So many sights, soo little time.

Since Monday was supposed to be only "partly cloudy" instead of "mostly cloudy" (thank you weather.com) we decided to spend it on the beach, whale watching, lighthousing, outside stuffing.

We went to the whale watching place that I found online and set up an excursion for noon. We had some time to kill so we hit a bunch of the shops in downtown Depoe Bay. MR is a big shopper, she had to bring back something for each of her kids, and likes to have souvenirs from places. So we had plenty of shopping to do. There were tons of little trinkety stores, so we shopped. She found stuff she wanted, and we all found stuff we didn't know we wanted.

Finally it was time for whale watching. Our captain said that this is probably the worst time for whale watching because it's not migrating time. Oh well, we still wanted to go play so we did. We went out and LOVED the boat ride. The weather was beautiful, we saw dolphins or porpoises or whatever they're called, and a ton of birds, and other cool stuff, so we were happy. We really had a great time.

We went back to Yaquina Head lighthouse to see their information center. That was really cool, tons of stuff to see, and of course a little gift shop. My dad wanted to see tide pools, and the rest of us didn't really know what they were, but we were game. So, we went down a couple of hours before low tide and looked at what the water left behind. Tide pools are where the water was, and the creatures stay. We saw anemones, starfish, barnacles, zillions of mussels. It was beautiful. The park gates closed at 5 minutes after sundown, (4:41) so we had to make sure we left in time. The girls were ready to go, but the dads were still playing with the creatures. Finally we made them go back up to the car and get us out in time. On our way we saw a bunch of little black dots in the ocean. We stopped to see if we could find out what they were, and finally realized they were surfers. There was a whole group of people surfing in that water! They were crazy, I'm sure of that. We made it out of the gates in time and headed home again.

Oregon days are so short! The sun seriously goes down before 5:00 and if you're there on vacation, I still don't know what you do for fun after dark....we hung out in our beautiful hotel room, watched movies, played games, and looked at/listened to the ocean.