Whale's Tales

Grey mornings at the coast have yielded a new favorite past-time - Whale Watching! There's a whale in our cove this year. I've heard from 2 different residents here that it's probably a teenage male. For some reason they drop out of the spring migration and hang around until the return trip. Cool!

For the first 5 years of coming to the coast we NEVER saw a whale. DH was convinced they were "urban legends" dreamed up for the tourists. Even once in December, we were on the Northern coast during the migration period, we stopped at every whale watching post - nada!

Then on a July trip a few years back, there were a lot of boats in the cove. We were both standing at the alcove window trying to figure out why and we saw the 1st really great whale tail flipping out of the water - it looked bigger than one of the boats there.

Last year there were a lot of whales spotted with friends from California, B & D. I'm convinced that D is a "whale whisperer." She can call them! But none of those were this close - not right in our cove - not seen from the comfort of our alcove! The whale is making up for the less than magnificent tide pools this year. Seeing a whale every day makes up for pretty much anything that's wrong!

The beach, this year, is higher - filled in with maybe 4-5 foot of extra sand. The cave is filled in and there aren't many tide pools. Last year it was the complete opposite. Gorgeous tide pools with at least 4 types of starfish including sun bursts - they have 19 legs! We've seen two sun bursts this year but last year there were 3-5 of them [orange, red, purple] in every tide pool.

Tuesday, we tried to get out of the grey fog. We drove up the coast to Bandon. I visited the quilt shop there and DH went out to the famous Bandon Dunes golf course to buy a sweatshirt. On the way out of town we found the new golf course - Bandon Crossings and DH is planning a trip back up there to play 18. The Curry County Fair starts tomorrow in Gold Beach, a Rainbow Rock quilting friend-K and I are planning to go and check out the quilt entries.

Our time here seems to be speeding up - only 6 days at the condo left and I'm worrying about fitting all our favorite spots in before we leave! Hope it clears off this afternoon - we still need to hang out at Harris Beach State Park. Or we can visit the Redwoods again ... or sit here and watch our whale! Remember Doni - no demanding schedules on the coast - we can play it by ear - we'll be back!