Festivus . . . and Everything After

12/25-29/11  Originally, we thought this trip would be all about hunkering down and chillin' during the thrillin'.  When we got here, the weather was all foggy and misty an' stuff.  Then, it got nice.  I mean, it got unbelievably nice.  Like, it got, 50 degrees and sunny in the middle of friggin' DECEMBER!  What the hell?  You know, sometimes you're just packing things and thinking, we're never even gonna use/wear/need this .  We could've brought skis, but we don't even own any.  Besides, we were heading to the beach!  For what?  It's WINTER for cryin' out loud!

Well, there's winter storm watching and whale watching and extreme beach walking, etc.  You know, we could roam the beaches and look for stuff washed up on the beach by the storm and tides.  What stuff?  Stuff from Japan?  That'd be gross AND dangerous!  As it turned out, Christmas Day the weather changed.  We'd found out about "King Tides" from a friend on Facebook.  So we checked the local tide tables and went about to take pictures of how high the tides got on 12/23 and 12/24.  We toured around north and south by car just to see what's out there.  We even went to Cape Arago and saw sea lions and tide pools.

But yesterday, we saw people on the beach north of us.  They weren't the usual lot of runners, dog walkers and pack bearing sorts.  They were . . .  gawkers.  You could just see them standing around and talking and taking pictures and plain ol' millin' about.  Some of them looked official, replete with orange vests and reflective gear and helmets and hats and badges and stuff.  We took a closer look via our binoculars and discovered that they were all looking at a beached whale.  We knew the tide would be coming in soon so we decided to gear up and load up with coffee and camera and go have a look.

It turned out the King Tides had brought a king of the sea, a deceased gray whale, to shore.  State officials were performing a necropsy of sorts and taking pictures and generally discussing what should be done.  There were beach walkers and curious on lookers and general gawkers hanging about as well, including ourselves.  I took some pictures.  The poor creature had met his/her demise and got washed up on the beach last night.  Now it was up to the state folks of Oregon to determine why it died and what to do with its remains.

We went to sleep last night to high winds and worsening conditions along the waterfront and awoke to the same.  The windows were wet and wiggly and we noticed vehicles driving along the beach towards the whale remains.  This was unusual because vehicles aren't allowed on these beaches.  Then, we noticed an excavator tracking its way in the same direction.  We figured it was out to do something with the whale, but what exactly we weren't sure.

One thing for sure, with the wind whipping about at 20-40 MPH, we had NO intentions of heading outside to "go check it out!"  The sand, rain and wind were not looking particularly friendly today.  We decided to use binoculars and monitor the situation from a warmer, dryer kinda viewpoint.  So, as I sit here and type from the same room where we played a complete game of Scrabble, put a partial 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle together and typed three new entries into this very blog, we watched the weather beat down on the birds, beach and crew.  The weather had no remorse as they rolled the decrepit, unfortunate whale onto a giant mat, drag it up shore and bury it in the sand.  No sunset tonight, the wind howls on.