The fun part was the preparation the night before. Since I had over $100 in pledges, I got a nice 32 oz water bottle. But since lots of other people had gotten the very same one, I decorated mine with magic markers and sharpies so it would stand out. I made wide stripes all around it. I really enjoy doing mindless things like that – it took about 20 minutes and I consider it time well spent. I had also stopped at JD Pence on my way home from work on Wednesday and gotten a very eye-catching pink and blue swim cap to make it easier for Dave to keep track of my when he was counting laps. So once I’d made my energy drink (HEED mango), I was all set.
I woke up early Saturday morning, about an hour earlier than I’d meant to. Josh was leaving for Maine to visit my mom on the red-eye Saturday night, and I’d woken up quite suddenly wondering if I’d actually made the plane reservations or only thought about it. Once I was awake I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I figured I might as well get up and see if I really made the reservation (of course I did – but you know how it is at 5:30 am). Everybody else got up around 6:15, and we left for the pool at 6:40. This was early for me in the summer, but Josh and Tim usually swim from 7-9 anyway, so it was no big deal for them. And of course they usually swim much more than 5,000 yards in that time, so that also was no big deal for them. In fact I was the only one who thought it was a big deal. Well, Dave did too, because he had to get up so early on a Saturday morning.
We were some of the first ones to the pool, but it filled up quickly with swimmers and parents. A little before 7 we all chose our lanes, and at first my lane only had two other swimmers in it, which would have been really nice. But once we got started, several more people got in my lane, and some of them were people I had hoped not to swim with. Here’s the problem: I’m not very fast, so I can’t swim in the lane with the fast kids, who have a get in, do your laps, get out mentality. No, I have to swim with the 9-11 year old girls, who want to do breaststroke (that’s where I get kicked in the face) or use kickboards (that’s where I get kicked in the hands). I figure I swam an extra couple hundred yards going around them.
My goal was to complete the 5000 yards (200 lengths, 100 laps, whatever you want to call it) in an hour and 45 minutes. I also planned to stop every 500 yards (20 lengths, 10 laps) to drink some energy drink to supplement my breakfast banana, and also to get out after 2,500 yards (you figure it out) to stretch my calves in the hope of avoiding the debilitating cramping I’d had the last two times. In order to make it, I figured I needed to keep a pretty constant pace of 50 yards every 60 seconds. So having to stop and start and go around the breaststrokers and kickboarders, or worse yet the breaststroking kickboarders, was really irritating. Then again, it always is, so I should get over it.
You might be wondering what I think about while I am going back and forth 100 times. The answer is, I am counting. Although 3 stroke breathing is pretty much what I do, I still count the arm strokes to breath. 1,2,3, breathe. And since I wanted to stop every 20 lengths, I needed to count lengths as well. So on the first length, I counted 1,2,3, breathe. 1,2,3, breathe. 1,2,3, breathe. On the second length I counted 2,2,3, breathe. 2,2,3, breathe. And on the 67th length, it was 67,2,3, breathe. And on the 85th length… well, you get the idea. After 100 lengths I got out, stretched, got back in, and started over at 1. 1,2,3, breathe. 1,2,3, breathe. It’s very relaxing, actually.
The amazing thing is that maybe because of the stretching, maybe because of the conditioning, I really had almost no cramping at all. At around length 165, I thought I might move over into the next lane, because most of the kids who had started in that lane (including Josh and Tim) were already finished, and the other kids still in the lane were (I thought) mostly my speed. So I moved over, and it turned out that they were mostly just a little faster. So I tried to speed up a little, especially by pushing off the wall a little faster, and then I did cramp up. So I swam through it (about 10 lengths) and moved back into the slower lane, and was thrilled when the cramps completely went away by length 180.
And length 180 is a very good place, because it’s the last 20. Oddly, the first 30 are the hardest for me – you’re not even 1/6 of the way there, and it seems like you are going to be swimming forever. But once you’re down to your last 20, which is 500 yards, it is a no brainer. Also I could see that I was going to make my goal time, and the cramping in my left calf had stopped, and things were good. I motored through the next 19, and finished with my last length of butterfly as always. I climbed out having finished in 1:42, which was (I think) about 5 minutes faster than last year, and I felt really, really good.
This was my third swim-a-thon, and after the first one (in 2006) I could barely walk and had incredible blisters from wearing zoomers. After last year’s I was in pretty good shape, but had some trouble walking because of all the cramping. This year I felt the best I’ve ever felt, and I went home and had a corn tortilla with cheese, black beans, chicken and green chili sauce to replenish my protein and celebrate.
Thanks to all of you who supported me by making a pledge. If you haven’t made a pledge and would like to support the team and help me reach my goal of $600 so I can push Coach Tim into the pool, please click on this link, and I’ll get back to you with how to turn in your money. Every little bit helps.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Day 7
Started the latest of any day so far – it was almost 9 when I woke up. Of course we’d stayed up late last night watching the crescent moon set into the ocean. It was very interesting. When we first saw it it was very high and made a great moon path both on the water and on the wet sand. As it sunk lower and lower, it made less of a path. There were the usual low clouds on the horizon, but instead of the moon sinking behind them and disappearing from the bottom up, it just got redder and redder and smaller and smaller. At one point there was just a thin vertical line of red on the horizon – kind of like a ufo.
One thing I haven’t mentioned that has been really wonderful about this week is that Dave has made the bed every day. This small thing has made a big difference – there’s just something so nice about coming in to a made bed and not having to do it yourself. Almost like being in a hotel.
Saturday night is a good night to have our smokked fish dinner, so we need to go in to downtown to get the fish and the steamers. Readers from last year will no doubt recall our disastrous attempt to go into town on Saturday, where we went to town about around 2 and couldn’t find a parking spot at all, and Dave had to circle like a shark while I went into the E. Coli Seafood Market to get the goods. Last year although the weather was not great here (foggy), it was over 100 degrees Portland and everybody was at the beach. This year the weather is great here, and thanks to the weather channel everybody knows it. But Dave had come up with the clever plan of going to town early (10:30) and then hanging out. So we did. The first thing we did was walk to midtown to see if anything was happening at Icefire. We timed it almost perfectly and got there just as they were finishing up a plate. We got to see the part where they take the small vaselike object and spin it out into a plate, it is just the coolest thing. Also where they cut it with scissors like it was soft plastic.
After Icefire we walked out to Haystack Rock, something we almost never do because it is too touristy and besides we have our own rocks. But we had some time to kill, so we walked out, and I am glad we did. We got there just at low tide – about a minus one – and there were many very interesting tidepools. There’s a place where the rocks almost form a barrier, so you get a little protected cove. Lots of seaweed, lots of starfish, lots of people, and lots of birds. Haystack rock is so big that the top of it actually has grass growing on it – and not just a little grass, either . The Haystack Rock Awareness Program volunteers were there too, with little telescopes, so we were able to see some birds up close – common murres, a puffin which was placed so perfectly in the view that we thought it might be an animatronic one they had for visitors, pelagic cormorants and of course seagulls. My favorites are the common murres, whose wings seem too short and small for their stubby penguin like bodies. Because of this there’s a sort of frantic haste to their wingbeats, like they’re not sure they’re going to be able to stay up. The gulls, on the other hand, do this wonderful thing where they catch an updraft and just hang in the sky without moving their wings at all.
