Fall Road Trip 2023 - Astoria to Victoria

It felt good to be getting closer to home! We splurged and spent a lovely evening at the waterfront Bowline Hotel in Astoria and had a great meal at our favourite Astoria restaurant, the Bridgewater Bistro. 

Evening light over the water. From the lounge/restaurant of the Bowline Hotel.

The Astoria-Megler Bridge is 4 miles long and connects Oregon and Washington.
It's the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.

Right beside the hotel, we could hear some sea lions. We went out a while later and found this cutie having a nap on a lower level. We assume he got up there when the tide was higher because it was a long way to the water. 

The next morning, a younger looking one was there. I just love the eyes and whiskers. 

Our view during breakfast at the Bowline Hotel.

We took our time driving to Port Angeles, stopping for coffee again at Elixer Coffee in South Bend, another of our favourite places along this stretch of the coast. 

Relaxing in the lobby of the Olympic Lodge in Port Angeles.

It was surprisingly not very busy on the Coho Ferry coming home. All the American Thanksgiving holidayers were probably going the other way. The water looked ready for a very smooth sailing! 

Home is in sight!

Last blog post of the trip is done! No one is more surprised than me that I actually kept up with posts this time and got to the end of all this. The strategy this time was to post as we went, rather than try to group things into categories (e.g. landscape, flowers, animals, etc.). The past few trips where I've tried to do it that way has meant that trip posts never get finished because, once we're home, I'm on to other things. So, moving forward, hopefully I continue to improve the way I do things. 

Despite being sick most of this trip and some of the things we had planned to do not getting done (e.g. overnight backpacking, Andrew paragliding) it was a great trip. We saw such a wide variety of landscape and I'm really happy with some of the photos I got. Things are improving there too!  :-) 

Fall Road Trip 2023 - Newport to Ashland

We were going to stop at the aquarium in Newport but pouring rain, and knowing that much of the aquarium is outside, made us change plans. Instead, we tried to find a place to pick up a coffee/tea and happened upon these sea lions (probably close to 100!) on a dock by the water. They are so noisy but it was so fun to watch them for a while. 

We stopped early at Sunset Bay State Park (just south of Coos Bay). Andrew went for a run and I did a campground workout with the dumbbells I'd packed. 

The next morning, we went for a short walk to where Andrew had seen these mushrooms the day before. Neither of us thought we'd actually seen mushrooms like this before, even though we both recall seeing them in cartoon type pictures.

Andrew used our van camping lamp for extra lighting. 

The orange coral was aptly named as it looks just like what you'd see under water. 

We arrived in Ashland in the late afternoon and enjoyed the Japanese Garden. Such gorgeous fall colours! 

We stayed at the Ashland Springs Hotel that night to clean up after a few days of camping and to have a nice meal at The Larks restaurant. 

Baja - Scuba Diving Videos

For Christmas last year, Andrew gave me a GoPro (Hero 4 Silver Edition). Since then I've been making videos like crazy! It's a lot of work but fun at the same time. With diving, it's fun to be able to show people how the sea life moves in addition to showing them Andrew's photos.

I try to keep all the videos around 2 minutes or less to avoid boring anyone. Our attention spans (mine included) are so short these days!

We started our dive holiday in Loreto.

Loreto Sea Lion (:21) - A few sea lions dove down to check us out but didn't stay long. Sadly, the sea lion and dolphin population has decreased the past few years. Rafael thinks it's due to disease of some sort.

Cliff Jumping at Carmen Island (1:08) - Another diver, Sarah, was quite a character. She was in Loreto with her uncle. She convinced Rafael and her uncle to jump off a cliff into the water.

Guitarfish in the Baja (:26) - It's not very often that you see a guitarfish so I did a separate video just for him.

Diving Loreto (2:15) - Some of the other sea life we saw while diving around Loreto.

Next, we moved on to La Paz and did a 3-day, 2-night dive/camping trip. We got three dives per day as well as a night dive.

Sea Lions Just Wanna Have Fun (2:17) - The sea lions here were much more playful than the ones at Loreto! So humorous!

Mobulas (:36) - The night dive was to see the mobulas. A bit "gimmicky" with a big light put in the water to attract the plankton which in turn attract the mobulas, but still fun to see.

Fang Ming Wreck (1:45) - Lots of interesting sea life around this wreck as well as a resident turtle.

Diving La Paz (2:09) - Some of the other sea life we saw while diving around La Paz.

Lastly, we headed to Cabo Pulmo. We were scheduled to dive six days but, due to high winds, only got in four days. I would say this area had the clearest water of all the three locations so video is a bit better.

Jewel Moray Eel (:46) - Usually the eels are just sticking their heads out of some hidey hole but I loved watching these ones out and about amongst the fishing nets of a wreck.

Diving Cabo Pulmo (2:19) - Some of the other sea life we saw while diving at Cabo Pulmo. Love the sting ray at the beginning of the video and some of the fish that let me get so close to them.