We took a few trips in the area during our Oregon family reunion which we'll post separately here since the last post had enough pictures already. This stretch of the Oregon coast is home to many whales, both full time residents and migratory ones passing through. We all went on a whale watching cruise to get close up views of the whales along the coast. While we were waiting for the cruise to start, we watched some harbor seals at the dock begging for scraps from the day's catch from a fishing charter that had just come in. They were cute to watch.
They succeeded in getting several fish carcasses and were happy with their prize.
Out on the cruise, we saw several whales (I think humpbacks).
The nice thing about these whales vs. others that we have seen is they were very close to shore, I guess due to the deep water near the harbor. In fact, over the week, we saw many whales just from the shoreline, or from viewpoints on the highway that ran up and down the coast. On the cruise, we looked for them breathing through their blowhole like this.
We also took a trip to a nice aquarium in a town called Newport. They had a nice playground for the kids to climb and play there. Brenna was brave enough to go down this "big" slide if Karina was there with her.
Going down with Karina and Tessa was even better.
Karina climbing.
Lydia wound up in the fossilized jaws of a megalodon!
The aquarium has a small tunnel you can walk through under the water with fish swimming all around you. It was a cool place.
They had seals swimming around that loved to come up and look at visitors through the glass. Lydia would pet them through the glass and the seals almost seemed like they could feel it based on their reactions.
At one of the coral reef sections of the aquarium:
Lydia "petting" a skate through the glass. Look at its mouth - it's smiling!
They also had a dinosaur section there full of land and sea creatures, I guess since scientists have found fossils there and dinosaurs are naturally cool. Grant had broken his arm before the trip (which made hanging out at the beach and swimming a challenge with his cast). I told him a much better story for his injury was that his arm was chomped by a ceratopsian.
Lydia tried to feed the dinosaur too.
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