Not much of a hiking day but it was a really beautiful day on the beach. Me and my mom decided to go to Depoe Bay in hopes of seeing some whales as today was the last day of their spring migration. After this, some gray whales stay there until May or early June, but in fewer numbers.
When we got to Depoe Bay there were a lot of people, really hard to find a spot to park anywhere. Sure it have been because it was a nice warm Saturday! In the beginning we even had some sunshine. While hiking along SR101 above the cliffs I noticed that these cliffs were teeming with life - many kinds of birds and - surprisingly - lots of squirrels. All cliff dwellers got a lot of handouts from the tourists and didn't worry about our close presence; the squirrels even allowed people to touch them. I tried to capture seagulls in flight (while keeping my dog from chasing squirrels) - it was not easy but very interesting. There were some whales too, mostly seen only with the binoculars. I spotted two, my mom about seven.
- What are these birds called?
After some time in Depoe Bay we decided to go south and see some new viewpoints. We stopped on
Cape Foulweather - it was very windy but the ocean 500 feet below looked almost still.
As we had a couple of hours yet we went to explore Devil's Punchbowl. I've never seen it before but it appears like there was pretty low tide at the time and many people walked inside the Bowl.
I wanted to visit the Bowl too but couldn't figure out how to get down to the beach. We hiked around the upper viewpoint and I spotted a large human trail going under the fence and beyond "don't go beyond this sign" sign so I gave it a try. This trail came steeply down and stopped on the cliff edge right opposite the Bowl entrance, but too high to climb down yet. Three more people came through the fence just after me but I said them there was impossible to get down here. After a little search we found another trail leading down to the beach - and sure enough, the Devil's Punchbowl entrance.
It actually has four openings - an upper hole, two from the shore (one is probably too small for humans to get in) and one opening from the ocean. The large waves sometimes broke into the cave from this entrance, it was somewhat scare to get close.
We found a lot of sea anemones (?), shells, and sea stars in and near the tidepools. There were at least two kinds of sea stars - dark red and bright orange, the red ones were numerous. We've also seen bright red sea anemones but they were all closed. The tide was closing in by the minute so we felt lucky to come there without any planning and being able to photograph the sea floor dwellers - by the wealth of things exposed from the sea I guess we don't get a tide so low every day!
. Next time I go there I'll also take a polarizer and a treepod to shoot underwater creatures - the polarizer will take away sky reflection from water (I had to stand directly over tidepools when shooting). The credit for that round pool with "tail" (pic#6547) goes to my mom.