When we’d had enough of the beach, we headed back to town to think about where to eat lunch. It was such a beautiful day we wanted to eat outside, and the natural thought was to go to the sunny beer garden at Warren House, especially since we had no children and could actually sit in the sunny beer garden. The problem is that the whole point of going to town early was to have a parking space in town, and Warren House is all the way down in Tolovana. Tolovana is a pretty good walk away from Midtown and you have to do it on the beach, because the S-curves are between the two places, and the S-curves are not a good place to walk. I considered calling Josh to have him come get us and we’d all eat at Warren House, but Dave said he didn’t think that was what Josh had in mind.
Why weren’t Josh and Tim with us, you may be wondering. First, because they’re teenagers and being with us is not at the top of their list. Second, because they had been at home awaiting the arrival of John Friend, who was driving out all by himself. We had been secretly hoping his parents would say that he couldn’t, not because we don’t like him (we do), but because now there is a precedent of taking the family car and driving to the coast. Oh well. At any rate, John arrived while we were in town and he and Josh and Tim went to Warren House all by themselves. Meanwhile Dave and I were still trying to figure out where to go. We wanted to go to Heather’s of sainted memory (it’s only been gone 7 or 8 years), and decided we’d check out the menu for Season’s café and Deli, which is in the new “Loblolly By the Sea” group of buildings. The menu looked interesting enough that we decided to stay, and they had nice tables outside to sit at. We both ordered soup (Beer Cheese for Dave, Tomato Basil for me) and sandwiches. The soups were fabulous. Dave says next year he’s just going to order a soup sampler. The sandwiches were good too, but not as spectacular as the soups. I had something called an Aussie Dip, which is like a French dip but made with lamb, and it was good if you like French dips, which I don’t particularly. I got a half sandwich which was a good amount. Dave had an enormous Rueben which looked and tasted very good, but we had to take half of it home.
After lunch we headed toward the wine shop, but it was too early to go there, so we stopped at the bookstore. Dave found a very nice picture book about Oregon Wines that is just lots of stories from winemakers and beautiful pictures, which he bought. I found a book called Heirloom about an heirloom tomato grower which I didn’t buy. Then we went to the wine store, home of Mr. Wine Know-It-All. He wasn’t there, but Kevin Howard from Zenas and Sejourne was there pouring some of their wines. We came, we tasted, we bought the Pinot Gris and the Meritage. Then it was off to E. Coli, where we had the first and possibly only snag with coming in June – there’s no smoked tuna until July. Rats! So we got both peppered and plain smokked salmon, smokked mussels (1/4 lb) and 2 lbs of steamers.
By the time we got back to the parking lot the place was a total zoo – people circling the parking lot looking for spaces, crowded sidewalks, all the things that make you ready to leave. Dave had wondered how many of the people were day trippers vs folks out for a week. Given how much more crowded it is on the weekend, I think there’s a large percentage of day trippers. Day trippers, yeah.
On the way home we stopped at Waves of Grain in Tolovana to get bread, but they were pretty much out – we got 4 french rolls and an extremely skinny baguette. Note for next year: stop there on the way in to town in the morning. When we got home Tim was asleep and Josh and John were down at the beach. Tim woke up and headed down to the beach with his boogie board and somehow managed to get all the way in the water and get Josh and John to come in too.
Afternoon was quiet. The boys came up and dried off and got cleaned up, then watched TV and facebooked until it was time for John to go home. Then I remembered that Josh had said to get milk, so he and Tim went down to the Arch Cape Deli to get some, but they were closed, so they went to the Surfcrest in Tolovana, where we always stop on the first night for milk. So that was a nice roundness. When they got back Dave put the steamers in to steam, and we had the smokked fish dinner. And for the first time ever, the smokked fish dinner failed to delight. We’re not sure what it was exactly, but the clam broth was watery, the smoked fish didn’t hit our spots, and overall it was just a disappointing dinner. It was so disappointing that only Tim had the heart to do talking Mr. Clammy. It was so disappointing that I sent Dave and the boys to Osborns to recover, while I put on an old Yes album (actually, I hooked my phone to the stereo) and did dishes and folded laundry. Because today is laundry day, so I don’t have too much laundry to do when we get home. Because Dave is leaving for New York City early Monday morning, so there won’t be much time for him to pack. Anyway, we’re thinking that next year maybe we’ll change it to a fish dinner – get some smokked fish (tuna) to take home & make pasta with, and maybe grill some fish to go along with the steamers. That with salad and bread would be a nice dinner.
Once the boys all got home (Dave had a haystack sundae) we did some relaxing, then Tim chopped the kindling for tonight. He didn’t need to chop any firewood, because he went a little nuts with it last night. I made oven s’mores for Tim & me, microwaving 4 marshmallows at a time for 7 seconds to get perfect doneness under the broiler. Tim is seeing how much sugar he can get before the sugar train leaves the station. I played a game of farkle with Tim, and two with Dave. I won one of the three games, but rolled 5 of a kind twice , which was good.
Wildlife note: In previous years there has almost always been a seagull perched on the corner of the roof, waiting for bread or cherries or whatever. This year there has almost never been one, which is too bad, because we like feeding the seagulls. The raccoon either didn’t come around tonight or we didn’t see it. What we have more of than we’ve ever had before is ants, Big, black carpenter ants. It makes us happy that they are not our problem.
Meanwhile, during the farkle games with Dave, clouds completely moved in from out of nowhere, and within half an hour we went from a beautiful night looking forward to a great sunset to completely socked in and wondering if it would rain. Also I discovered that the game is spelled farkel, but that doesn’t rhyme with sparkle, so I’m going to retain the old spelling.
We finished our week with a rousing game of Dread Pirate. Josh was the dread pirate first, and even put on the eyepatch. Tim and I were never the dread pirate, and Dave only got to be it for a short time. As usual, Josh was the Dread when the game ended. I had the least amount of treasure, and Dave had the most and is the Pirate Winner until we come again.
Goodnight and thanks for riding along.
One thing I haven’t mentioned that has been really wonderful about this week is that Dave has made the bed every day. This small thing has made a big difference – there’s just something so nice about coming in to a made bed and not having to do it yourself. Almost like being in a hotel.
Saturday night is a good night to have our smokked fish dinner, so we need to go in to downtown to get the fish and the steamers. Readers from last year will no doubt recall our disastrous attempt to go into town on Saturday, where we went to town about around 2 and couldn’t find a parking spot at all, and Dave had to circle like a shark while I went into the E. Coli Seafood Market to get the goods. Last year although the weather was not great here (foggy), it was over 100 degrees Portland and everybody was at the beach. This year the weather is great here, and thanks to the weather channel everybody knows it. But Dave had come up with the clever plan of going to town early (10:30) and then hanging out. So we did. The first thing we did was walk to midtown to see if anything was happening at Icefire. We timed it almost perfectly and got there just as they were finishing up a plate. We got to see the part where they take the small vaselike object and spin it out into a plate, it is just the coolest thing. Also where they cut it with scissors like it was soft plastic.
