Thursday morning, low tide would be just about 8am, perfect timing to grab a cup of coffee and a bite to eat before exploring nearby tidepools. I had spent a bit of time on the internet before leaving home checking out both tide charts and places to view tidepools. By many accounts, the best place in the whole Yachats area to view tidepools is right at the western edge of town at Yachats State Park. And naturally, there's nothing to see except at low tide.
The location of our room was a bonus: we could walk the 75 yards to the nearby coffee shop and then continue on to the tidepools, no car necessary! In high tourist season, the wait in line at the coffee shop was nearly 30 minutes and despite arriving shortly after their 7:30am opening hour, it was shortly after 8:00am when we got our coffee and breakfast sandwiches.
Neither of us realized that the coffee shop was vegan, but the negotiation with the cashier about my breakfast burrito seemed a little off. They apparently have two kinds of vegan egg substitutes and wanted to know which I would prefer. I preferred neither. Perhaps I would like to substitute tofu instead? Thank you, no. Black beans? Yes please, I can get down with black beans in my burrito any day. Ann mentioned later that evening, before we found out that the shop was vegan, that there was something weird about the eggs and meat on her bagel sandwich.
After spending the early evening at Yachats State Park Wednesday night, we took our coffee and sandwiches back to the park for more first thing on a beautiful Thursday morning. We pulled up a bench right near where we sat for dinner and ate our sandwiches while person after person bearing birding gear arrived to take up station on the wooden viewing platform. As a group, they were pretty awkward and weird. We finally figured out that they were doing a census of Marbled Murrelets, a small seabird that nests in old growth coastal forests. We never saw any murrelets during our stay. Plenty of murres and scoters, but no murrelets.
After breakfast, half of which we packed back up for lunch, we clambered down the hill to the lava below and wandered the tidepools in the immediate area.
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| The View from our Room: Low Tide, Yachats River |
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| Pastries at the Coffee Shop |
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| Waiting for Food, Unremarkable Coffee |
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| Breakfast at Yachats State Park |
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| Lava is Unforgiving Should You Fall |
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| All Underwater The Night Before |
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| Giant Green Anemone |
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| Lone Ochre Sea Star in the Surf |
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| Small, Orange, Many-Armed Sunflower Sea Star |
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| Large California Mussels |
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| Goose Barnacles and Blue Bay Mussels |
After getting our fill of the tidepools, we wanted to get moving with the rest of our day so we headed back to our room. On the way back, I shot a few more shots along the water's edge.
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