Just one more picture of Kevin goofing...So last post left us standing on a beach south of Florence (don't think I mentioned that...), thinking of what to do next. We had been standing and watching the water, when I saw two heads in the waves. I thought they might be otter, but then Kevin shouted, said they were a bit further south now and no, they were sea lions. How exciting! We, neither one of us, have ever seen a sea lion in the wild! So what if we just caught a glimpse of their round little heads! We still saw them lol
We left the beach driving north again toward Florence when we saw a sign "The World's Largest Sea Lion Cave, 11 Miles North of Florence on HWY 101". Well, we couldn't say no to that!!!
"The Worlds Largest Sea Cave" is an interim home to two breeds of sea lions; the Steller and the Californian, both can be seen in the following pictures.
This is the view from the deck around the building where you go to pay to see the cave. What a view!
This is looking west off the deck; if you look really close, you can see a sea lion in the water here...
Wow, huh? This sea lion skeleton is still lying exactly where they found it when the started exploring the cave system.
If you click on the link above you will see that the sea lions do spend at least part of their time in the cave, but on this day it was too cool, and the rocks too invitingly sun-warmed for them to be tempted into the cave.
California sea lions are brown while the Stellers are dark brown.
Please click for big on these pictures, I am continually amazed at the detail my camera picks up, and there is so much of it!
I caught the light house winking at me ;-)
I love to catch the 'spooshes' when waves come in... so here we are standing on a deck between two towering rocks looking out through the crevasse. See the rocks where the sea lions are? The sea lions actually ride the waves to get onto the rocks, then haul themselves up. We watched at least two playing this game while we were there. Kevin said he saw one get on the rock, turn around and jump right back off to play some more.
Couldn't resist this shot...
And that was that.We left the sea lion caves, headed back down to Florence, caught the 126 East back to Laura's and complete and utter, contented exhaustion. So the last 3 posts were all of one day.
Tomorrow???
The Festival :)
2 comments:
I STILL can't believe I missed you! I feel a little (completely undeserved) pride that you enjoyed our state so much; I just love it here and hope to never move away. And we have two guest rooms, just so people like you can come and stay while visiting here! Just let us know and "we'll leave the light on for you."
If you pull off at the Strawberry Hill wayside you can see sea lions, walrus and tide pools without having to pay admission and without the smell. We went with Amy a couple of times which is cool since she is a marine biologist. We also went to Heceta Head a couple of times, even paid to walk to the top of the lighthouse. She also could tell us all about the Fresnel lenses since that's her dad's specialty. You really should take the trip with Amy.
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