After Icefire we walked out to Haystack Rock, something we almost never do because it is too touristy and besides we have our own rocks. But we had some time to kill, so we walked out, and I am glad we did. We got there just at low tide – about a minus one – and there were many very interesting tidepools. There’s a place where the rocks almost form a barrier, so you get a little protected cove. Lots of seaweed, lots of starfish, lots of people, and lots of birds. Haystack rock is so big that the top of it actually has grass growing on it – and not just a little grass, either . The Haystack Rock Awareness Program volunteers were there too, with little telescopes, so we were able to see some birds up close – common murres, a puffin which was placed so perfectly in the view that we thought it might be an animatronic one they had for visitors, pelagic cormorants and of course seagulls. My favorites are the common murres, whose wings seem too short and small for their stubby penguin like bodies. Because of this there’s a sort of frantic haste to their wingbeats, like they’re not sure they’re going to be able to stay up. The gulls, on the other hand, do this wonderful thing where they catch an updraft and just hang in the sky without moving their wings at all.
When we’d had enough of the beach, we headed back to town to think about where to eat lunch. It was such a beautiful day we wanted to eat outside, and the natural thought was to go to the sunny beer garden at Warren House, especially since we had no children and could actually sit in the sunny beer garden. The problem is that the whole point of going to town early was to have a parking space in town, and Warren House is all the way down in Tolovana. Tolovana is a pretty good walk away from Midtown and you have to do it on the beach, because the S-curves are between the two places, and the S-curves are not a good place to walk. I considered calling Josh to have him come get us and we’d all eat at Warren House, but Dave said he didn’t think that was what Josh had in mind.
Why weren’t Josh and Tim with us, you may be wondering. First, because they’re teenagers and being with us is not at the top of their list. Second, because they had been at home awaiting the arrival of John Friend, who was driving out all by himself. We had been secretly hoping his parents would say that he couldn’t, not because we don’t like him (we do), but because now there is a precedent of taking the family car and driving to the coast. Oh well. At any rate, John arrived while we were in town and he and Josh and Tim went to Warren House all by themselves. Meanwhile Dave and I were still trying to figure out where to go. We wanted to go to Heather’s of sainted memory (it’s only been gone 7 or 8 years), and decided we’d check out the menu for Season’s café and Deli, which is in the new “Loblolly By the Sea” group of buildings. The menu looked interesting enough that we decided to stay, and they had nice tables outside to sit at. We both ordered soup (Beer Cheese for Dave, Tomato Basil for me) and sandwiches. The soups were fabulous. Dave says next year he’s just going to order a soup sampler. The sandwiches were good too, but not as spectacular as the soups. I had something called an Aussie Dip, which is like a French dip but made with lamb, and it was good if you like French dips, which I don’t particularly. I got a half sandwich which was a good amount. Dave had an enormous Rueben which looked and tasted very good, but we had to take half of it home.
After lunch we headed toward the wine shop, but it was too early to go there, so we stopped at the bookstore. Dave found a very nice picture book about Oregon Wines that is just lots of stories from winemakers and beautiful pictures, which he bought. I found a book called Heirloom about an heirloom tomato grower which I didn’t buy. Then we went to the wine store, home of Mr. Wine Know-It-All. He wasn’t there, but Kevin Howard from Zenas and Sejourne was there pouring some of their wines. We came, we tasted, we bought the Pinot Gris and the Meritage. Then it was off to E. Coli, where we had the first and possibly only snag with coming in June – there’s no smoked tuna until July. Rats! So we got both peppered and plain smokked salmon, smokked mussels (1/4 lb) and 2 lbs of steamers.
By the time we got back to the parking lot the place was a total zoo – people circling the parking lot looking for spaces, crowded sidewalks, all the things that make you ready to leave. Dave had wondered how many of the people were day trippers vs folks out for a week. Given how much more crowded it is on the weekend, I think there’s a large percentage of day trippers. Day trippers, yeah.
On the way home we stopped at Waves of Grain in Tolovana to get bread, but they were pretty much out – we got 4 french rolls and an extremely skinny baguette. Note for next year: stop there on the way in to town in the morning. When we got home Tim was asleep and Josh and John were down at the beach. Tim woke up and headed down to the beach with his boogie board and somehow managed to get all the way in the water and get Josh and John to come in too.
Afternoon was quiet. The boys came up and dried off and got cleaned up, then watched TV and facebooked until it was time for John to go home. Then I remembered that Josh had said to get milk, so he and Tim went down to the Arch Cape Deli to get some, but they were closed, so they went to the Surfcrest in Tolovana, where we always stop on the first night for milk. So that was a nice roundness. When they got back Dave put the steamers in to steam, and we had the smokked fish dinner. And for the first time ever, the smokked fish dinner failed to delight. We’re not sure what it was exactly, but the clam broth was watery, the smoked fish didn’t hit our spots, and overall it was just a disappointing dinner. It was so disappointing that only Tim had the heart to do talking Mr. Clammy. It was so disappointing that I sent Dave and the boys to Osborns to recover, while I put on an old Yes album (actually, I hooked my phone to the stereo) and did dishes and folded laundry. Because today is laundry day, so I don’t have too much laundry to do when we get home. Because Dave is leaving for New York City early Monday morning, so there won’t be much time for him to pack. Anyway, we’re thinking that next year maybe we’ll change it to a fish dinner – get some smokked fish (tuna) to take home & make pasta with, and maybe grill some fish to go along with the steamers. That with salad and bread would be a nice dinner.
Once the boys all got home (Dave had a haystack sundae) we did some relaxing, then Tim chopped the kindling for tonight. He didn’t need to chop any firewood, because he went a little nuts with it last night. I made oven s’mores for Tim & me, microwaving 4 marshmallows at a time for 7 seconds to get perfect doneness under the broiler. Tim is seeing how much sugar he can get before the sugar train leaves the station. I played a game of farkle with Tim, and two with Dave. I won one of the three games, but rolled 5 of a kind twice , which was good.
Wildlife note: In previous years there has almost always been a seagull perched on the corner of the roof, waiting for bread or cherries or whatever. This year there has almost never been one, which is too bad, because we like feeding the seagulls. The raccoon either didn’t come around tonight or we didn’t see it. What we have more of than we’ve ever had before is ants, Big, black carpenter ants. It makes us happy that they are not our problem.
Meanwhile, during the farkle games with Dave, clouds completely moved in from out of nowhere, and within half an hour we went from a beautiful night looking forward to a great sunset to completely socked in and wondering if it would rain. Also I discovered that the game is spelled farkel, but that doesn’t rhyme with sparkle, so I’m going to retain the old spelling.
