18 April 2006 ... The Ocean!

My Dad came visiting on Easter Sunday, driving from Portland in a rented car. After church and a great lunch (at a vegan-friendly restaurant)... we drove out to the coast!!

We live about 60 miles from the Pacific Coast, and it was a lovely drive through the hills. Some trees are just barely starting to bud out, all the trees covered with moss: most with green moss others with spanish moss (but it doesn't hang down like in the swamps of the South). It was beautiful with all the different green shades on a cloudy rainy day.

And when we finally caught a glimpse of the ocean, I didn't even recognize it! It was grey. And big. ha. I was a teenager the last time I saw the ocean... half my life ago!

We visited the Sea Lion Cave and it was awesome. It's a natural cave, the biggest sea cave in the world, where sea lions come to hang out. There is a fenced off place for the humans to watch, and the rest of the cave is open for the wild sea lions to come and go!

There are about 200 sea lions in this group (um, herd? pride? pod?) and I think we got to see almost all 200! They were all packed, lying down on the rocks lining the walls of the cave. Every now and then a big wave would come up and get most everyone wet. (But not the humans, we were far up and angled against the cave opening.) And there were a couple sea lions in the water, coming or going.

It was Loud! The waves were crashing and the sea lions were making their noises, trying to sing the loudest! Us humans had to shout if we wanted to say anything!

And it smelled funny. A fishy smell, like slightly rotting fish, or maybe that's just how the sea lions smell. It was a pretty strong smell, but after a couple minutes I didn't mind it at all.

On the tallest rock, sits the sea lion who thinks he is the most cool! He had his head back, singing, the entire time we were there! I think his neck is going to be sore!

Off Site: Sea Lion Caves

We decided to drive a little bit up the coast and we stopped at a few of the wayside parks. Yay, I got to touch the ocean! We kept our shoes on because it was really chilly, but it was still fun! I stole some rocks from the beach, and some shell fragments. We also got to see a good "blow hole"!

We drove home through a National Forest, on a winding un-named road.

In other news, my little garden is sprouting all over the place! There are dozens of wildflower seedlings. And today I found four baby pea plants trying to pop up! I hope the other seeds I planted come alive soon, as well.

And the state of the web site. I know, it's still all blue and snowy here, instead of rainbow happy elephants, like I promised! Well, all those dumb drawings are hard work, you know. It's coming along, it's just not as much fun as it used to be.