Healing Waters

Newport, Oregon  May 30th 2025

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” Isak Dinesen

The sparkling waters of the Pacific Ocean, helped heal our souls today. We drove 30 minutes north to Depoe Bay for a whale watching trip, a favorite activity of our family. My mother in law lived on Cape Cod and our visits often included whale watching expeditions. Witnessing endangered right whales breaching or flipping their enormous flukes was a thrill and a privilege. So we were excited to see the gray whales of the Pacific.

Unlike the big whale watching ships of Cape Cod, we went out on a small Zodiac with nine other passengers, a deckhand, our captain Carrie, and her two dogs Koda and Kilo. Carrie, a marine biologist, trained her dogs to spot whales by smelling the stinky water they blow as they surface. They see a lot of whales because Depoe Bay’s unique geography and nutient-rich waters create an ideal habitat for gray whales. More than 200 whales live there and thousands more pass by on their annual migration between their breeding grounds in Baja, California and their feeding grounds in Alaska.

All we saw of the whales were a couple of blows but that didn’t matter because it was a glorious day to be on the water. We did see seals, sea lions and river otters in the small harbor.

On the way back we stopped to pick up our glass blowingprojects. We were thrilled with my heart and Jamie’s tornado paperweight. Cousin Marj made a gorgeous bowl but kept it wrapped for her flight back to DC

Once we returned to Rhoda, we took Gizmo for a walk to the beach. It was mostly deserted and totally gorgeous. Gizmo didn’t know what to make of the waves but enjoyed every moment. It was wonderful to see him enjoying himself because losing Enzo has been hard. He just doesn’t understand what happened to his brother and why he’s not with us. The ocean was good for all of us... On The Rhoda