Oregon
Tide pool creatures:
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Purple sea urchins |
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Gooseneck barnacles |
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| Giant green anemone |
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| Aggregating anemones |
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| Two Sea lemon nudibranch (sea slugs) |
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| Ochre sea star |
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| Can you spot to two baby sea stars!? |
At the end of my visit to California, I visited Sue Meg state park. It was the location of my first tide pool experience and so amazing that I decided to visit more tide pools on Oregon's coast.
Low tide is the best time to explore tide pools. Clambering around on barnacle encrusted rocks, I found a lot of green, cup shaped blobs. Later, I learned that they were closed Giant green sea anemones. They close up when exposed to the air in order to retain moisture. They also close when a finger brushes against their tentacles. A finger does not glide smoothly over the tentacles as over the main body. The tentacles feel "sticky". This is how anemones capture small fish. Fish are stung and captured by the tentacles and then eaten by it's mouth in the middle.
Purple Sea urchins were also plentiful, and in some areas they are too plentiful since their main predator, sea otters, no longer live along Oregon's coast. Ochre sea stars come in a variety of colors, but the ones I saw were orange and purple. Most have 5 legs but some can grow more than 20 legs and move very quickly! I saw one sea star with 6 legs and two baby sea stars as well!
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Harbor seal |
My second tide pool exploration was not as exciting as the first. It was weird, I thought I would be just as excited exploring other tide pools, but only the new creatures sparked my interest. These included tadpoles and Aggregating anemones in various stages of open/closed. New creatures at my third tide pool visit, at Newport's Yaquina Head, included harbor seals and crabs. Harbor seals often sleep on rocks during low tides and swim during high tides. They are not graceful when hauling themselves out of the water and moving around on the rocks.
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Calamari |
Inland near Portland, I visited Wayward Winds Lavender Farm. Customers can cut bundles of lavender and buy other lavender accented goods. The lavender smelled really good, and the hum of hundreds of bees filled the air as they flew from flower to flower. Later that afternoon, I attended a silk sling class at Afterglow Aerial Arts and expanded upon what I learned at my first sling class in Michigan.
My time in Oregon also included: lunch with relatives (which was a nice reminder of home), and a board game Meetup (where I learned how to play 7 Wonders). Throughout the week, I also contemplated what to do about feeling burned out. Should I stop traveling for a while, spend more time at each location, be more spontaneous, focus on different things, change my routines??? I don't want to take a long break from traveling, because that is not a
long term solution for building balance in my daily/weekly life. For routines, I've tried having two+ days of each week for tourism, a days for trip planning, and two days for chores. But should that change? Maybe. So, currently I'm trying slower mornings that are focused on food, afternoons of tourism, evenings of work, and after diner for relaxing time. Yes, this daily routine of work and leisure might seem normal/traditional to you, but at one point it was very stressful for me and I needed something different.
Flexibility is also something I'm working on. If plan A works for situation
One and Two, I expect it to work for all situations. But when it does
not, stress and frustration appears. I figure out that plan B works for
situations Three and Four, and I then expect plan B to work for all
situations and I forget about plan A. Which leads to stress and
frustration when I use B for One and Two. Flexibility, like balance, will probably be a life long pursuit.
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| Banana Slug |
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| A tide pool area at low tide |
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| Harbor seals resting |
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| Lighthouse viewpoint from coastal highway |
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| Same lighthouse |
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| type of Algae |
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| Wayward Winds Lavender Farm |
