Sea Lion Caves

My family’s Spring Break trip featured several visitations, including a car ride to go see the Sea Lion Caves in Florence, Oregon. Located south of Newport, this is home of the largest sea cave in the world, as can be seen from the picture below. I think I also remember reading that the Sea Lion Caves feature the largest sea lion habitat for the creatures off sure.

The visitors building itself was a pretty cool sight do to the fact that it is built on a cliff right next to the ocean. I also learned that whale sightings are common to see from this location, when the whales are migrating up to Alaska from Mexico.

The actual journey down to the caves is taken by an elevator in which you plummet over 200 feet. The actual caves we weren’t able to go into, due to the fact that it would disturb the hundreds of sea lions that lounge there. It was still a cool sight though, and is something worth visiting if you ever get the chance.

Once we pulled up to the center, this was the sign that greeted us, letting us know of our arrival.

Although the lighting wasn’t good, and the photo quality is poor, you can make out the many sea lions that were laying against the rocks. This picture doesn’t even show how big the cave was either. Imagine each of those animals are 500 pounds, and it will give you an idea of size. 

It was a nice dry day, and the coast line looked great from our view point.

This was the entrance to the cave–-at least I think it was.

Another shot of the cave. We were behind a wire fence to let the sea lions have privacy.

Before the elevator was built and the shaft excavated, people had to take a long set of stairs to see the wonder. Talk about a long walk.

Oregon Coast Aquarium

Spring Break arrived and my family decided to spend a few days touring the more central part of the Oregon coast. Although we live on the coast, we don’t go down south too often, and decided that we would take advantage of the time that we got off from Spring Break. Most of our time was spent in either Newport of Lincoln City.

One of the places that we made sure to visit was the Oregon Coast Aquarium. We visited it a few years ago, but it had been awhile, and so we decided to visit it again. It is a cool aquarium and is rated in the top 10 aquariums by USA Today. I snapped a couple of pics of the place.

There was a building that you could go into with a name along the lines of “In to the Deep.” It featured three giant tanks—that you walk right through. From this picture you can see the tunnels that you could walk through. Even the floor featured some glass. It’s pretty amazing to watch marine life swim all around you.

The tanks even featured some sharks. Not Great Whites, but they still had some that you wouldn’t want to be swimming with.

From here you can sort of get an idea of what the tunnel was like to be in. This was a sting ray swimming above my head.

The aquarium feature a bunch of exotic fish as well. 

This isn’t your typical pet fish, though it would be cool to have one of these as a pet. 

  

I found Dory, now only Nemo is left to look for. I keep forgetting what movie their from. :-)