The weather guessers were right. It stopped raining last night and there was even a bit of sunshine breaking through the clouds this morning as evidenced by our roof-mounted sunshine detectors. (See image below).
Around noon, we went to Moolack Beach about six miles north of Newport. Bridget read that it was a good place to find agates. It was pretty close to low tide (12:57 pm) as you can see in the pictures. The lighthouse to the south is the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse. I have no idea how to pronounce that name. I believe the lighthouse is on tomorrow’s itinerary. No agates were found.
BTW, at the listed low tide time, the tide seemed to be coming back in. Maybe the times listed are PST, not PDT. The website I looked at didn’t say one way or another.
We ended up heading into the Yaquina Head Lighthouse aka Cape Foulweather Lighthouse. The lighthouse property is managed by BLM so no entrance fee with my senior National Park Pass. They have a very nice interpretive center and it’s about a third of a mile walk to the lighthouse with some fabulous views. You could drive to the lighthouse but it was a fabulous day for a walk.
The inside of the lighthouse is closed on Fri, Sat, and Sun. Seems odd but since the tours are staffed by volunteers, they probably want the weekends off. When the tours are offered, you can climb the steps. This is the tallest lighthouse in Oregon. Since the lighthouse is now fully automated, the 100-year old residences were removed before such things were considered historical. Most of the building material was brought in by ship directly to the site as there was only a rough path from Newport.
At the base of the lighthouse, there were quite a few seals/sea lions. I don’t know which. In the previous picture, you can see them to the left and below the lighthouse. There were quite a few but they were not very vocal. Maybe saving their energy for the weekend crowd. The tide was still pretty low and there were some tide pools but I opted not to go down to the beach.
nice pics, nice place to boondock.
ReplyDeleteI’m told that boondocking locations are hard to find in the PNW. But we are staying at Thousand Trails locations as well as Harvest Host. In Corvallis, the only option is expensive RV parks. I haven’t looked very hard. Next week, we have a couple of free dry camping locations picked out. Those are Harvest Hosts.
DeleteIn the next few days Bridget will be posting her pics of the tide pools. She opted to go down and enjoy sea anemones and sea stars.
ReplyDeleteThe tide pools are usually pretty cool with all kinds of sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and mussels, etc. We've only been there once but it was neat.
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