Our resort is a true resort...still not as nice as our beloved Hilton Head but exceptional views that include whales right outside our windows!
The beach is often windy, but for me, Finny, it is fantastic!
And a dog park with grass no less! My buddies Rudy, Duffy, Cooper, and Murphy would love it!
The first night Mom and Dad went downtown to Local Ocean Seafood with a beautiful view of the harbor. Mom had Halibut, Dad had huge oysters he said, and they had a Dungeness crab appetizer...come on Mom and Dad, what about me😋
We ended the day with a nice sunset that we watched from the coach...
Okay Saturday morning all three of us headed down to Florence, but not before Mom and Dad visited some coaches on display at the resort and went to a Chowder House in Ney Beach for a nice bowl of clam chowder! Mom said it was a cute town!
Along the way we saw some nice scenery...
And a lighthouse!
We stopped at Oregon Dunes National Park to see the dunes. A strange sight was how they allowed Dune buggies and Dirt Bikes on the dunes...so different from what we are used to where we protect the east coast dunes. While it looked fun, we couldn't help but wonder if they will regret in years to come that they didn't protect them.
Florence was a neat little town with a Farmer's Market along the boardwalk! I got a few pets too!
The next day Mom and Dad went to Depoe Bay to check out the Whale Watching Tours...they didn't realize they could see the whales right in the harbor and right from their lunch stop!
Depoe Bay is called the smallest harbor in the US...it was a cute town Mom said!
Mom wants to tell you about the rest of the trip...This part of the trip has been very relaxing, we have eaten too much fabulous seafood that included delicious clam chowder, Dungeness crab cakes, huge Pacfic oysters, salmon, and halibut without enough exercise to balance😋. However, nothing compared to today, Monday, July 25.
We scheduled a whale watching trip out of Depoe Bay, Oregon. Now we have been on trips out of Maine and Alaska, but this was just way, way above and beyond. We went out with four other folks plus our guide Carrie Newell and her Golden Retriever, Kady. Carrie is a PhD Marine Biologist with 26 years experience with studying gray whales on the Oregon Coast. We saw a film where she worked with Jean Michael Cousteau, son of famed Jacques!
Through her research, Carrie has discovered specifically what the whales eat that has caused them to stay in the area. While some gray whales travel to Baja for breeding and birthing calves and then travel up the coast to Alaska for feeding, there is a subset that stop in Oregon and never go to AK. They feed in the bay in 30-40 ft of water. We learned to identify the difference in the blow air spouts of females, males and calves. Also, because each of the whales has very identifying marks and barnacles she had named them and could readily identify them! We were able to see 10 different whales with countless sightings! Two other very unique things about this trip...we were in a small zodiac boat she bought from Jimmy Buffet so we were often fairly close and her Golden Kady traveled with us. Now Kady was 151/2 yrs old, had lost her lower jaw to cancer but still went out on the boat up to four times a day. It turns out Kady can smell the whales before we saw them and would bark to let us know when one was close! I cannot say my pictures were very good but we were actually close enough a few times to smell the whale breath...which is pretty bad😝.
On the way out we went through the smallest harbor in the US and saw a few birds and harbor seals.
Here is Kady, the wonder girl!
We watched the whales blow, dive, fluke, and feed. You can tell they are feeding because they flip on their sides and you see a dorsal fin flip up, looking like a shark!
Here are some feeding called sharking...
Blowing...
Fluking...
Kady almost jumped out she got so excited at one point when we had numerous whales around us...
We even saw their back ridges...
It was a truly amazing day thanks to Carrie and Kady!
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