Still More Fun at Cape Lookout

As you can see, we've been very busy the last couple of days. Yesterday, we went kayaking on the Trask River, which flows around Tillamook and into Tillamook GBay. On the advice of some fishermen who were launching where we were, we paddled downriver, into the wind, planning on the tide turning and pushing us back to the start when we were done. The river is pretty sheltered, so the wind didn't bother us too much. Steve even found us a nice little backwater to explore where it was calm with no wind at all. And, amazingly, when it was time to turn around, the fishermen's advice worked! Unlike Utah, where the wind seems to switch just when you don't want it to, here the wind seems to blow consistently in from the ocean. We really didn't have to paddle much at all to get back to the launch, even though we were going upriver and theoretically against the current' It's sort of like Rock, Paper, Scissors--in the game of Current, Wind, Tide, Tide always wins. On our way back to camp from our paddling trip, we stopped at Cape Meares to view the lighthouse and the Octopus tree. There's a nice trail with beautiful views all around the Cape, with excellent informational signs about the birds, seals, and other wildlife that live in the area. A bonus was a volunteer ranger with a spotting scope set up facing a peregrine falcon nest in the cliffs across the little bay at the cape. We were able to view the five week old chicks on the ledge.

Today we went back to the Cape Lookout trail that we hiked several days ago, but didn't get to the end because we ran out of time. The picture of us Vagabundos was taken there. There are several other pictures from the hike that will show up in the next blog, because Blogger wouldn't let me put them in this blog. One of them is of a bald eagle in the top of a Sitka spruce. But he was only the second best thing we saw on the hike. Whales! We saw grey whales in the bay just south of the cape. We were just hiking along, admiring the view of the water way down below, when we heard this whooshing/blowing sound. Next thing we saw a spout of water, and then the mottled dark gray back of a whale just before it dove. We kept watching, and sure enough, it resurfaced, along with a smaller one--her calf. And then a third. They didn't seem to be going anywhere, were just kind of circling and hanging out. Too far away to photograph, although close enough to see clearly.We later found out that there is a resident pod in that bay; they stay there all year 'round, rather than migrating down to Baja and back to Alaska. We felt so lucky to spot them.

In the afternoon, I drove into town to do laundry and grocery shopping, as we are leaving here in the morning. On our last trip to town, I had picked up some fresh crabcakes at the little fish market across the street from the cheese factory and fried them up for supper that night. They were fabulous, and Steve requested that I get some more, which we had tonight with baked potatoes and the snow peas I bought at the Farmers' Market on Saturday. The fish market lady also told me how she makes them, so next time I may just buy the crabmeat and make them myself.