Sea Lion Caves

Yesterday we drove over to the coast of Oregon at Florence and headed north on Rt. 101. The Florence area is known for it's sand dunes which get as high as 300 feet. We stopped at a number of state parks and scenic views along the way. Sea Lion cave has an elevator to take you down to the edge of the cliffs where sea lions colonize. At this time of year they tend to be feeding in the ocean and not on the rocks where they tend their young in spring. We saw a number of them swimming around. They're a larger animal than I thought with males averaging 1500 pounds and some getting as large as 2000 pounds.
Further up the coast, we stopped at Cape Perpetua, another well known spot. We turned back east at Walport, a bit south of Jim Carson's hometown of Newport. We went through Corvallis and continued east on Rt. 20 back into the Willamette National Forest and more big trees. Logging is again a huge industry in the Cascades. We saw trucks with some logs which must have been 6-8 feet in diameter. They were down to 4 or 5 logs per truck. A lot of fruit and vegtables are grown in the area and we stopped and picked up some excellent produce which even turned out to be organic.