Snail Spirals

We took a post-Sock-Summit quickie trip to the coast, to Newport, Oregon. It was really fun. This is actually the first time in the eight and a half years I've lived on the West Coast that I've been to the outer coast. (Eight and a half years? I've been out here eight and a half years? Almost a decade?) Yes, we lived on an island in the middle of Puget Sound for a big chunk of that time, but I never made it over to the big coast.



Pretty. So, so pretty. La Grande is a great place to live, but my heart longs for a coastline.

We stayed one night in Newport. Like I said, it was a teaser trip. We went to Nye Beach,



went to the aquarium,



(how cool is that tubular aquarium!), had a truly horrible overpriced fish and chips dinner with terrible service (for the first time in my life, I left no tip), saw the sea lions at the pier,



and generally had a nice relaxing time. As we left, we drove up the coast sightseeing.



We stopped a couple places to get out and look around, but since we were traveling all the way back to La Grande that day, didn't want to take too much time. We did stop a while at Cape Foulweather, and saw two gray whales from the top of the cliff, which was cool. I definitely want to go back.