Washburn to Umpqua

Captions from the top: Dani entering the Gardiner in Oregon, Sea lions from afar all of those little things that look like rock are sea lions, Sea lions for the last two.
10/27/09
Carl G. Washburn State Park to Umpqua Lighthouse State Park
Day 11-43 miles

We left the comfort of our yurt this morning. Oh, how comfortable it was. How warm and dry we were. We got out of there at 11 AM, which was probably because we liked having a nice dry place to sleep, eat and dry our clothing and tent. We also saw some awesome bright red and bright yellow mushrooms and a salamander at the yurt.

We had a little oatmeal for breakfast and we were starving when we rolled in to Florence. We found a neat little place called "Kathleen and Nina's Restaurant." We decided to get a second breakfast/lunch there and it was amazing. Now I know what all the retired people in Florence do all day. They hang out and K&Ns. We ordered omelets and they came with toast and homemade peach jam. It was really good. The omelets were huge and so tasty. The home fries came with homemade gravy on them and we also had a side of biscuits and gravy. The sign on the building says "You can't say Yummy enough." They are right!

We rode our bikes past Sea Lion Caves, which are the biggest sea caves in the world. Before we got there we heard a barking noise from below us on the cliff, and there were enormous numbers of sea lions lounging on the beach below and swimming in the surf. We were very excited to see the pinnipeds because several times before we had spotted "kelp seals." It went kind of like this..."GREG!! SEALS!!! look at the seals there are so many seals!!!" Greg takes a photo and zooms in, "nope, its kelp Dani. Not seals." "aww.....darn! I was so excited." This probably happened three times before we actually saw seals, or, sea lions.

That night Greg made an amazing dinner of pizza. We got some precooked pizza crusts, sauce, pepper, onion, zucchini, cheese, and some of Don's dehydrated tomatoes. We fitted the pizza crusts into our skillet and then loaded them with the ingredients and cooked them over the MSR. They came out SO good, with the crusts toasted and everything hot, the cheese acting as a lid for the other ingredients. I wish we had a picture of this because it was so awesome, good looking and tasty. I couldn't believe they came out so good being cooked over the blow torch that is the MSR stove. Nice job Greg :)

Dani