We finished our week with a rousing game of Dread Pirate. Josh was the dread pirate first, and even put on the eyepatch. Tim and I were never the dread pirate, and Dave only got to be it for a short time. As usual, Josh was the Dread when the game ended. I had the least amount of treasure, and Dave had the most and is the Pirate Winner until we come again.
Goodnight and thanks for riding along.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Day 6
Finally, a break in the clouds! Today’s digression is about construction – how much of it there seems to be. Between here and Arcadia Beach there are several new roads going off the east of 101 (although some of them could be logging roads). And just south of Arcadia beach they are building a house that is so big Dave thought it was two houses. That’s in addition to all the new construction at the former site of picture windows, and even more between Ecola Creek and Crescent Beach. And parking in town is already bad… also speaking of construction, we’re hoping that by next year’s they’ll do some construction on the bridge which is on the path to the beach from the house. It has a charming, yet alarming, bounce when you walk on it.
This morning I woke up around 8 and it was a beautiful blue sky day. We had made a very complicated plan about how I would head off to Indian Beach and walk south, and Dave would walk from here to Mo’s at Tolovana, and Josh would shuttle around picking people up. We spent some time trying to figure the timing out but eventually just gave up. Dave headed off around 9, and I left around 9:30. I didn’t get to Indian Beach until about 9:50 – I had forgotten that it’s 3 very twisty miles between the turnoff for Ecola State Park and the beach parking lot. And, at the head of the path that goes down to the beach, they had posted a tide table which showed today’s low tide at 9:40, not 10:15-ish the way most of the tide tables said. So I was a little nervous heading out, but undaunted.
I was right to be a little nervous. I don’t know the rocks in that area as well as I know our home rocks, so I can’t tell if the sand there was particularly high or low. What I can tell is that just past the first big rock I was already in trouble. There was a boulder garden between the land and the beach, and they were completely covered with seaweed. In other words, way too slippery to climb over. And the rock closest to the water had made one of those streams from it to the ocean that looked too deep to go through in my black ecco hiking boots. I watched for a while and considered giving up (never!), and eventually when a wave went very far out I was able to get across on tiptoes without any water going over the tops of my boots.
Past there the rocks get very interesting, as does the cliff behind. The cliff has all sorts of folded rock layers. It looks like some sort of demented marble raceway, only huge and maybe 40 feet high. The rocks are great, too – one is almost a rectangle, with a huge hole in the middle of it. Unfortunately even at the lowest tides you can’t get out to those rocks, and this was for sure not one of the lowest tides. I was pretty nervous about getting stuck in a cove and not being able to get back, but I figured I might as well keep going.
Walking from Indian Beach towards town, you end up walking around the base of the overlook at Ecola State Park and then across Crescent Beach. Crescent Beach is difficult to get to. There is a path from the overlook, but it’s long and windy. There used to be a more direct one, but is washed out and was never rebuilt. Many years ago Dave and I took the trail down and then climbed back up the side of the hill to the parking lot, but looking at it today I can’t believe we did that – it looks very steep and scary to me now! I was looking at the hill and thinking about the long path because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get around the big rocks at the south end. As it turned out there was no problem with that at all. The coolest thing about the walk was all the birds. At the first cove after Indian beach, where the giant rectangle rock with a hole is, there was one huge rock (when I say rock, I mean monolith, about 30 feet tall) that was completely covered with pelicans on top, like spiky crenellations. Then at the south end of Crescent beach there were 3 monoliths that had several hundred birds flying in circles around them. It looked like an aerial racetrack that went around the outside of the rocks, with most of the birds all flying in the same direction. I have no idea what that was about, but I sure enjoyed watching it.
Just after I passed the big rocks that are like the gateway at the south end of Crescent Beach, Dave called. Apparently he’d gotten to Mo’s at about 10:30 and had called Josh to come get him, but Josh and Tim were both still asleep with their phones turned off, so he had walked all the way in to town – in fact, all the way to the north end of town. This is a prodigious walk! It’s the longest single walk anyone in our family has ever taken, I think. So we talked about where I was and decided we’d meet in town. I only had one more obstacle – Ecola Creek. That’s a pretty big obstacle, though, when it has been raining. I was wearing jeans as well as my boots, and the problem with taking your shoes off and wading the creek is that then you have wet sandy feet and it’s very hard to get your socks and shoes back on. You can walk all the way east along the side of the creek until you get to the road, but that’s quite a walk – maybe ½ mile? So I walked up and down the creek for a little while, trying to find a shallow place to cross, and finally just pulled my jeans up and walked across, filling my boots up with water in the process. And here’s what about waterproof boots – when water goes in, it doesn’t come out. So I was making pretty funny squishing sounds from this point on.
After I crossed the creek I looked towards town and there was Dave. So we waved at each other and I headed towards him. He was standing at the top of a short dune, but there were some stairs near there that I thought would be easier than scrambling up the dune, so I motioned him towards them. Of course when I got there they were labeled “private property”, so I ended up going and scrambling up the dune anyway. We were about even with the Coaster Theater. We walked up the street that lead into town, and when we got between the Coaster Theater and the Lazy Susan Café (where we’ve never been, oddly) there were some nice benches to sit on so I could empty my boots and wring out my socks. We sat there for a few minutes, then called Josh to come meet us at the parking lot in Midtown. We walked (I squished) over there and got there just a minute or two before the boys.
What I didn’t mention is that shortly after I got up and noticed that it was clear, the clouds had started to roll in, and by the time I got to Indian beach it was completely overcast. Now, though, the clouds were starting to break up, and it was definitely time to head to Warren House and the sunny beer garden. We can’t actually sit in the sunny beer garden, since no minors are allowed, but we did sit on the deck and have wonderful food while the sun went in and out of the clouds. Warren House is associated with Bill’s, so Dave could get his 2x4 stout and I could have a spruce beer (yes, made with spruce buds). The boys sat at their usual table, and it never got crowded, so they ate at their table and we ate at ours. Much of the time before the food came and again after they had devoured it they were singing “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee”, which was just weird, but oddly pleasant as well.
After lunch we drove over to Osborn’s, and this time I was the one who didn’t get ice cream. Instead I walked to Bruce’s and got a very small selection of my favorite salt water taffy, as well as a chocolate one for Josh and a licorice pipe for Tim. We piled back into the car and after much hemming and hawing were able to get out of the very tight parking space and drive out to the Indian Beach parking lot to pick up Dave’s car. Dave and I took the car straight home, while the boys stopped at the Les Shirley park to relive Emmaus beach days, and then at the Mariner market to get more Oreos – we are almost out, which Tim found too frightening to bear. Then they tried to hide them under Tim’s bed and pretend they hadn’t gotten any, which was bad and evil. They were found out pretty quickly though.
