Lunch with the Sea Lions and a Totem Pole

On Dayle's birthday we tried out a new restaurant which had a view of the Sea Lion Docks in the historic Yaquina Bay Front. So these guys were our view all during lunch. Look at this face! The sound effects.. click HERE to hear them.

We also did some people watching.. checking out the folks who were watching the sea lions and getting photos and selfies with them..

This one is talking to us.. ork ork..

Two years ago the old docks were in very poor condition and when many of them got on the docks they were sinking under the water. So, people began raising money to build new ones and now they are floating better.

They're pretty funny how they don't want any new sea lions to get on "their" dock.. so they bark at them and try to push them back into the water.. and often the pusher ends up being the one to fall in.. goofy creatures.

This is also the view from the restaurant.. they have an outdoor deck, too.. where you can listen to the cacophony of the sea lions while dining.. lol. But the Yaquina Bay Bridge looked pretty that day.

A fishing boat was on it's way out under the bridge.

What an adventurous life.. they go out rain or shine.. warm or cold.. rough seas or calm.

On the way back to our cozy caravan I finally pulled in to "Little Whale Cove" to get a photo of this amazing concrete totem pole there. I can't find any information on the totem pole itself on the internet, which in itself is amazing, but I've loved it for years. A short history is as follows:

After scouting for the most remote and undesirable areas of the new Oregon Territory in the early 1850’s, the Coast Reservation was established in 1855 by executive order from the United States government. The government deemed the land unfit for farming and too remote for commerce. The reservation included 1.3 million acres of land from about the Tillamook County line to just below where Florence is now, extending east about 30 miles. About 4,000 Indians from 30 to 40 different tribes and bands were forcibly moved here from the Oregon Territory and Northern California to join the existing tribes and bands already here. To make the accounting simple, these people were all to become the Siletz tribe.

By 1866, many of the natural resources of the area were discovered, such as oysters, fish, timber and the potential for tourism. Little by little, the land was opened up for white settlement until, in 1894, the Reservation was reduced to the area around Siletz, Oregon. The remaining approximate 500 tribal members were each given 80 acres allotments.

I won't post the rest, but suffice it to say, those lands were all eventually sold to white investors and developers. And Little Whale Cove is a gated privately owned community. All that is left of the native people is this totem pole (to be clear, this totem pole is not made by the native people, but commissioned by the owners of the private community).. which I guess is a nice homage to the people who were forced from all of California and Oregon to live here.

Most totem poles are made of wood and hand carved from whole trees.. this one is concrete. I'd love to know who made this and designed it.

When I zoomed in and downloaded this photo I noticed a moth sitting next to the person's mouth. I've always thought of this as a woman.. do you think it's a man or woman?