Day 3

Wednesday March 23, 2005:
A fire boiled our water for a breakfast of oatmeal and yoghurt, then we took our time breaking camp, cleaning up and saying our goodbyes to the shade. We enjoyed a beautiful drive down the coast and kept an eye out for whales. We spotted one and pulled over to watch it for a few minutes. It was very far away and was making feeding dives. A little further up the road we arrived at the sea lion caves. The cave is the largest sea cave in America! To see the lions you walk down a path and ride an elevator some 200 feet down. You look through a chain-link fence at a big (2 ½ acre) cave full of sea lions. Herds of Stella sea lions come here to rest, mate, and calve. California sea lions (AKA circus seals) show up too. From our visit we determined that the sea lions also come to the cave to make a lot of noise and stink up the place. As soon as the elevator opens you are hit with the smell of hundreds of sea lions. They’re constantly “roaring” which sounds like broken motor boat operated by the winner of the world belching contest. It was really cool to see and hear, though I could have done without the smell. The was discovered in the 1800s and was full of sea lions then too. They discovered sea lion bones some 30 feet above the water which are still on display! Because of the unique conditions of the cave it’s difficult to know exactly how old they are. From the cave you can also spot the Haceta lighthouse which is claimed to be the most photographed lighthouse in the world (we took a photo of course). Outside the cave, you can walk to a viewpoint and look at the cave’s entrance where sea lions enjoy the sun and make more noise. It’s also where they have their calves. Sea lions live in the cave year round but it is most full of lions in the spring and summer months.
After enjoying the sea lions, we raced back north up the coast to try to reach Yaquina lighthouse before it closed for tours at 4:00, we arrived at 3:40 and were told that the they’d been so busy they had to close the lighthouse early (make sense?) so we went to the interpretive center and learned about the Fresnel lenses that cover lighthouse lights and took some pictures. Some other day, we’ll return to go inside, it looks really interesting. It was very windy and rain was threatening to take over so we were glad to head home to our warm apartment. We did stop to shop for a while in McMinnville, and had a good night’s rest.