Dave and I settled into our chairs, figuring it was nap time, but Josh wanted to go down to the beach (!). So he and Tim and Dave got their gloves and Tim’s kite and headed down while I finished my Sudoku game. When I got down there they were all throwing the ball around. By this time it was pretty much clear over the ocean, but right overhead (where the sun was) was still mostly cloudy. When the sun was behind a cloud it was pretty chilly. After a while Dave came and sat on the log with me, and Tim got out his kite. Josh went up to the house to get his kite, but was snared by the internet. Dave went up to get his chair and umbrella and the beach blanket from Wellfleet, and discovered Josh sitting out on the deck with the laptop. Now that’s a nice vacation! By now all the clouds had gone. Dave came back with his beach stuff, and he sat in his chair and read while I sunned myself on the blanket. Mind you, although it was sunny it was still chilly – I had on a t-shirt, long sleeved shirt, fleece vest, and sweatshirt. Tim finished flying his kite and played in the sand for a while, then went down and played with the waves. We watched him work up the courage to go in – this water is COLD. He started by running away from all the waves, then going in and running from small waves, and so on, and eventually was completely submerged. While he was out there a huge flock of pelicans glided over his head, going very slowly. It was a totally movie-poster moment, but we didn’t have any cameras.
He finally got cold enough to come up, so we all headed up (him wrapped in the beach blanket) and took showers. The sun was completely shining in the windows, which it hadn’t done for most of the week. Dave took a nap in the fabric chair while I worked on this blog for a while. I can note here that up until this year Dave rarely sat in the fabric chair – the back is too short for him – but now that they put the weird headrest on the naugahyde chair he is often in the fabric chair, even if the naugahyde one is empty. Also for the first time this trip, the front room got almost unbearably warm with the sun coming in.
At about 6 I got up and got out of my bathrobe & into some real clothes, and Dave and I headed to town for the Bistro. We’d looked at the menu last night, so knew pretty much what to expect. I had stuffed prawns and Dave had scallops, so we shared a nice bottle of French Chardonnay with it. With no appetizer and a shared dessert, we were out of the without feeling completely stuffed, which was nice and (for this trip) rather unusual. When we got home the boys were just finishing up their mac and cheese. We were hopeful of a full sunset, but when the sun got about one sun-height above the water it disappeared into the usual cloud bank. Rats! There is a beautiful crescent moon out, though, and soon the stars will be coming out.
We had only one game tonight, which didn’t start until 10 – my new favorite game, farkle. Even Josh played. Dave had discovered a rule I had missed, which allowed for some pretty good scores. It was very competitive at the end with everybody except me. I did not have a good farkle night. But at the end, Josh was the one who got to say “I sparkle at farkle!”
Raccoon report: it comes every night. We yell at it and Dave sprays it with the hose. It’s not figuring it out.
I can’t believe we only have one more day here. It has gone by so fast!
This morning I woke up around 8 and it was a beautiful blue sky day. We had made a very complicated plan about how I would head off to Indian Beach and walk south, and Dave would walk from here to Mo’s at Tolovana, and Josh would shuttle around picking people up. We spent some time trying to figure the timing out but eventually just gave up. Dave headed off around 9, and I left around 9:30. I didn’t get to Indian Beach until about 9:50 – I had forgotten that it’s 3 very twisty miles between the turnoff for Ecola State Park and the beach parking lot. And, at the head of the path that goes down to the beach, they had posted a tide table which showed today’s low tide at 9:40, not 10:15-ish the way most of the tide tables said. So I was a little nervous heading out, but undaunted.
I was right to be a little nervous. I don’t know the rocks in that area as well as I know our home rocks, so I can’t tell if the sand there was particularly high or low. What I can tell is that just past the first big rock I was already in trouble. There was a boulder garden between the land and the beach, and they were completely covered with seaweed. In other words, way too slippery to climb over. And the rock closest to the water had made one of those streams from it to the ocean that looked too deep to go through in my black ecco hiking boots. I watched for a while and considered giving up (never!), and eventually when a wave went very far out I was able to get across on tiptoes without any water going over the tops of my boots.
Past there the rocks get very interesting, as does the cliff behind. The cliff has all sorts of folded rock layers. It looks like some sort of demented marble raceway, only huge and maybe 40 feet high. The rocks are great, too – one is almost a rectangle, with a huge hole in the middle of it. Unfortunately even at the lowest tides you can’t get out to those rocks, and this was for sure not one of the lowest tides. I was pretty nervous about getting stuck in a cove and not being able to get back, but I figured I might as well keep going.
Walking from Indian Beach towards town, you end up walking around the base of the overlook at Ecola State Park and then across Crescent Beach. Crescent Beach is difficult to get to. There is a path from the overlook, but it’s long and windy. There used to be a more direct one, but is washed out and was never rebuilt. Many years ago Dave and I took the trail down and then climbed back up the side of the hill to the parking lot, but looking at it today I can’t believe we did that – it looks very steep and scary to me now! I was looking at the hill and thinking about the long path because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get around the big rocks at the south end. As it turned out there was no problem with that at all. The coolest thing about the walk was all the birds. At the first cove after Indian beach, where the giant rectangle rock with a hole is, there was one huge rock (when I say rock, I mean monolith, about 30 feet tall) that was completely covered with pelicans on top, like spiky crenellations. Then at the south end of Crescent beach there were 3 monoliths that had several hundred birds flying in circles around them. It looked like an aerial racetrack that went around the outside of the rocks, with most of the birds all flying in the same direction. I have no idea what that was about, but I sure enjoyed watching it.
Just after I passed the big rocks that are like the gateway at the south end of Crescent Beach, Dave called. Apparently he’d gotten to Mo’s at about 10:30 and had called Josh to come get him, but Josh and Tim were both still asleep with their phones turned off, so he had walked all the way in to town – in fact, all the way to the north end of town. This is a prodigious walk! It’s the longest single walk anyone in our family has ever taken, I think. So we talked about where I was and decided we’d meet in town. I only had one more obstacle – Ecola Creek. That’s a pretty big obstacle, though, when it has been raining. I was wearing jeans as well as my boots, and the problem with taking your shoes off and wading the creek is that then you have wet sandy feet and it’s very hard to get your socks and shoes back on. You can walk all the way east along the side of the creek until you get to the road, but that’s quite a walk – maybe ½ mile? So I walked up and down the creek for a little while, trying to find a shallow place to cross, and finally just pulled my jeans up and walked across, filling my boots up with water in the process. And here’s what about waterproof boots – when water goes in, it doesn’t come out. So I was making pretty funny squishing sounds from this point on.
After I crossed the creek I looked towards town and there was Dave. So we waved at each other and I headed towards him. He was standing at the top of a short dune, but there were some stairs near there that I thought would be easier than scrambling up the dune, so I motioned him towards them. Of course when I got there they were labeled “private property”, so I ended up going and scrambling up the dune anyway. We were about even with the Coaster Theater. We walked up the street that lead into town, and when we got between the Coaster Theater and the Lazy Susan Café (where we’ve never been, oddly) there were some nice benches to sit on so I could empty my boots and wring out my socks. We sat there for a few minutes, then called Josh to come meet us at the parking lot in Midtown. We walked (I squished) over there and got there just a minute or two before the boys.
What I didn’t mention is that shortly after I got up and noticed that it was clear, the clouds had started to roll in, and by the time I got to Indian beach it was completely overcast. Now, though, the clouds were starting to break up, and it was definitely time to head to Warren House and the sunny beer garden. We can’t actually sit in the sunny beer garden, since no minors are allowed, but we did sit on the deck and have wonderful food while the sun went in and out of the clouds. Warren House is associated with Bill’s, so Dave could get his 2x4 stout and I could have a spruce beer (yes, made with spruce buds). The boys sat at their usual table, and it never got crowded, so they ate at their table and we ate at ours. Much of the time before the food came and again after they had devoured it they were singing “I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee”, which was just weird, but oddly pleasant as well.
After lunch we drove over to Osborn’s, and this time I was the one who didn’t get ice cream. Instead I walked to Bruce’s and got a very small selection of my favorite salt water taffy, as well as a chocolate one for Josh and a licorice pipe for Tim. We piled back into the car and after much hemming and hawing were able to get out of the very tight parking space and drive out to the Indian Beach parking lot to pick up Dave’s car. Dave and I took the car straight home, while the boys stopped at the Les Shirley park to relive Emmaus beach days, and then at the Mariner market to get more Oreos – we are almost out, which Tim found too frightening to bear. Then they tried to hide them under Tim’s bed and pretend they hadn’t gotten any, which was bad and evil. They were found out pretty quickly though.
Dave and I settled into our chairs, figuring it was nap time, but Josh wanted to go down to the beach (!). So he and Tim and Dave got their gloves and Tim’s kite and headed down while I finished my Sudoku game. When I got down there they were all throwing the ball around. By this time it was pretty much clear over the ocean, but right overhead (where the sun was) was still mostly cloudy. When the sun was behind a cloud it was pretty chilly. After a while Dave came and sat on the log with me, and Tim got out his kite. Josh went up to the house to get his kite, but was snared by the internet. Dave went up to get his chair and umbrella and the beach blanket from Wellfleet, and discovered Josh sitting out on the deck with the laptop. Now that’s a nice vacation! By now all the clouds had gone. Dave came back with his beach stuff, and he sat in his chair and read while I sunned myself on the blanket. Mind you, although it was sunny it was still chilly – I had on a t-shirt, long sleeved shirt, fleece vest, and sweatshirt. Tim finished flying his kite and played in the sand for a while, then went down and played with the waves. We watched him work up the courage to go in – this water is COLD. He started by running away from all the waves, then going in and running from small waves, and so on, and eventually was completely submerged. While he was out there a huge flock of pelicans glided over his head, going very slowly. It was a totally movie-poster moment, but we didn’t have any cameras.
He finally got cold enough to come up, so we all headed up (him wrapped in the beach blanket) and took showers. The sun was completely shining in the windows, which it hadn’t done for most of the week. Dave took a nap in the fabric chair while I worked on this blog for a while. I can note here that up until this year Dave rarely sat in the fabric chair – the back is too short for him – but now that they put the weird headrest on the naugahyde chair he is often in the fabric chair, even if the naugahyde one is empty. Also for the first time this trip, the front room got almost unbearably warm with the sun coming in.
At about 6 I got up and got out of my bathrobe & into some real clothes, and Dave and I headed to town for the Bistro. We’d looked at the menu last night, so knew pretty much what to expect. I had stuffed prawns and Dave had scallops, so we shared a nice bottle of French Chardonnay with it. With no appetizer and a shared dessert, we were out of the without feeling completely stuffed, which was nice and (for this trip) rather unusual. When we got home the boys were just finishing up their mac and cheese. We were hopeful of a full sunset, but when the sun got about one sun-height above the water it disappeared into the usual cloud bank. Rats! There is a beautiful crescent moon out, though, and soon the stars will be coming out.
We had only one game tonight, which didn’t start until 10 – my new favorite game, farkle. Even Josh played. Dave had discovered a rule I had missed, which allowed for some pretty good scores. It was very competitive at the end with everybody except me. I did not have a good farkle night. But at the end, Josh was the one who got to say “I sparkle at farkle!”
Raccoon report: it comes every night. We yell at it and Dave sprays it with the hose. It’s not figuring it out.
I can’t believe we only have one more day here. It has gone by so fast!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Day 5
Well, the weather finally got to me. I’d thought about going to Indian Beach this morning and walking from there to town, but when I woke up to the grey skies and possible rain I lost my motivation. It ended up being a nice slow morning. I had leftover fruit salad for breakfast. I think this may be the best fruit salad I’ve ever made, even without the watermelon. I read a goopy book about an orphan who takes a cruise and ends up with a male roommate, and they fall in love. I enjoyed it very much. Everybody else read or watched TV or surfed the internet. At lunchtime the clouds were still quite thick, so our plan of going to Warren House was scrapped again. Instead, we went back to Bill’s, which is Dave’s favorite lunch place. We had a very nice lunch there, including a moment when the waiter glanced at Dave’s glass and said, “dangerously low beer there.” No wonder Dave likes it so much at Bill’s.
After lunch we went to El Mundo for me to exchange Tim’s fabulous eggplant-purple T-shirt for a less good looking tan one which he said he would be willing to wear. I thought the exchange process would take forever when they told me they had a new computer system and would have to go get somebody who knew how to run it, but when the somebody came she took the tags off the new shirt, handed it to me and said, “You can go. We’ll figure this out.” Yay! I was able to join Dave and the boys at Osborn’s, where three out of four people had ice cream. No, actually, it was Dave who demonstrated self-control.
After that we went to Gepetto’s toy store to get a hoppy ball for Tim. We almost got him a pink one but the saleslady noticed we had the pink one and double checked. You know if a purple shirt wouldn’t work, a pink hoppy ball would be right out. Our next stop was Ye Olde Driftwood Inn, to check it out as a possible place for dinner tonight. It has been here forever, mostly unchanged except they put a deck out front a year or two ago, but we have never been there. We thought maybe we would try it out tonight, but one look at the menu – completely uninspired meat and potatoes (Dave called it The Mo’s of Steakhouses) – and one sniff of the deep-frying oil laden atmosphere was all it took to change our minds. So we are going to take a chance on JPs again tonight. Stay tuned.
Finally we headed down to the bookstore to meet up with Josh and Tim. Josh found a book about shipwrecks during World War II, or something like that, and Dave found a book about Oregon wineries. I like the bookstore very much. They also had a very cool magnifying glass sort of thingy, which the boys had trouble sharing. It was very cool, but not $26 worth of cool, so we left it there. On the way to the car we stopped at the Mariner market for more sissy firestarters. Dave has almost made having fires completely painless, except for the part where he has to poke at it and rearrange it at intervals, which he says he is ready to hand over to someone else but which I think he wouldn’t like to give up.
We got home and Tim inflated and tried out his hoppy ball. It is a heavy duty ball with a handle, about 18” tall, that you sit on and bounce around. It is way too small for Tim, but lots of fun anyway. Eventually we hope to take it down to the beach and all try it out. And even though it was still cold and cloudy, Dave was determined to have his nap on the deck, so he bundled up in a sweatshirt and went out to read his wine book on the deck. Once again he was thwarted, however – it started to rain not long after he went out. So he came in and we both had naps.
