Our Vacation Day Three

Today we went on a chartered ocean fishing trip. It was a very peaceful day on the ocean, the water was so flat that it felt and looked like we were fishing on a lake. The boat left at 6:00am and we returned to shore after everyone on board had caught their limit of fish at a little after noon. Kyle caught 6 fish and I caught 5, but we were able to each take home 8 fish (if you would like some good fish let us know because our freezer is overflowing). Kyle and I only caught rock fish, although some of the people on board were able to catch a Chinese cod, some ling cod, and a mother-in-law fish (it gets its name because it is mean, puts up a heck of a fight, and because it is so ugly). One person on board even caught a duck. The ducks in the ocean dive over a 180 feet to catch fish and one duck caught the man next to me's hook instead of a fish. We saw hundreds of jelly fish swimming in the water and even saw a few dolphins.

Here are the pictures of our fishing trip.

"Fish on!"

Even our little baby caught a little baby fish.

The guy next to me had to reel his duck in over 200 feet.

The bird was very mad when it got on board and bit the captain when he tried to remove the hook from its wing. The bird was okay and flew very far away from the boat (very fast) when we set it free.

Our trophy size fish

All 16 of the fish we got to take home with us.

After fishing we went to a nearby town called Coos Bay where we went to a botanical garden and saw sea lions on rocks in the ocean. The botanical garden was huge and very beautiful. The garden was donated to the state by a very wealthy couple who built it themselves. We didn't take as many pictures as we wanted to because our battery was starting to get low.

Us under a giant rhododendron bush.

This is a Monkey Puzzle Tree

This rose was larger than a large grapefruit.

We found some rock that had hundreds of seals and sea lions on them. They were all barking very loudly.

Our Vacation Day Two

Our second day of vacation was a pretty relaxing, laid back day. We started by going out tide pooling at 9:00. It was nice having low tide so late in the morning because we were able to sleep in a little it longer than usual. There was so much neat and new stuff to see that we stayed out at the ocean until lunch time. After lunch we went and walked around all of the shops in Bandon. Bandon is a very small town so it did not take very long to see all of the shops they have. Then we decided since it was too late in the afternoon to go to any of the nearby towns and do stuff there that we would go back to the beach, where we walked a very long distance and both got a little sunburned. Here are some of my favorite pictures and videos from tide pooling and exploring the beach.

Of course there were birds on the beach.

You can't have pictures of the sea without a picture of seagulls.Vultures

When you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

A very close encounter with Sea Lion.

We barely had enough time to take this picture of me before the rock filled up with water.

Here are several crabs we came across
There is a crab hiding in this rock.

These were really pretty although we don't know for sure what they are. Their skin felt leathery with marble-like shells.

A snail

We could hear the barnacles talking.

Starfish kisses for the baby.

A sunstar.

We both got stuck in quicksand a couple of times.

Our Vacation Day One

Our first day of vacation began at 3:30am when we woke up and left town to head to Bandon, OR. Bandon is 11 hours away from Moscow and because I am still very pregnant and get uncomfortable easy we had to stop frequently at rest stops to walk around so it took a little longer than we thought it would.

After we got situated in our room we went down to walk on the beach which is just across the street and down a big set of stairs.
We chased what we thought were baby turtles for a while in the water. They swam like turtles and even seemed to have flippers, but they always buried in the sand before we could catch one. Finally we caught one and decided that it wasn't really a turtle but more of a turtle-crab. It swims like a turtle but is more of a crustacian than a reptile.

We played with some starfish.This one we call Stubs.

We saw A LOT of jellyfish. The brown ones like this are the poisonous kind and have long frilly tentacles.These purple jellyfish were HUGE.And some of the jellyfish were small and clear.

There were some seals on some rocks.

Here is a big rock that I thought it would be fun to climb on. You can call me Queen of the Mountain.
We had so much fun today that we decided to buy this very cozy beach house.