Vacation

As some of you know my sister and her daughter decided to come and see us, so we planned some fun things to do. On Thursday we were going to go pick strawberries, but they were closed. George thought that was a weird idea of fun things to do, but I think it is cool to go and see the huge fields of strawberries and get to pick your own.

This is the devils punchbowl. It is kind of cool to see. While we were here we watched a group of about 30 surfers, trying to get up on their boards, and it was interesting to see a guy head out in a kayak, I might dare try a kayak but the surfing didn't look fun to me at all.
Next we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, it is always a fun place to go. This Japanese crab (below) can get as big as 13 feet!! They were huge.The puffin bird never fails to entertain. This little guy was within touching distance and all he did was look at us. This cage is one that you walk through a door and the birds can fly over and around you, so basically you are in their cage. The tanks have such a huge variety of fish that it is really fascinating. The blue and white ring things and the pointy things are blown glass.
These star fish and anemones are in touch tanks, we all took turns touching all the sea creatures. Very cool.
The ultimate tank was the shark tank, it is a long tunnel and the sharks swim over and around and under us. It is amazing to see all the varieties and really hard to get a good snap shot of them. Jackie took a video but she was moving around so much that it makes a person dizzy, but she did get some cool sharks.
The picture above shows the tunnel, and you can see the sharks swimming around. Below is a picture of the one of the mural at Newport Bay, the buildings have all these amazing paintings on them. It is fun to see.

We spent the whole day walking around and enjoying the day, oh I forgot before we went to the Bay we stopped at a place called the Edge and they are the company that did a lot of blown glass in the fish tanks at the aquarium. The cool thing is they worked right in front of us, we watched them work on some long twisty things for an arrangement for a wedding and they also make a horse for the kids. If you are at the Oregon coast in the winter months you can go to Lincoln beach and look for glass floats that lots of glass blowing companies "hide" on the beach, I have been meaning to do it for years and I just never have. Maybe this year :)