Tag Archives: Oregon

Through to Idaho

August 5, 2013 Maurice Leave a comment

Today we stopped in Boise, the capital city of Idaho. Interestingly enough, the Hudson’s Bay Company was the first to start a settlement here, as a means to protect the Oregon Trail. It’s a fairly good sized city, about 210,000 people. It’s a university city, so it’s vibrant, and fun, with a semi-arid climate. That means it’s a lot like Kelowna – hot summers, and some cold winters! We are staying tonight in a Best Western, called the North Lodge. It’s done in a cool log cabin style, with nice rooms, a big tv and comfy beds. They give you a free breakfast too! And their Happy Hour is truly happy, starting you off with a FREE beer!

Travelling today was nice, with beautiful roads. The American Interstate is really a wonderful highway system. We’ve had no construction, with smooth roads, and lots just freshly resurfaced in the last few years. It’s funny tho, in Washington, the speed is 70 mph and most people travel easily at that speed. We saw the odd speeder, but not many. In Oregon, the speed is 65 mph, and most everyone speeds, including Oregonians who routinely do 75, and a lot at 80 or more. In Idaho, the speed is 75, and there are still a LOT of speeders, maybe even more than in Oregon. It’s a strange thing.

The pic here is of the Sturgis Bridge that crosses the Columbia river into Oregon into a little town called Umatilla. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center there, wanting a map of Oregon. The lady there was super friendly gave us maps for all the states we’d be visiting! Nice little center too – artwork on the walls, and just tons of info.

Here is a brief movie of a couple of cool cars we saw near Benton, Washington. Love that little trailer the second car is towing! Pretty cool.

Vacations

Whales in Newport

June 11, 2010 Maurice 1 Comment

Today we decided to do some “crabbing,” a popular activity here on the Oregon Coast. There is a long dock here at the resort, dedicated to crabbers. So we got our ring, attached some raw chicken and tossed it in the ocean. Every 5-10 minutes you pull it up and hope you get some dungeness crabs. There are always a lot of crabs in the net, but most are red rock crabs, not the greatest eating, but still lots of fun and excitement every time you pull up the crab trap!

The talk of the day though, was the pod of killer whales who made their way through the inner harbor here in Newport. It had the town in a tizzy, that’s for sure! All the locals were in shock… one guy told us that he’d been here twenty nine years, and no whale had ever been in the harbor, let alone a whole pod of orcas!

The whales were right off the break water, less than 30 feet from us on the crab dock! They were obviously hunting, looking for the seals that are all over the harbor. I tell you, it was really amazing to see them so close. I’ve been to orca shows, but nothing comes close to the experience of seeing them “in the wild” so close, you could almost touch them.

After they moved off down the harbor, we came back to the room, and were getting ready to go for dinner, when the pod came back into sight, moving back towards the harbor exit! They smacked their tails on the water, breached and rolled and came so very close to our deck it was unreal! Totally fascinating to see whales, just unreal.

After the “show,” we headed to dinner and our waitress wanted to know if we’d seen the whales! She talked about what an honor it was to see them, how she’d lived here all her life and never seen a whale in the harbor. It was a really special day, that’s for sure!

Vacations

Exploring Newport

June 10, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

We explored Newport today, taking in some of the sites around the town. The main street in the downtown area is being repaved, so we first went to a park overlooking the Yaquina Bay Bridge. The park features the Yaquina Lighthouse, one of many lighthouses that dot this area. This area is very windy, and very rugged. The coastline has some amazing beaches, long and sandy and windswept!

The town has a lot of public art. Lots of buildings are painted with amazing murals, mostly on a nautical theme. The old man in the sea, battling rough waves is very common. They have a couple of Wylund wall murals, with his beloved whales prominently featured. There are some amazing sculptures all over the town, too. Seems every time we turn another corner, another statue is there for us to examine. I’m willing to bet Newport has more public art per capita than any city in North America!

We had been hearing sea lions barking all day, so we knew they were around somewhere. We finally stumbled on them, lounging on one of the docks near the fish processing plant. There is a small rocky point that is totally covered with them too.

Just up the road from us we came upon a stretch of beach that was totally packed with herons. Not sure why they liked this stretch of beach, but we saw dozens of them looking for dinner along this one stretch.

They are pretty nervous birds though. Every time we got close enough for a decent picture, they took off! They are a very cool bird in flight – but it really seems they are just too big to fly!

Vacations

Newport, Oregon

June 9, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

We drove down to Newport, Oregon on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010. It’s about a seven hour drive, basically straight down the I-5. Newport is right on the famed Oregon Coast. We are staying in one of our timeshares, called the Embarcadero, right on the waterfront. In fact, you could jump off our balcony, right into the ocean!

The suite is very nice. It’s a two bedroom unit, and the upper bedroom is reached via a spiral staircase. It’s a large loft-style bedroom, with a huge king sized bed. There is a small “office” that opens onto the ocean view, and has a nice little desk, overlooking the living room downstairs as well. The bathrooms are HUGE – and I mean capital HUGE. Double sinks, huge soaker tub… the bathroom alone is bigger than our first apartment!

We can sit on our deck, and watch eagles and seagulls glide over our heads, swooping down on to the water every once in a while! Quite remarkable. We arrived here around 4 in the afternoon so we haven’t really had much time to scope the place out, but there is a huge dock here where people can “do some crabbing” and Pam fully intends to catch her limit!

We’re going to explore the aquarium today; it’s supposed to be one of the ten best in the USA. We’re hoping to get a round or two of golf in while we’re here too.

I have to talk for a second about the driving on the I-5 highway: all through Washington state, the vast majority of the people drove about 5 miles an hour under the limit. The speed limit is 70, but I put the car on cruise right at 70, and always caught up to people. Most people got out of the left lane, when they saw me approaching, but one or two would not. It’s clearly signed all along the road to “Be polite” and only use the left lane for passing, for slower traffic to use the right lane, but the odd person was just stubborn. Most of the way there were three lanes, so there was really no need to block the left lane. But Oregon – now that is a completely different matter! They are the rudest drivers I have ever met! WOW! They all drive about 10 miles under the limit, and drive in the left lane like they own it. Not one person vacated the left lane, even though they were driving so slow.