Whales & Lighthouses

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Our new location is the Oregon coast. Our first volunteer job is at Heceta Head Lighthouse just north of Florence Oregon. Our job is to conduct the tours of the lighthouse. We work 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. We have just completed our first 1 & ½ weeks of work and so far we are loving it. In return for our labor the parks department gives us a free campsite to park our trailer in. We will be here for one month. In June we’ll be volunteering in the Columbia River Gorge at Memaloose state park just 11 miles from where Kathy grew up. There we will be the campground hosts. This consists of cleaning up campsites, emptying garbage, providing information and working the entrance booth. We will in Europe for all of July (more about that later), then back to the lighthouse for August. In Sept/Oct we are camphosting at a state park just above Bend Oregon called Smith Rock. It is a day use only park very popular with rock climbers. That is pretty much our schedule for the next 6 months.

But more about what we are doing right now. When we first arrived the ranger gave us a small booklet which contained a sample tour guide presentation to study. We had a few days to study then we showed up for work. We were able to walk along with a few tours the more experienced guides took and then we got the dreaded question… “Are you ready to go alone?”. The first one is always the scariest. But we both handled it well and are now old hands at this game. Our tour consists of explaining the early history of the lighthouse while we stand with the group outside looking down into the cove and up at the lighthouse, then we head inside and take them through the rooms and up the different levels, pausing and explaining what they are seeing as we go until we climb all 58 steps to the top and they get to see the huge hand ground glass rotating lens. Each tour takes anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes, depending on the group and how much history they want to hear. Some groups just want to get up to the top, see the lens and get back down. Others want the whole story and what life was like for the lighthouse keeper and their families. The lighthouse is situated on a cliff overlooking a small cove and a fantastic viewing place for whales, seal lions (we are right next to the sea lion caves) and sea birds. Waiting for tourists and looking at the view is as good as taking tours up.

Our best day so far was yesterday. It was a very slow day until about 2PM, only a few tourists every hour then in the afternoon things started to pick up and we had more people. Likewise in the first couple of hours we didn't see much activity in the water, just a few sea lions and the usual birds.
Then about 2:30 we started to see whales and we saw whales and we saw whales. All in all we saw about 8 grey whales in less than an hour. Most of them were mamas with their calves beside them. Then the best of all... a female started breaching. Breaching is when a whale jumps out of the water and they rarely do it when the water is shallow. You usually have to be out at sea in a boat to see them do this. The female came out of the water about 1/2 it's body length not once but about 4 times! And her baby tried to do it too. Mike and I couldn't believe we were actually seeing this from shore. The whales usually travel very close to the shore when they migrate up the coast and these whales were about 100 feet from shore. Very close to us, and we were standing up on a cliff above them so we had a great view. The weather was sunny and breezy and the conditions couldn't have been better. I am still excited about what we saw. We ended up staying at the lighthouse until after 4PM (we usually get off at 3pm) most of that time watching all the whales. What an experience!

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Photos

Hard at work
It's HOW MANY steps to the top??? And HOW MANY times a day do I have to climb it?????