Day 462: Lincoln City, OR to Florence, OR

This morning we walked down to the beach at Lincoln City. It was really cold:

Sand was blowing across the beach:

Heading south, we pulled of at Boiler Bay State Wayside to take a look at the kelp “fields”:

Our next stop was Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, home of the Yaquina Head lighthouse, the tallest lighthouse in Oregon. We watched the video in the visitor center:

The model of the lighthouse is in the foreground, with a to-scale model of the light itself in the background:

This exhibit shows how the first-order Fresnel Lens, made by Fresnel himself in France in 1868, bends the light so it all gets sent out to sea:

The kids received their Junior Ranger badges. This is a BLM visitor center, not an NPS visitor center, so the badge looks a little different:

Sadly, the lighthouse is wrapped in Tyvek over scaffolding for repairs, so we didn’t go out to see the lighthouse itself.

Unfortunately, Newport’s Hatfield Marine Science Center was closed. The Oregon Coast Museum, also in Newport, was a little to expensive for us at $75ish admission for the four of us, so we continued south.

Next we stopped at Devil’s Churn to watch the waves crash in. The ocean was mellow, so there wasn’t much action: