Ecola State Park

Our latest beach exploration took us to Ecola State  Park.  It was supposedly a great time for whale watching but none of the whales decided to show themselves.  So we scooted over to Indian Beach and had a great time bouldering and searching through tide pools - we're getting pretty good at that.

The picture above is looking at Cannon Beach from an Ecola overlook.  Ecola is a Native Amercian word for whale.  We found evidence that elk had been hanging around the grass at the Ecola viewing area but they were avoiding the whale watching crowds that day.

 Hudson and Lincoln walking along Indian Beach.

This is a great beach for tide pool finds.  We saw quite a lot of hermit crabs, snails, sea stars, barnacles, muscles, sponges, and anemones.

I was curious as to why most sea stars are a shade of purple but every now and then there is a bright orange one.  After researching online, I didn't really get an answer, but from what I gather it's comparable to us having different hair color - black, brown, and blonde hair is most common but every now and then you get a bright red head.

But I did learn some other interesting facts about sea stars like they can extend their stomach out of their mouth to feed on food that is too big for their little mouths.  Their stomachs will attach to the food, a muscle, barnacle, snail or clam, sending digestive juices into their prey's shell through a crack to eat it. Also, I learned that sea stars are considered a "keystone species" meaning scientist look to sea stars as an indicator of intertidal zone health.

This is a picture of the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse.  I was intrigued with this little lighthouse on it's own tiny island, over a mile from the shore, so I did some research when I got home to discover it's name and to read stories about it.  I'm so glad I did.  It has a very interesting history.  I'll try to sum it up a bit but click here to read a Wikipedia article about it and here to read an article from a website dedicated to lighthouses.

To make a long story short, the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse was quickly nicknamed "Terrible Tilly" because of the dangerous conditions there.  Building it and running it was quite a feat. At the time it was built it was the most expensive lighthouse on the West coast.  It became the most expensive lighthouse to run in the country because of all the constant repairs needed due to waves and debris crashing against the lighthouse. Some reports told that the keepers themselves were going crazy, being confined to such small quarters and under such stressful situations.  The lighthouse ran from 1881 to 1957 after which it was sold a couple different times to private owners until it became a columbarium.

For the sake of time I left out all the exciting stories so if you're interested just click on the links above.

Any day at the beach is fun, but those days when we can have fun at the beach and learn something new, well, those days are even better, aren't they?