Day 4 (7/14) was breakfast from the bin again (none of these coastal hotels seem to offer any kind of breakfast). Low-tide was just passing in the morning and the beach outside the hotel was really shallow so the water was retreated much further than I am used to.
Van packed again, it was up to Depoe Bay for our whale-watching trip. The little Zodiac took us out the harbor past the seals to a navigational buoy with some sea lions before heading on towards the whales. The expedition group we used is part of a research team led by a marine biologist who’s been studying this pod of whale for over 20 years. Her work started by definitively proving what the whales are eating that allows them to stay off the Oregon coast all summer instead of continuing up to Alaska with the rest of the whales–it’s a type of shrimp.
On this trip a mother and calf were hanging out, much closer to the shoreline than I would have expected, doing their constant diving for food to fatten up for winter. While the boat was moving Heather and I were fine, but while “stopped” and just kind of slowly rotating in place we both got a little queasy. For me it seemed to primarily be when the waves came rolling in from behind and couldn’t be predicted. The boat captain got us moving again and that helped a lot. But I stopped taking pictures about halfway through because trying to sight through the telephoto lens was definitely making it worse.
We got to watch while a research team attempted to drop a tracking beacon onto one of the whales using a drone. They missed a couple times and then a pair of seagulls decided they didn’t much care for this thing in their space and started diving at it. It was amusing.
We saw a lot of spouts from the whales’ blowholes, some “sharking” (when the edge of their fluke is visible and looks like a shark fin), and a couple of clear views of their flukes. No breaching though.
Back to land, a little walking around to resettle my stomach, and we were heading north once more. Next stop was the Lincoln City Glass Center (finally managed to catch a glass-arts facility open). Would have been fun to sign up for a hands-on tutorial, but not being able to predict when we’d be anywhere very precisely we hadn’t done that. We looked at the gallery, bought a magnet, and took a picture with this mural nearby.
Lunch was at the Lincoln City Pig ‘N Pancake. The girls had more crepes than they could eat and Heather was now obsessed with the restaurant–which is a chain, so this would not be our last Pig ‘N Pancake visit.
The next point of interest on our map was the Tillamook Creamery, but the plan had been to be there around dinner time and eat dinner at their cafe. However, we’d only just eaten lunch and it was only an hour away. So we looked for some way to kill time and ended up at the Connie Hansen Garden Conservancy (also in Lincoln City). Connie had created and tended this garden lot throughout her life and after she died the community organized to continue in her memory and maintain the garden. It’s freely open to the public all day. So we meandered about. Found a bed for Heather and Corinne was distressed by the size of these leaves.
Then Tillamook Creamery for self-guided tours, samples, dinner at the cafe, and obligatory ice cream. Since we were still somewhat full from Pig ‘N Pancake we had a light “dinner.” Fried cheese curds, fries, and Heather and I split a grilled cheese sandwich. You could get a scoop of ice cream for $4 or this flight of 3 scoops of ice cream for $9 (they were not smaller scoops). So the girls and I split a flight and everyone got to pick a flavor (chocolate peanut butter for me, orange & cream for Heather, mint chocolate chip for Corinne) and Jess got a scoop of her own (caramel swirl).
Our destination for the evening was the Surfside Inn at Rockaway Beach.