Thursday on the Oregon Coast

Thursday Becca and I awoke happy, dry and warm despite several rain showers that passed throughout the night. That was a relief – we hadn’t ever camped in rain the in that tent before, but it did well. We hit the road fairly early, and headed south for another cold, wet and beautiful day. After a little ways, we started to get into dune country as you can see here:

At around lunch time we pulled into the Oregon Coast Aquarium and shoved all the little school kids out of the way so we could be in the first row when they fed the sea lions and sea otters. That’s what they get for being so short. Here is a cool picture of a puffin from the aquarium, the otters and octopus were the best part, but the pictures didn’t turn out:

After the aquarium, I was feeling like I always do after I go to aquariums or zoos – a little conflicted. Good aquariums (which this one was) usually have rescued animals on display that couldn’t survive in the wild, and in reasonably sized enclosures. The problem is that they are still enclosures, and the smarter animals know it. The less cognizant animals, horseshoe crabs in this case, just keep going around and around in their cages trying to go someplace and never get there. I always get the impression that their lives are empty, even by horseshoe crab standards.
Our next stop was the Sea Lion Caves to see some of the animals in their natural habitat. Not only did it not smell nearly as bad as I thought it would, it was much cooler also. We rode an elevator down about 200-ft through the cliff, and came to a fenced-in viewing area (we were in the cage this time).

Much better to see nature doing its own thing.

After the sea lion caves, we headed south again to our campground for the night at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, cooked some dinner, went for a short walk, and hit the sack.