One thing that is interesting today is how dirty the ocean looks. Of course it looks all gray because of the clouds,but it also has lots of brown foam on it. We don’t know what causes it, although the surf does seem rather higher than usual so maybe that is what does it? It makes the ocean look polluted.
While we were at the toy store I also picked up Pocket Farkle, a dice game similar to but mostly unlike Yahtzee. It’s 6 dice in a film canister and is very portable. After Dave and I woke up from our naps and I finished my daily game of Sudoku, Tim and I played it without keeping score to get a feel for it. Turns out we should have kept score because it might be the only time we’d ever have a chance to win, but more about that later.
We’d decided to give JPs another try for dinner. JPs used to be in midtown, and was one of the first grownup restaurants we ever went to in Cannon Beach – first without the boys, then with them. JPs used to be known for simple food perfectly prepared. Since then it has vacillated between simple food perfectly prepared and boring food not done quite right. Also they have marionberry lemonade, which used to be a dark, rich drink, not too sweet, without the bitterness you sometimes get in lemonade. Tonight it was mostly successful. Not to take too much away from Dave’s food and wine blog, but here it is: Josh and Dave had the special, a flatiron steak au poivre, I had my perennial favorite, the lamb & chicken black forest salad, and Tim had a NY strip with a green peppercorn sauce. Everybody but Tim was very pleased with what came, and Tim was pleased when Dave generously gave him a large chunk of his. Everyone but Josh had dessert, and they were quite good. So JPs gets good marks, although honestly I’m not sure if it’s any better than Wayfarer – the expectations were just much lower going in. JPs sides – the rice and veggies – I find particularly uninspired, so it’s hard for them to get top marks.
On the other hand, we love Chef Bill and his wife Diane, who came over and gave the boys advice about marrying well. Two of their sons have married and moved away, but their daughter is still working in the restaurant (the Pappas nose is unmistakable) and their youngest son just turned 16. It turned out to have been a nice choice for dinner. During dinner we also talked about what makes a perfect vacation, and for Josh it is unlimited internet, good food, and a game in the evening. You might think from this that when we got home he would have been up for some farkle, but it was the unlimited internet that got him. We have two computers – mine in the front room and Dave’s in the TV room, so when we got home Tim got on Dave’s, Josh got on mine, Dave read a book, and I practiced farkling.
After a while I was able to convince Tim and Dave to join me in a game of farkle. Josh has taken an unreasoning dislike to the game, but the three of us enjoyed it very much. It is a little like the game Press Your Luck from TV, in that you can keep rolling as long as you want, but if you don’t roll something that scores, you lose all your points (but only from that turn, unlike the TV show). But you do find yourself saying “big numbers, big numbers” a lot. It was sort of a pretty close game except that Dave was definitively out in front most of the time, and eventually won. Later on, he and I played a game just the two of us, which he also won. This made him say, “I sparkle at farkle”, from which Josh is still trying to recover.
Between the farkles we played what may have been the longest ever game of trouble. Dave got all his pieces out while the rest of us were either still all at home base or had 1 piece out, but then somehow in one round of playing three of his pieces got sent back home, and since one had already been sent home (been honked, we say), he was suddenly back to the beginning. Meanwhile I eventually got all of my pieces to around to win the game, though not without many setbacks, and at the time that I won all of Tim’s pieces were in his home base. He was a very good sport about the part where for most of the game all he got to do was push the pop-o-matic and watch the rest of us move around the board.
These days we don’t usually eat dinner until 7, and get home around 9, so it gets late very quickly. The evenings have been very peaceful, though, and even though we don’t get to bed until midnight or so we’re doing better at sleeping in, so everyone is feeling pretty well rested. And the weather is supposed to be better tomorrow, so maybe Indian Beach and Warren House will be able to happen. Low tide isn’t until after 10, and it is still a very low tide (-1.1 or -1.5, depending on where you look), so we have some good walks planned.
We also have two extra places reserved at the Bistro Friday night at 6:30 – if you want to come out, let me know!
After lunch we went to El Mundo for me to exchange Tim’s fabulous eggplant-purple T-shirt for a less good looking tan one which he said he would be willing to wear. I thought the exchange process would take forever when they told me they had a new computer system and would have to go get somebody who knew how to run it, but when the somebody came she took the tags off the new shirt, handed it to me and said, “You can go. We’ll figure this out.” Yay! I was able to join Dave and the boys at Osborn’s, where three out of four people had ice cream. No, actually, it was Dave who demonstrated self-control.
After that we went to Gepetto’s toy store to get a hoppy ball for Tim. We almost got him a pink one but the saleslady noticed we had the pink one and double checked. You know if a purple shirt wouldn’t work, a pink hoppy ball would be right out. Our next stop was Ye Olde Driftwood Inn, to check it out as a possible place for dinner tonight. It has been here forever, mostly unchanged except they put a deck out front a year or two ago, but we have never been there. We thought maybe we would try it out tonight, but one look at the menu – completely uninspired meat and potatoes (Dave called it The Mo’s of Steakhouses) – and one sniff of the deep-frying oil laden atmosphere was all it took to change our minds. So we are going to take a chance on JPs again tonight. Stay tuned.
Finally we headed down to the bookstore to meet up with Josh and Tim. Josh found a book about shipwrecks during World War II, or something like that, and Dave found a book about Oregon wineries. I like the bookstore very much. They also had a very cool magnifying glass sort of thingy, which the boys had trouble sharing. It was very cool, but not $26 worth of cool, so we left it there. On the way to the car we stopped at the Mariner market for more sissy firestarters. Dave has almost made having fires completely painless, except for the part where he has to poke at it and rearrange it at intervals, which he says he is ready to hand over to someone else but which I think he wouldn’t like to give up.
We got home and Tim inflated and tried out his hoppy ball. It is a heavy duty ball with a handle, about 18” tall, that you sit on and bounce around. It is way too small for Tim, but lots of fun anyway. Eventually we hope to take it down to the beach and all try it out. And even though it was still cold and cloudy, Dave was determined to have his nap on the deck, so he bundled up in a sweatshirt and went out to read his wine book on the deck. Once again he was thwarted, however – it started to rain not long after he went out. So he came in and we both had naps.
One thing that is interesting today is how dirty the ocean looks. Of course it looks all gray because of the clouds,but it also has lots of brown foam on it. We don’t know what causes it, although the surf does seem rather higher than usual so maybe that is what does it? It makes the ocean look polluted.
While we were at the toy store I also picked up Pocket Farkle, a dice game similar to but mostly unlike Yahtzee. It’s 6 dice in a film canister and is very portable. After Dave and I woke up from our naps and I finished my daily game of Sudoku, Tim and I played it without keeping score to get a feel for it. Turns out we should have kept score because it might be the only time we’d ever have a chance to win, but more about that later.
