Over the weekend we went to the coast. It seemed to me that it had been a while since we had left the house, although Mark reminded me that we had entertained some friends the week before. I guess last week's craziness with car keys and some not-quite-awake-yet bus rides have skewed my memory of successful ventures from the house.
Aoife came with us. We managed to actually leave before dawn and thus reached the Muriel O. Ponsler Beach about 8:30. This meant that there were virtually no other dogs there, and we could let Aoife be off-leash (there were also no birds or marine life, either). I had brought my camera, but was only slightly tempted to take Yet Another WPA Concrete Bridge In The Mist shot.
High tide was about two hours before our arrival, so we hunted for agates. The weekend was sunny and clear, calm, and warm for a March Oregon Coast day: 65F. The day before had been a high surf advisory; the waves when we were there seemed normal, although a little erratic.
Mark is very good at finding all sorts of interesting and unusual rocks in the surf. This time around there was a lot of large, plain basalt; bright red jasper; banded rocks; quartz; and small-to-medium-sized agates. Mark did find a mouse-sized agate. At first I only found jasper, but later on I hung out at the end of a peninsula of basalt where the retreating tide would tumble all sorts of rocks and my agate count went up.
I'd forgotten the Chuck-It. Mark and I had to take turns throwing a ball for Aoife. For about two hours.
Afterward, we went north to Depot Bay in the hope of seeing migrating whales. But we saw neither whales, nor pelicans, nor seal lions, nor coastal eagles. We did see some Crossbills, which we didn't know were Crossbills until we got home and zoomed in on photos I took and saw their crossed beaks (used to extract seeds from pine cones). In addition to wild fauna, I got some photos of Aoife as an "Irish Pit Bull."
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