A Dead Gray Whale

Last night, after work, Cely and I decided to drive out to the coast to see a 41 foot gray whale that died at sea and washed ashore at Seal Rock beach. We have never seen a whale up close so we decided to take advantage of the situation even though it did feel a bit gruesome. It doesn't show up well in the picture but someone had placed a bouquet of flowers near the whales jaw. There were others who were gawkers like us viewing the whale. Then there were those like this guy in the red sweatshirt who was cutting a piece of baleen from the whale's jaw, which since whales are a protected animal is a federal offense. When I alerted this person to that fact (which had been very well publicized) he really wasn't interested.

Later, we drove up the road to a high point above the ocean in the city of Newport. We had packed a small picnic dinner since we wanted to get out to the coast before sundown. A really great thing happened there. While we were eating our sandwiches we kept seeing some water spouts about a thousand feet off shore. I told Cely that it must be some rocks out there that were kicking up waves. Cely didn't really believe it and when the spouts started moving around and I eventually realized that we were watching a pod of whales feeding off shore. It was really shocking to us since is a little out of season. Whenever we go to the beach during the seasonal whale watching days we never see whales. We would see about four different spouts and an occasional fin or back break the surface. It was terrific, especially after seeing the beached whale. Cely and I marveled at how easy it was to just drive out to the coast and back in the evening after work. I wish we would take advantage of this more often.