Boiler Bay Beacon
DEPOE BAY — Even on a family afternoon the reporter brain never really turns off. You’re always scanning for the scoop. News never sleeps. Woodward never stopped digging and neither do the rest of us who live this beat.
The town was packed solid on Saturday. Every parking spot taken. Sidewalks full of people moving both ways. Traffic crawling across the bridge. The shoulder of Highway 101 had close to fifty trucks with empty boat trailers lined up. Fishing season is either here or right on the edge of it. That many trailers in one stretch is a story by itself.
Bridge work is still going strong. Carter & Co. has been at it since early March on the old Hwy. 101 span, the $10.9 million job we covered when the blue-collar artists showed up with power chisels and concrete saws to save the 99-year-old Conde McCullough bridge instead of tearing it down. Work runs weekdays though so it was quiet on that front.
We ducked into Mazatlan Mexican Restaurant for lunch. Great tacos. The kids went straight for the free bean dip that comes with the table and cleaned it out. I had a Pacifico. Cerveza mas fina. They keep binoculars by the window in case a whale shows up while you eat. Nice touch. Consistently good food every time.
After lunch I took Beacon Force One, the Mavic Mini, and sent it about a mile offshore. The little drone is rated to go six miles, so a mile is nothing. Calm seas under the low gray clouds. Depoe Bay sat there in the distance, right about… 5400 feet away. The Samson, a whale watching boat with Dockside Charters, was working the water with people on both decks and a clean white wake behind her.
I drifted over to a red buoy floating alone and zoomed in. A brown sea lion was stretched out on the platform like he owned it. Just sitting there watching the water. That was the scoop. The smell of fish was strong in spots along the harbor. Coastie air.
Back on land a seagull had claimed the peak of the Depoe Bay Whale Watching Center roof. The whole top was streaked white. A black raven sat on a weathered ledge nearby and stared at me. Down on the black rocks a guy in a blue shirt stood with a rod as the waves broke around his feet.
That was the day.
