Crabbing, Heceta Head Lighthouse, Tide Pools, Picnics, Sea Lion Caves, Running on the Beach, Tillamook, Oregon Vacation Days 4 and 5

Day 4 we drove over to Heceta Head Lighthouse.  There was a small trail to get up to the lighthouse, but it was really pretty.

 We made it:

 It is not in operation anymore, but you can see what it looked like in 1894 after it got restored to its original state back in 2011.  The view from the fence was really pretty:

 There was a few seals swimming around in the water below.  I took the picture not knowing if I got the seals in the picture or not.  It looks like I didn't, but they were there, honest!!

 After we left the tide started coming in and I had really wanted to see some tide pools that day.  We drove right by some so we stopped to check them out.  We saw lots of cool things.  There were tiny fish, hermit crabs, snails, Daniel even caught a small crab we all got to see:

 Starfish:

 You could see the tide rising in some of the little cracks in the rocks as the waves came in:

 The Sea Anemones would close if you touched them:

 Sea Urchin:

 A huge ball of muscles or some crustacean:

 After the water started getting too deep in the tide pools we stopped for lunch.  Here's the tide pools filling up as the tide came in:

 You can't beat a picnic lunch on the beach listening to the waves crashing and being the only ones there:

 Noah wasn't a super fan of the tide pools.  As soon as he started climbing on the rocks to check them out he fell and got some cuts.  That put a damper on his day.  This is after I cleaned them up:

 We then went and visited a place called Thor's Well.  It is a cool sinkhole.  You can watch it fill and empty endlessly.  It was pretty cool.

Here's a video of it filling and emptying:

 You had to hike down to get to Thor's Well. Aaron had been using his ankle way too much too soon after surgery and it was starting to bother him.  He just stayed close to the top and watched it from there:

He did take a few pictures of the rest of us down at the well.  Josh is the super tall guy in gray and the rest of us are around him:

We then stopped by a place called Devil's Churn.  It is an inlet of the ocean and as the tide comes in it can throw spray several hundred feet into the air as the water reaches the end of the churn.

We then stopped by the Sea Lion Caves.  It is a privately owned wildlife preserve and a bird sanctuary that is home to some California Sea lions year round.  It is not a zoo so the animals can come and go as they want.  It was pretty interesting. This place was a bit busier so we wore our masks.

 They had some observation areas outside of the cave that were full of sea lions:

Here's the other side of the observation area:

 You could even see the Heceta Head Lighthouse from where we were at the Sea Lion Caves which was pretty cool!

 Next you can go down in the elevator and into the cave that was pretty full of sea lions.  It was pretty cool:

 After visiting the Sea Lion Caves we drove back to our AirBnB.  That evening I saw a deer in our neighbor's yard eating her plants.  That was neat:

 Despite us being on vacation Daniel and Josh still had to do their cross country workouts.  Since we would start the day off early they liked to run in the evening on the beach.  They were able to take some cool pictures as they ran on the beach:

 Again, we were in a low tourist area so there was hardly anyone around on the beach.  It was way awesome!

This was the sunset off our balcony.  That view would never get old!!

We stayed in Oceanside which was on the shore, but only 9 miles away from Tillamook.  We really wanted to do a factory tour, but unfortunately, it was still closed to the public due to COVID.  However, their outdoor ice creamery was open for orders and we got some fresh ice cream.  

 We had to wear our masks through the line, but when we got up to order we took them off and then went and found a place to eat away from people.  The ice cream was pretty yummy!

 The cheese curds or squeaky cheese was good, but I like Gossner's squeaky cheese from Cache Valley better!

 After ice cream we went to try our luck with crabbing.  None of us had ever done crabbing before so it would be an adventure.  We decided to try our luck off a dock.

We rented four crab rings, bait and gear.  Here's what one crab ring with old rotten fish bait looks like:

 Too bad you can't smell it because it was stinky!

Anyway, we got everyone the needed licenses to crab and headed to set our rings:

 You would throw the baited crab ring over the side of the dock and tie the floatie to the rope on the dock to keep it in place.

 After 15 minutes you pull the crab ring up and see if you got anything.

 Here's what it looked like to pull up a crab ring:

Then you would sort through the crab.  You can only keep males of a certain size all the rest had to be thrown back into the water.  Each ring that got pulled up would have anywhere from 15-30 crabs you had to sort through.

 After sorting the crab you would throw the still baited ring back into the water for another 15 minutes before pulling it up again.  Since we had 4 rings total there wasn't too much down time.  However, Sarah, Noah and Matthew did not enjoy handling the crab AT ALL so they just stayed on the blanket and hung out while the rest of us did the ring setting, pulling, and sorting.  Sarah and Noah had to wear life jackets since it was the law for anyone under 12 years old.

 Josh was on the losing end of a crab battle and the crab pinched and cut Josh's finger.  He was the only injury, though--haha!

 We thought we had a keeper and named him Bob:

 Alas when we got back to the shore they expert measured him and he was just a hair short.  So in all of 4 hours of crabbing we got zero keepers--DOH!  Oh well we still wanted to try some fresh crab to see what it tasted like so we ordered two.  They cleaned it and cooked it right there in the actual boiling salty bay ocean water.  Sarah watched them clean the two crab:

 When they finished cooking they pulled the crab out and let Josh and Daniel try eating the hearts.  It sounds Bleh, but is supposedly tasted like butter?  Anyway here's Daniel and Josh trying the crab hearts:

 We also threw in some fresh boiled clams as well.  Here's what everything looked like before we dove in:

 Let's just say it's a good thing we didn't actually catch any crab because no one liked the crab or the clams.  I didn't mind the crab meat, but a little went a long way.  With each license (we had 7 one per person) we could have caught up to 12 crab per license.  Our family couldn't even eat two crab so it really is a good thing we didn't actually catch any keepers--haha!  Here's Aaron trying to figure out how to crack the crabs open to get to the meat:

 They had a photo op that my kids wanted a picture with.  Daniel was too cool to pose, but the rest of them did.  We thought it was funny that they had two of the people named Josh and Matt--haha!

 By the time we got back home I realized we hadn't applied any sunscreen and I now was as red as the crab we ate....Ugh!

The AirBnB we rented was an entire house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms with two living spaces.  In the basement they had a poker table and a pool table that the kids loved.  Through the week we played many games of pool and a few games of poker:

That evening we did have some extra time so we watched the movie The Goonies. We were going to try and see the different places where it was filmed if we had time this week. Little did we know it would happen sooner than later--haha!