeing the spout is amazing.
We had lunch in Newport at a
restaurant called Quimby’s. For those of you who do not know my maiden name - guess what it is? Quimby. It was quite an upscale restaurant, but the food was delicious and the bill was less than $19.
We found a campsite at Cape Perpetua, a National Forest campground, just outside of Yachats. After setting up we decided to go for a ride to a scenic overlook, 2 miles above the campground. On the way up, Dave saw a road with a sign that intrigued us, “One Lane Road with turnouts.” Thinking this went a mile or so to another scenic overlook, up we went. Well as the road got narrower and the pavement turned to gravel in spots, we came to areas where the forest was clear cut, which opened up to beautiful panorama of this mountain range. We reached an area where the road was narrow with several hundred foot drops off the side of the mountain, and then the road was washed out and barely passable. On we went. Dave was totally amazed at the old-growth forest in this area. The trees were 200 feet high and 4 foot across at the trunk. Anyways after 6
First Whale Sighting
This is the whale we saw in the morning miles, we finally ran into a car coming the other way. We tried to stop it to ask where the heck we were, but the car kept going. Right behind that came another car, and this one stopped. A woman was taking her Granny out for a Sunday drive. We asked were the road went. She said she didn’t know, but when we came to an intersection, the left would take us to Yachats (she pronounced it Yaw-hats. Well it was thirteen miles this way and only 6 if we returned the way we came. But not wanting to return over that washed out area we went the long way home. Our two mile trip to the scenic overlook, turned into a 20 plus mile odyssey - life with Dave is never boring.
We walked across the street from our campsite to the Devil’s Churn. There was a walkway, that meandered down the side of this rock faced cliff to rocks below where the ocean just pounded in, sending the waves 30-40 feet in the air. A family was stopped on one of the overlooks, and they had spotted a whale. I stood with them and sure enough spotted
the spout and then the whale. Usually when the whale surfaced, he would spout 3-4 times and then go under for about 5 minutes. It was awesome to watch. This trip has been very successful for spotting wildlife. We are just loving every minute of it.
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