Last weekend in September and whale watching in Depoe Bay, Oregon

The sun came out again in September, after several days of gray skies and rain, not rain like we know in Mississippi most of the time, though, just misty, drizzly moisture in the air. Mama and I realized that we might not get another sunny weekend, so we got Leland and Cristina to spend the night with Duncan and drove off to the Pacific Coast Saturday, all set to explore and then spend the night at Spirit Mountain Casino which is about an hour and a half, at the most, from our apartment.

I read online somewhere that Depoe Bay is is the place to be for whale watching at certain times of the year, so we opted to head for it in case I had guessed right that September was the right time. Being without a computer to check things out ahead of time was not much fun, but we went ahead and winged it.

That little building on the shore/cliff is the whale watching center. I let Mama off there, drove over the bridge and parked, then walked back towards Mama. Cold, stiff breezes met my every step. You can tell that Mama was very happy that I brought her shawl to her. (Later own the shawl would not have been enough if she had stepped out of the car--it turned cold!)

You can see the spray from the whale's blowhole in some of the shots, plus the whale's back just a little bit. We were amazed to see how close it really came to the shore. People and cars were lined up everywhere along both sides of Highway 101. After we watched and no more whales appeared, we drove on south towards Newport.

There's a famous chowder house there, Mo's, two of them in fact, but we couldn't find either one of them. However, on the way back up the coast, we managed to find Mo's West, out on a promontory where the wind whipped the car door out of Mama's hand when she opened. Cold! Wind! Mama ate the chowder; I only had a bite since it's mostly milk which I cannot tolerate. I ate a shrimp salad instead--pretty good, too.

It was about 8 p.m. when we got to the hotel, so we settled in and went to play the penny machines. We had lots of fun but didn't win big. Still and all, it was a great weekend.