Oregon Coast

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I’m running a bit out of time and was only able to stay on the Oregon Coast for two days and two nights. In case any of you have ever driven the approx. 50 miles along the Great Ocean Road just imagine doing that for two days. It is very rugged and beautiful and since I’m on this unbelievable lucky streak (and somehow needed to be rewarded for NOT seeing Orcas on San Juan) I went to have a look at a light house next to a seal rock just by chance really. I was standing there taking photos of about thousands of penguins crammed together on an offshore island when this women elbows me in the back and asked ‘Did you see it’? This little sentence has become my energy drink so to speak, I instantly spun around and demanded to know what ‘it’ was. A Grey Whale mom with her calf, cruising past us down below. I could have hugged that lady, honest, and I thanked her many, many times for telling me where the whales were. I stayed for a while and just watched them come back up for air every few minutes. The mom first and the little one just a beat after her. So cute. I didn’t even look for any when I got there because according to the park leaflets the whale season was over. But this lovely woman was told by a local that a Grey Whale female and her calf were hanging around in the bay because there was a huge kelp field. What that actually means I don’t know, because I thought Grey Whales eat plankton but I will investigate this further when I get back home.

I did a lot of driving in the past two days and I’m still not in California. I will have to decide in the next two days if I stay on the coast and go back that way to Los Angeles, or go back west to the National Parks, in particular Yosemite and Kings Canyon. Decisions, decisions. But I doodled around Washington for too long to do both. I cannot believe that 7 weeks are still not long enough for all the places I wanted to visit. I would really like to go to San Francisco for a day or two and then my friend Debbie’s brother-in-law is expecting my visit. It’s almost over, but to be honest, I miss my dogs so much. Everyone seems to have dogs here and when I walk on the beach it just doesn’t feel right without them. Something is missing – they would just love it here.

Btw, I saw a guy today on a bike, heavily packed up with backpack and pulling one of those kiddie trailers and another one after that. He had a Weimeraner on a leash padding along next to him. First when I saw him I thought how cruel and unnecessary, but when I got closer I realised that the kiddie trailer was empty – that was for the dog when it got too tired! Ha ha ha, isn’t that the coolest way to go on a road trip? My dogs would love that. But my brown one is too fat, he would have to pull me like a horse. Now there is an idea.

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