This was our second day at the coast. We visited a few seaside towns first and saw a few beaches and sights like the Devil’s Punchbowl (which I highly recommend, it blew me away).

After seeing the one whale on our previous visit, we didn’t think we’d get to see many more. Especially when the whale watching building had today count at only 8. We got “lucky” though and saw maybe 15 more throughout the day! Maybe lots of those were all the same whale just moving forwards but it was still exiting every time they breached so who cares. Since they’re only visible for 2 seconds getting a good footage or photos was unlikely. So I took one shaky, loud, windy video of what might be some whales. 🙂 I just looked at it again and it’s not even worth sharing. Rest assured there were whales.

Tidepooling was always the one activity I was super jazzed about for this trip. Admittedly I didn’t do an amazing job of planning our visit to the Yaquina Head Cobble Beach and the tide was relatively high (but on it’s way out) when we arrived. Nevertheless we were greeted with something much more exciting than any anemones I saw this day. An elephant seal had set itself up for a day of lounging only a few meters away from the beach entrance. Wildlife protection had set up signs so no one wandered up to the seal but we were still really close!

I even got a little bit of video footage (albeit shaky and noisy from the wind).

 

The rest of the visit was us scrambling over wet, rocky pools. I saw mostly giant green anemones (Anthopleura xanthogrammica).

In fact the only non-seal non-anemone I saw was this tiny little crab.

On our way out we overheard a couple talking about how there were SO many seals and I had to ask where they all were because the beach was empty! Apparently the whole time they were on a rock, way out. All lounging.

Further along the same rock were birds!

And then in between the beach and the rock was one lone seal and one lone bird.

All in all though, this place was beautiful and I hope I will get the chance to return one day (having thoroughly examined the tide tables).