Depoe Bay, Oregon

As tends to be the case, while I have good intentions and fun experiences to blog about it manages to get pushed aside…. in this case for the season!

We arrived in Depoe Bay in late May, just in time for some of the earliest Gray Whale residents to start making their appearances for the summer.  Depoe Bay is the professed “Whale Watching Capital of the Oregon Coast” and boasts having the worlds smallest natural navigable harbor.  Visitors just passing through can park and often see whales from the highway as well as view the “spouting horn”- where strong waves are forced through a narrow opening and can launch water as high as 60 feet in the air. The Depoe Bay bridge was built in 1927 (though widened in 1941) and may be recognizable as it was featured in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

Initially we had been told that the tour company could always use more captains during busy season, but luckily there were plenty of projects for us to dive into until our licenses were approved by the Coast Guard. Colby did a lot of renovations around the various parts of the property, and we were both able to assist with kayak tours on a gorgeous local river.  I was able to sneak out on the boat some as a deckhand on the larger vessel, and once  Colby had his license (with near perfect timing as another captain went on vacation) he was running tours solo! I was able to indulge my geeky and type A side by assisting in the museum/office as a manager, and eventually was able to run some tours myself.

In a bit of a bout of irony, the vessel that Colby and I operated the most often was a former tender vessel of Jimmy Buffet’s!  After living in the Keys for years and having heard Jimmy Buffet far too often for my personal preference it was funny that when we finally decided to commit to our captain’s licenses it would be a former boat of that singer’s…

Kida Girl with Colby as captain on the left, and an iconic whale tail on the right.

Now that we are settled back in to a semi-permanent home for a while and have jobs lined up and bills in order I will have to do more posts on what we saw out there.  The wildlife and scenery was all phenomenal, and we had a marine biologist to learn from!  I need to do a post on all the new species we saw, and on some of our favorite whales.

(Note- the squealing in the video wasn’t me.  Not that I didn’t have plenty of them myself during the season!)

I apologize for the lack of updates!  Thanks for tuning in.