Our trip to Oregon--Part Four

We started out our day by going to the Aquarium.  This was the activity that Jeff and Carol had chosen for us the day before but we hadn't ever quite made it there.  

At the Aquarium we saw all the things you would expect to see, including some beautiful jelly fish, cute puffins, sharks, and fish, and assorted sea creatures, including some beautiful anemones.
  

 We saw a few more amazing things there at the Aquarium!!

  Then we moved to the Newport wharf for some authentic seafood.  

Uncle Jeff ordered seafood soup, which came with half an unshelled crab sticking out. 

We had chosen to go crabbing for our activity.  When it came time to do it, no one else wanted to "crab" with us :(  We had gone in the previous day and had a crash course in crabbing from a crusty old woman who worked in the bait shop.  After lunch we went back to the store and we bought crabbing licenses, two very dead and frozen mink for bait, rented crabbing baskets and a couple of buckets for the catch.  The crusty lady warned us that anyone helping, without a license, could be in big trouble if the fish and game warden came around.  All of the Dungeness crab that we caught had to be measured, and only those that were males and above a certain size could be kept. We could keep any Red Rock crabs that we caught.

 We took our gear to the wharf and started "crabbing".  Each time we pulled in the baskets we had crabs, but most were too small to keep or else they were female dungeness.  About this time the fish and game lady showed up, checked sizes, asked questions.  Apparently we answered them all correctly because she bid us a good day and left.  

This activity turned out to be one of the funnest things we had ever done!!  But, after two or three hours, we had only kept 3 Red Rock crabs (the others we had caught were quite small) and it was time to turn in our equipment.  We looked around and found someone else who was crabbing, asked them if they wanted our three crabs, and we turned in our equipment.  We were a little disappointed that we didn't have any crabs to take back and cook and eat but there was also a little bit of relief that we didn't have to take any back with us to cook!!!

As we were spending our final evening at the beach house, we noticed this beautiful sunset out over the ocean. Beautiful ending to a beautiful week.  Time to head home in the morning :(