Life with Andrea

OK.  We took a trip.  I wanted to go to the ocean, and Bob was agreeable (no surprise), so we went.  We drove through a town called Philomath, and I thought that was so exciting - they love math in that town!  Bob said I was crazy.  No surprise there either. This sign indicates that they scout out for math lovers, and lodge them in this town. 

Now, eventually we got to Newport, which was the desitination of choice.  We'd never been to the port of Newport, just to the Aquarium, so we thought it might be worth a look.  And the port was where we should have been all the time!  It's go the tourist shops you find in any beachside place, and they have these docks on which the sea lions hang out.  They bark at each other - very loudly.  The big ones are on top, and if one of the "pillows" underneath tries to move, there is a LOT of objection.  It reminds me of how the girls used to sleep in the back of the car.  One would lie down from the right, and the other would set her head on top of the first, from the left.  I always thought it quite unfair, but the bossiest one (and you will have to guess) said it was OK and fair.  The other one didn't say. 
The whole reason I wanted to go to Newport was to see the seals and the cobble beach.  Seals, not sea lions.  The seals hang out at Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, and it really is outstanding.  There's a lighthouse, and there were eagles, and some people could see whales (but I couldn't).  And, not far from the lighthouse, there's a beach that has cobble stones.  smooth round stones, black, which come when the hot lava meets the cold ocean sometimes.  And then they get tossed around and smoothed out.  Anyway, in that cobble cove, there were SEVERAL seals, but they you can't see the pictures because they were in the water and I wasn't.  And there's this wonderful cove formation, which reminds me of the fjords I've never seen, and I could take a picture of that so I did. 
And, very last, we went to Seattle to see Soren.  We saw some of the Junior Projects with him, and had dinner, and had egg fights the next day, and walked around the wonderful parts of town in his neighborhood.  His neighborhood is great - just too far from school, and it's not a cooperative house. But while we were waiting for him to wake up, we spent some time on the 9th floor rooftop garden of our hotel (The Inn at Virginia Mason), and this was our view from there - view of the city and we could even see the Sound!  This was a good spring break!