Tuesday was very nice weather-wise.  We left the AC(s) on in the Coach for the dog and headed back North on 101 a few miles to the Sea Lion Cave.

Here’s a picture of the building which doubles as the entrance point and gift shop.  We took this pic yesterday at a pull-off  on the way down to the RV Park.

This is as close as we got to Sea Lions for the day (pic below).  We were told that at this time of year, they are all out in the ocean “fattening” themselves up for winter.  They offered a discounted price and a “rain-check” if you come back within a year.  And oh yeah, they gave me a free popcorn for being a veteran.  Their discounted price was still rather high at $24 for the two of us.  Since we’re only here once, and here now… we paid and walked down to the pathways behind the building.  One of the two paths goes North down to a viewpoint and the other goes South to the elevator that takes you to the cave.

 

Here’s the elevator that takes you down to the cave.

Here’s the empty cave.  Still impressive even without sea lions.

This answers one of the questions you always wondered about but were afraid to ask:

The Sea Lion Cave has a secondary lookout point with a view of the Heceta Head Lighthouse.

These next three pictures were taken with my camera instead of the iPhone.  I was able to zoom in on the only “real” sea lions that we would see today.

Nice view of the Heceta Head Lighthouse  as seen from the Sea Lion Cave that would be our next destination.

We toured through the gift shop at the entrance after going back up the elevator and long pathway.

I spotted these Cool refrigerator magnets in the gift shop that I probably would have purchased before we went full-timing in the RV.  RV style refrigerators are generally not conducive to magnets.  Although our refrigerator is a residential style Amana stainless model  it still won’t hold magnets – besides, who would want to keep picking magnets up off the floor all the time after a road trip?

We were a little disappointed with not seeing sea lions, except for the couple we were able to see from a distance out at sea.  But, the cave was definitely worth seeing.

We left the Sea Lion Cave and went up the road to the Heceta Head Lighthouse which was our next intended destination for the day.  We drove through a tunnel and across a bridge and then looped back under the bridge to the parking lot.

And of course, we get to pay for this pleasure.

Here’s the tunnel and bridge we went through and crossed over then under to get to the parking lot.

A little interesting trivia on the bridge.

We pulled the folding chairs out of the back of the Silverado and sat on the beach awhile.  We enjoyed the sandwiches we had made to take along with us today.  Mine was peanut butter and jelly, made with the cranberry jam we bought while on Long Beach.

When we returned to our chairs after walking around on the beach, we found that this bird had pecked away at our plastic trash bag we left hanging on one of the chairs.  He must like cranberry jam.

How about some more pics on the beach:

After our lunch on the beach, we hiked up the pathway to tour the lighthouse.

Informational placard on the pathway to the lighthouse.

And here it is!  Another lighthouse… you haven’t seen enough of these in this blog yet, right?

The tour was free.  They only take groups of 4-5 people at a time to limit the weight and vibration on the spiral staircase.

And of course, we had to do the selfie while we were at the lighthouse.

After our two tours for the day, we headed back to the Coach to get little Coach (our dog).  Once again, he was just just fine.

We did some exploratory driving around the town of Florence.  It turns out that it is only 1 about 1.5 miles South of the Elks RV Park where we are at.

There seem to be a lot of sand dunes around this area.  Here’s a view across the channel below.

We walked around the “Old Town Florence” and stopped here for some calamari and liquid refreshments.

We toured through the little shops in the area and found a doggie carry bag.  It’s like a backpack but for front use.  I guess you could call it a frontpack, right?  It should come in handy on the rare times we are allowed to take dogs on hikes in the future.  So we bought it and put it to use right away.

We then drove over to the Elks Lodge in town to check it out.  As I mentioned in a previous post, they also have RV parking with hook-ups – cost is $15.  Here’s a pic.

View of the Lodge parking lot.

We went inside and ended up staying for Bingo.  Yes, I said Bingo.  It’s was kind of fun, although we didn’t win anything.  We stayed until 9 PM.  We were able to bring little Coach inside with us.  He stayed in his new frontpack on my lap while we marked bingo cards.

The lodge also had burgers, dogs, and fries to order courtesy of the vets group.  We shared some fries and Stilla had a kosher dog.  After bingo, we left about $10 in the slots and then headed home.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we plan on packing up and driving over to a local casino parking lot that we scoped out while driving around town earlier.  There were lots of motorhomes and RVs in the free parking area.  Free sounds good for a day… so I’ll post from there tomorrow.