Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

Today’s agenda was totally dependent on the weather. If the weather turned out to be nice and sunny, we were going to head south along the coast, which we have been told is beautiful, and stop in to see the sea lion caves and then continue on to the sand dunes. And guess what? The weather did turn out to be warm and sunny so off we went! I can now tell you that it is true, the Oregon coast is as impressive as everyone says. After only about 10 minutes we stopped at a “view point” to, what else, take a few pictures. Little did I know that I was about to take a photo that I may never be able to duplicate … at least from shore. While we were there we found a group of people whale watching. That’s right, watching whales from the shore with their bare eyes. Well, some of them had some covering on their eyes. It turns out that this part of the Oregon coast is home to Grey Whales much of the year and they feed on creatures who live on the bottom of the ocean so they tend to stick around the coast to minimize the depth they need to go to food. We saw many whales’ blow spouts as they came to the surface for air but it was difficult to actually see the whale themselves as they remained barely below the surface. We did catch a couple of glimpses of their back as they finished catching a breath and started to dive again. I was having a terrible time trying to catch a photo of this since by the time someone spotted the blow-spout mist I had to quickly located it, as well as get focused, zoomed properly, and then take the picture. That was usually more than enough time for the whale to be gone again. However, we managed to find one whale who seemed to be about as slow at catching breaths as I am at taking photos. So I actually caught some photos of his back a couple of times. Then, after all the breaths he decided to take a deep dive and as he went down his tail swung out of the water and I actually, through some aligning of the planets, managed to get a photo of the tail (But Blogger won't allow me to upload that photo for some reason ... arrgg!). Technically I believe they refer to this part of a whale’s body as “flukes”. I know I could certainly refer to my ability to get a photo of it as a fluke. Anyway, feel free to explicate this to someone at your next cocktail party with that bit of trivia. After that great start to the day we continued on down 101 toward the sea lion caves. But along the way we kept coming across breathtaking scenes causing us to stop and take photos and to just appreciate the incredible scenery. This made our trip take perhaps just a little longer than normal. And just before we arrived at the Sea Lion caves we came across the Heceta Head Lighthouse. This is apparently the most photographed lighthouse on the Oregon coast. How do they know things like this? Maybe they were watching me? Anyway, we took a little tour and actually got to go inside and climb to the top. What amazed me was that this lighthouse was built in 1894 and it is not only still standing, but it is still being used! They switched from kerosene to electricity in 1934 which made the maintenance duties dramatically simpler to be sure. And I collected a few other tid bits of trivia just for my readers. For instance, the light does not actually move. The light is stationary and the lens around it moves. Also each lighthouse has its own signature. The Heceta Head lighthouse’s signature is to give a “flash” every 10 seconds. That way sailors can determine which lighthouse they are viewing. That’s probably enough for now. Then it was on to the Sea Lions. To be honest, I found the Sea Lion caves to be a bit of a let down. We got to see the Sea Lions basking in the sun on the rocks outside and we also got to see them behaving badly on the rocks inside the cave. The cave itself is interesting but I guess that kind of thing just doesn’t do it for me. But the views of the ocean and the coast from the viewing platforms were spectacular though. Then is was on to the dunes. Unfortunately the winds had really picked up at this point so the idea of spending much time in sand dunes was not all that appealing. And renting dune buggies was pretty much out of the question since we could likely generate the same effect on our bodies with a sand blasting tube. So we decided to pop into a state park and just checked them out while we were there. We were surprised to see that many people were “sand boarding”. I guess that is what you call it when you are using what looks like a snowboard but you are wearing shorts and sliding down huge mounds of sand on a warm summer day. Pretty radical. It was fun to watch but the wind and sand were taking there toll so after a stroll up a couple of dunes, and taking a few video clips, we decided to call it a day. Then we got to enjoy all the same lovely scenery in reverse with the added enjoyment of a slightly different sun angle. We made it back in time to catch the sunset on the beach and then head back to the MoHo. So all in all, this will have to go into the books as an excellent day.

Today’s word:

explicate \EK-spluh-kayt\, transitive verb:
To explain; to clear of difficulties or obscurity.