My Summer Vacation: Part II

Right, so after the highly relaxing fire alarm on Friday night we rocked all the touristy stuff over the weekend.

At the Newport harbor they have a variety of touristy things highlighted by the quadrilla of the Ripleys Believe it or Not Museum, the wax museum, the questionable aquarium, and the butterfly house thing.

If you haven’t ever been to a Ripleys Believe it or Not Museum it usually starts with a itty bitty shrunken head and goes downhill from there. The only thing that you can’t believe is that you just paid real money to see that stuff. Yup, everything in there is significantly more believable than the stuff you can read on some fb pages I know of.

There are a several aquariums of variable quality in and around Newport, but the first one we went to first was the one right on the main drag in the old harbor. It looks roughly like someone sunk a boat and filled it with ocean crap. It is basically a big circular tank filled with all those ocean things that are hard to kill. You know, because all the stuff that wasn’t hard to kill is already dead. It’s the ocean equivalent of the gold fish in your fish tank at home – you know, the gold fish that are the only things left alive after all the fancy fish die. So yeah, we went there.

We also went to the wax museum. It pretty much sucked ass. There was exactly one realistic looking wax dude. Unfortunately it was wax Johnny Depp. Not the 21 Jump Street era Johnny Depp. More like the Edward Scissor Hands era Johnny Depp. Or maybe the Captain Jack Sparrow era Johnny Depp. I gotta say, it was pretty creepy. The only thing that could have made it creepier is if it were the real Johnny Depp.

I think the final part of the quadrilla was the highlight. Yup, at the Butterfly House thingy they didn’t have all the hang-ups that normally go along with that kind of place. That’s right, you can touch the bugs – err insects.

I enjoyed looking at the sea lions in the harbor. Well, that is until a guy strolled up alongside me and started spouting about how many of them there are now compared to the old days – and how they are eating all the fish. I rolled my eyes and walked away instead.

The Oregon Coast Aquarium was pretty good. They lost me when I saw the turkey vulture exhibit though. I mean seriously, who puts a turkey vulture exhibit at an aquarium? Think, it’s not exactly a marine animal is it? Besides, I really don’t like exhibits about things that are readily observable outside of said exhibits. I saw a handful of them gnawing on a road killed deer the very next day for Christ’s sake! Ugh.

I am pretty sure, by the way, that Oregon is the road kill capital of the world just based on variety. Did you know they have opossums there? Yeah, go figure. Either that or big white rat things.

We also did the beach thing. Flying a kite, playing in the surf, looking for shells, just hanging out, getting sun burned in 60 degrees and overcast. Ultimately though, no matter what you call it – being at the beach is just jamming sand into your cracks and orifices. But yeah, anyway, we did a bunch of that.

I didn’t really see any exciting bike stuff there, besides the fact they had bike lanes. At least I think they were bike lanes, I don’t see many of them here. Oh yeah, and they had a sign that flashed when there was a bike on the bridge over the harbor – I’m not really sure if it was a warning sign or some type of redneck beacon.

I did go to Portland though. The bicycling capital of the world from what I hear. Kind of strange that the bicycling capital of the world is located within the road kill capital of the world. Yeah, I’ll save that story for part three.