We were hoping for fog this morning since it rained last night and it was supposed to be cloudy today. There was some patchy fog, but it wasn't where we needed it. We tried shooting the trees by Seal Rock, but there was no fog there. The fog was too thick on the Yaquina Bay Bridge and too thin around the bridge over Alsea Bay. Since nothing was working, we returned to the motorhome and went back to bed.
You can tell the very long days have gotten to us. We've been traveling now for 31 days. Most of the days start at 8:00 and end after midnight or 1:00 a.m. We didn't wake up from our morning nap until 1:00 in the afternoon. We were wiped out.
The weather hadn't improved while we were sleeping, so we had a leisurely lunch before driving to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. The aquarium was relatively small when compared to Sea World or Birch Aquarium, but it was very well designed and packed a lot into a small area. It focused on the Oregon coast habitat. We spent a couple hours photographing the puffins and the sea otters. The smaller exhibits of the intertidal zone were excellent. We even saw a sea perch giving birth.
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| Puffin | Puffin | Puffin |
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| Sea Otter | Sea Otter | Moon Jellyfish |
While we were at the aquarium, the sky started to open up, so we drove south to Seal
Rock.
This is an amazing area. The coastline is all sandstone here, but there is an off-shore
volcanic dike that has created two huge rocks joined by a
knife blade of basalt. Arcing on both directions away from
the two rocks are a long series of rocks that seem to be
holding their own against the pounding of the waves. North
of the main viewpoint, the islands take a huge pounding,
and the waves splash at least 10 feet above the waves. Far
out in the distance, we could see the Yaquina Head Lighthouse
light. One group of rocks traps the waves as they come in,
so any of the larger waves crash the height of the rock.
On the south side of the viewpoint, the basaltic rocks arc to meet the shore a couple miles farther down the coast.
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| Seal Rocks Looking South | Seal Rocks Looking North |
The clouds at the horizon prevented a good sunset, but the clouds did light up briefly just before sunset. One of the nice things about the viewpoints at Seal Rock is that you can go back and forth on the trail to see either north or south.
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