OMG!?!!

So THAT'S what happened to my bra!!

YAQUINA HEAD OUTSTANDING NATURAL AREA, NEWPORT, OREGON - Part III

THE TIDE POOLS

Yuuummm, pickled sea pea salad!

You can see now why tide pools are like undersea gardens.

Strawberry Anemones live in colonies.  Do these tiny, sweet sea creatures look like a carnivores to you?  Not only are they vicious meat eaters, they can clone themselves!  (Clicking to enlarge gives a better view of their delicate, hairy tentacles.)

This Anemone's ghostly appearing tentacles are soft as a rose petal.  If you glide your fingers across them, you hardly feel anything at all.  But if you let your fingers linger, it grabs you ever so softly with tiny suction cups embedded in its many "hands."  Good thing human fingers weren't on the menu that day! 

Its pebbly pedal disc or basal column (upper left) looks like chain mail.

Whomever the scientist naming this creature was, he named it  because of its resemblance to the terrestrial garden variety!  Eye of the beholder and all that...!  This is its mouth.

No longer called "Starfish," because they aren't a "fish"; they are an invertebrate echinoderm (related to sand dollars and sea urchins), now called Sea Stars.  Makes sense to me.

Some species have been known to live for up to 34 years.

Yes, I left my polarizing filter in the car -- s'cuse the murky shots of the submerged creatures!  And, in some cases the water was moving.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

YAQUINA HEAD OUTSTANDING NATURAL AREA, NEWPORT, OR - Part II

THE LIGHTHOUSE GROUNDS

Basalt Cobble in the foreground --

Seeps and crevices in the cliffs are home to tiny, but not-at-all fragile, mini gardens of incredible beauty and color...

...some bold...

...and some with blossoms no bigger than a little girl's pinkie fingernail!

In the fields around the lighthouse and rimming the parking lots, there were  great masses of wind-hardy wildflowers...

...including some curious, almost comical stalks that reminded me of the "coneheads"

Salal's three stages of "bloom"; the berries are edible once they become berries.

Beach aster, clinging to the cliff.

Some kind of daisy-like daisy!

Lots of lowly Wild Cucumber...

...and plenty of elegant Queen Anne's Lace.  I caught this one in its early pink-fringed state of bloom...

...and this one in its full almost-all-white flowering stage.  

I'm still researching the name of this eye-catching plant...a tall stalk holding cream-colored (with a little pink blush) giant pompoms made up of little, individual pompoms.

OK, so for now it's name is "Creamy Pompom-on-a-Stick."  

And the best and brightest flower of them all, my sister Janet!

YAQUINA HEAD OUTSTANDING NATURAL AREA, NEWPORT, OR

(Yes, that is truly how it's referred to.)

THE LIGHTHOUSE  (Maintained by BLM)

Outside in...

...Inside out.

Its dizzying, five-story staircase, not for the feint of heart!

SAY AAHHHHH!

 FOG!  Mother Nature's air conditioning.  The Oregon Coast isn't just pretty.  It's COOL and pretty.  And it's the perfect getaway for people with Scottish blood who LOVE drizzle and mist and fog!

This is the Yaquina Bridge,

Newport, Oregon

From Land

and from Sea

SMILES...

...from my friend Jeanie's kitchen:

"The only reason I have a kitchen is because it came with the house"!!

...from her T-Shirt

"Let's eat Grandma."
"Let's eat, Grandma."
(PUNCTUATION SAVES LIVES!)

A BIT OF NOSTALGIA...

TO DISTRACT YOU FOR A MINUTE -- check out the "Museum of Endangered Sound."

http://savethesounds.info/