We spent another few days on the Oregon Coast last week. This time we drove North on the Coast Highway to the busy port city of Newport. The c0ast route between Florence and Newport is beautiful. There are good views of the Pacific the whole way and numerous places to pull off for a longer look.
Newport is one of the larger and busier coastal towns in Oregon. Besides beautiful ocean and bay views and a busy fishing port, it is the home of NOAA's Pacific Fleet and of the Mark Hatfield Marine Science Center (Oregon State University's oceanic research facility). We packed a lot into our three-night midweek getaway. Here's some of it.
This iconic arch Bridge spans Yaquina Bay on the south side of the city. It opened in 1936 and is one of eleven major bridges along the Coast Highway designed and built during the same era.
Our first morning we drove to Cobble Beach hoping to do some tide pool exploration, but we missed low tide. (I sleep really well whenever we're at the Coast and the morning low tide happened before I wanted to open my eyes. Sleep seemed more important.) But a day with a view of the ocean and a walk along the shore is never wasted.
Two not very good pictures but from the beach. By zooming way in, I could see a whole lot of pelicans on one of the rock ridges and a colony of common murres on a couple of others.
None of the birds were accommodating enough to fly in for a close-up shot. On the next day on the Bayfront, we got a nice close-up view of another sea creature:
You can get up close and almost personal here with a whole bunch of California Sea Lions. The picture above is a jetty across from a dock where even more of them hang out. There are hundreds of them between the two places.
It's hard to get a picture of one single animal no matter how you focus. They really like to hang out together.
Really really close together.
We spent some time the next day at the Hatfield Marine Science Center visitor center. I got to take some good pictures of tidepools there — probably much better than I could have gotten exploring the pools at the beach.
There was a whole lot to see and learn at the Center. Along with other Newport activities I have enough for a whole other post. Sometime soon because this one is already quite long enough.
Here's an evening view of the same bridge in the top photo. This one is from the RV Park where we stayed:
End of another perfect day.
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