Whale Watching

Saturday was day one of the spring whale watching week. The gray whales are migrating past Oregon. We drove out to Astoria, OR and ate at The Blue Scorcher Vegetarian Bakery Cafe . We all shared a couple of berry and rhubarb oat bars, then Dan and I each had a different yummy sandwich. Mine was the best grilled veggie sandwich I've ever had, made on fresh foccacia with a super tasty artichoke spread and tons of veggies.


Halen enjoyed the little kid play area.

We then headed to the Ecola State Park and did the Clatsop Loop Trail . It was a great trail. The first mile and a half was up up up. I actually got my heart rate up and felt a little sweaty. It felt great! My whole body felt like it was getting cleaned out and refreshed. I so needed to get outside and do something like that. At the top of the trail, there was a lookout point, where you can watch for the whales. Here's Halen using his binoculars to spot the whales.

The whales were really far out. We could just barely see their spouts of water blowing up, like little white lines specking the horizon. Halen couldn't see them at all, even with his binoculars. There were people there that had real binoculars. Halen quickly struck up a conversation with them. He's become so social. His opening line is always, "Hey, what are you doing up there?" I love that he says 'up there' just because they're taller than he is. With his social charms, he managed to get a look through the real binoculars, but still couldn't see anything. They said they didn't really help them see better either. We didn't need binoculars, we needed a boat.

The rest of the hike, Halen kept a look out for cougars. There are cougars in Oregon's coastal range. One was spotted in this park back in September, there are signs that tell when the last sighting was. Then they say to keep your children close and always in your view. Yikes. I must say that for a moment, I didn't want to hike anymore. Halen said he wanted to see one, pet it, and say hi to it. We didn't tell him that it would want to eat him, not get petted by him.