Every Blooming Thing at the Beach

Yesterday was Mike's birthday. We were having so much fun out and about that I never got around to writing a blog post. So here's what we did. First, Mike enjoyed kitty worship while he waited for me to make his birthday Eggs Benedict.

It was my first time making hollandaise sauce from scratch in the RV, and it worked out just fine. The whole dish worked out, but it would have been much easier if I'd remembered to bring my egg poaching pan.

After breakfast, we headed out to see the Circles in the Sand again. First, we stopped off at the state park just north of the circles. This is the Oregon Islands State Park, for day use only, but some beautiful views. The sea stacks off the coast are so interesting.

Here's a pano of the whole area. Remember that you can make any image larger by clicking on it.

So, let's just walk out a little ways. The puffins inhabit these sea stacks during their nesting season, and I'd read a sign that said something about "Cat and Kitten Island." Well, that I had to see. But first, please read the instructions.

Now, don't make me tell you again. And given the sign, I stayed well back from the edge when I took this next picture.

And I never did figure out Cat and Kitten Island. We read the signs, but couldn't find anything that identified them, and none of them looked like cats or kittens to us. Still, this sign about how the sea stacks are formed was interesting.

And here's something that gives us nightmares here in Oregon. Occasionally, the media will get off on a tangent about it and everybody gets wigged out. I'm not sure what one can do to prepare for such a catastrophe.

You can read more about the Cascadia Subduction Zone right here.

From there, we headed over to the circles, which were just on the other side of that particular beach. In this image, we're looking back the other way.

These are Tuesday's Circles.

Mike was having fun playing with the little hand-held weather station I got him for his birthday. These kinds of things are urgently important to engineers. If it can be measured, then we want to measure it. Here, he's watching the wind speed, which was at 13.4 mph when I took this picture. If you look closely, you can see that the highest wind measured during the time we were standing there was 21.6 mph. It actually got up above 28 mph at one point. His little weather station also measures temperature and altitude and some other stuff.

Now here's something. That woman there is a complete random stranger, but I left her there so you could see the size of the puffin.

He's made of garbage that has washed up on the beach.

Here's an interesting tidbit about puffins. We love puffins.

And here are all the blooming things we saw on the beach. These little pink jobs look a lot like a type of clover.

These were interesting. Flat like pancakes.

This is a wild strawberry just like the one I dug up in our field at home. But I noticed the lupine leaves beside it.

Then, I started looking for lupine. This was the most open one I could find, but these will all be blooming within the next few days.

From the circles, we drove into the old town part of Bandon and walked around, had some lunch, and visited a few gift shops and galleries. There were blooming things there too.

This was a nice gallery with some beautiful, but very expensive things. I had to take a picture of the cat.

Back home, we found the kitties lounging in the afternoon sunshine.

Just inside and next to the catio, Sadie was snoozed out too.

After dinner, we went out for a walk around the campground. The wild rhododendrons are blooming.

And there were some other blooming things too.

Alongside one of the campsites, someone had left river rocks with painted designs.

That green turtle reminded me I hadn't shown you the polished stone I was given on the first day we visited the circles. A woman had a whole pile of them in an abalone shell and she was handing them out as souvenirs. I chose this green one to represent my emerald birth stone.

We've been busy while we've been here, but I've had plenty of time to stitch. Getting the word "Stitch" finished in that tiny chain stitch felt like a milestone. I still have to encircle the entire heart with more tiny chain stitch.

The evening before, we'd been out for a walk around the campground, and I was experimenting with my new iPhone camera attachment. I still need to work on learning some of its capabilities...especially exposure control. These pictures were a little blown out.

Bandon claims to be a "tsunami-ready" city, and we've noticed all kinds of signs around with instructions should a tsunami warning be issued.

This sign confused us a little. It looks to us as if you are supposed to go to the "assembly area," and then you'll be led to where you'll likely die in the tsunami. Hm.

So anyway...we're planning to leave this morning to thwart the evil efforts of any lurking tsunamis. But first, we'll check out the day's circles in the sand, and we're going back to Bandon. There's a cute little candy store there. I visited yesterday, but Mike wasn't with me at that moment. He missed out, and so we'll go back again today. After that...home.