We’d decided to give JPs another try for dinner. JPs used to be in midtown, and was one of the first grownup restaurants we ever went to in Cannon Beach – first without the boys, then with them. JPs used to be known for simple food perfectly prepared. Since then it has vacillated between simple food perfectly prepared and boring food not done quite right. Also they have marionberry lemonade, which used to be a dark, rich drink, not too sweet, without the bitterness you sometimes get in lemonade. Tonight it was mostly successful. Not to take too much away from Dave’s food and wine blog, but here it is: Josh and Dave had the special, a flatiron steak au poivre, I had my perennial favorite, the lamb & chicken black forest salad, and Tim had a NY strip with a green peppercorn sauce. Everybody but Tim was very pleased with what came, and Tim was pleased when Dave generously gave him a large chunk of his. Everyone but Josh had dessert, and they were quite good. So JPs gets good marks, although honestly I’m not sure if it’s any better than Wayfarer – the expectations were just much lower going in. JPs sides – the rice and veggies – I find particularly uninspired, so it’s hard for them to get top marks.
On the other hand, we love Chef Bill and his wife Diane, who came over and gave the boys advice about marrying well. Two of their sons have married and moved away, but their daughter is still working in the restaurant (the Pappas nose is unmistakable) and their youngest son just turned 16. It turned out to have been a nice choice for dinner. During dinner we also talked about what makes a perfect vacation, and for Josh it is unlimited internet, good food, and a game in the evening. You might think from this that when we got home he would have been up for some farkle, but it was the unlimited internet that got him. We have two computers – mine in the front room and Dave’s in the TV room, so when we got home Tim got on Dave’s, Josh got on mine, Dave read a book, and I practiced farkling.
After a while I was able to convince Tim and Dave to join me in a game of farkle. Josh has taken an unreasoning dislike to the game, but the three of us enjoyed it very much. It is a little like the game Press Your Luck from TV, in that you can keep rolling as long as you want, but if you don’t roll something that scores, you lose all your points (but only from that turn, unlike the TV show). But you do find yourself saying “big numbers, big numbers” a lot. It was sort of a pretty close game except that Dave was definitively out in front most of the time, and eventually won. Later on, he and I played a game just the two of us, which he also won. This made him say, “I sparkle at farkle”, from which Josh is still trying to recover.
Between the farkles we played what may have been the longest ever game of trouble. Dave got all his pieces out while the rest of us were either still all at home base or had 1 piece out, but then somehow in one round of playing three of his pieces got sent back home, and since one had already been sent home (been honked, we say), he was suddenly back to the beginning. Meanwhile I eventually got all of my pieces to around to win the game, though not without many setbacks, and at the time that I won all of Tim’s pieces were in his home base. He was a very good sport about the part where for most of the game all he got to do was push the pop-o-matic and watch the rest of us move around the board.
These days we don’t usually eat dinner until 7, and get home around 9, so it gets late very quickly. The evenings have been very peaceful, though, and even though we don’t get to bed until midnight or so we’re doing better at sleeping in, so everyone is feeling pretty well rested. And the weather is supposed to be better tomorrow, so maybe Indian Beach and Warren House will be able to happen. Low tide isn’t until after 10, and it is still a very low tide (-1.1 or -1.5, depending on where you look), so we have some good walks planned.
We also have two extra places reserved at the Bistro Friday night at 6:30 – if you want to come out, let me know!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Day 4
Before I can get into today, I need to go back to yesterday for a minute to say that Tim’s shirts, Dave’s shirt and my computer bag were not the only purchases yesterday. Josh also got a T-shirt, about which he complained mightily (it had a stupid saying on the front, the color was wrong) but eventually grudgingly accepted. He is wearing it today. I also need to back to Monday, when Dave taught Tim to chop the firewood. This daunting task has been Dave’s since we first started coming here, but Tim has now taken it over. The most daunting parts of it are the dullness of the axe and the chance of being attacked by the raccoon.
Now, back to this morning. Dave and I both slept poorly last night, probably because of the fabulous chocolate dessert. I started waking up every 15 minutes or so at about 5:30, and finally got up at 7. It was another beautiful day and the tide was out pretty far. There were already lots of people on the beach – apparently word got out that today was the very low tide. I did some bible reading, ate some breakfast, played a game of Sudoku and watched the clouds come in. Dave got up a while after and got ready to go try to find the Arch of Arch Cape for himself. After he left the clouds sort of started breaking up, and I got Tim up so he could have some breakfast before we headed out for the beach bikes.
I always forget that it’s only a short drive into town from here, compared to the 20 minutes it takes coming in from Nehalem at Thanksgiving. So we got to town very early, which was not a bad thing because midtown was completely parked up. Again, I blame the article in the Oregonian about the low tides. We circled around for several circles and eventually found a spot. The other thing I always forget is that even though they say they’ll open at 9:30, they don’t really mean it. Between the guy being late (and it was a different guy, too), his not knowing if he could take a traveler’s check from the other family that was there, and the general slowness of only having one person there, it was almost 10 by the time we got onto the beach. This was very disappointing to me, because low tide was actually at 8:40. A good thing that happened with the new guy is that he wasn’t as particular about getting the correct bike size, so he gave Tim and I the same size bikes, which meant that Tim’s bike was actually a little too small for him. This happy circumstance means that I have a whole nother year before I have the smallest bike.
While we’d been sitting on the bench in front of the bike place the sun had been shining on us, and I’d been starting to wonder if I’d made bad clothing choices. I had on a long-sleeved thermal shirt and zip front hooded sweatshirt, and I was hot. But as soon as we got on the beach and turned the cycles to the south, I started thinking I had erred in the other direction, because it was seriously windy and quite cool. We battled our way south. I was really struggling, even though you’d think with Curves and swimming I’d be in better shape. Tim wasn’t having any trouble, but the wind was just fierce. We made it to the rock with a hole in it, but by then the tide was pretty far in, so we didn’t stop. I’d climbed around in there on my walk on Monday, and Tim didn’t care about stopping. Just a little past Jockey Cap (that is, about 5 minutes later) I asked Tim how far he wanted to go – I wasn’t sure I would make it to the carriage road. He suggested that we split up, so he could go as fast as he could and maybe get to the house. I thought that was a great idea – that way he would stop laughing at my pitiful puffing and sweating. By the time he got to the carriage road, though, the tide was in too far.
He left his bike and went over the carriage road, but by the time I got there he’d come back. We turned around and headed back. Oh joy! Oh bliss! With the wind at our backs we were practically flying. Pretty soon all memory of the struggle to get there had faded, and I was starting to wonder why I hadn’t gone further. We zoomed up the beach, chasing seagulls and being the envy of all the kids on the beach. We stopped at Haystack Rock to take pictures and call Dave to tell him it was time for him and Josh to head for the Pig’n. I gave Tim my camera so he could take a picture of me in front of Haystack Rock, as is traditional. He decided to also take a movie of my while he was riding in circles around me. I got queasy just watching. He said it would teach me not to make him take pictures.
We returned the bikes and started walking towards the Pig’n. We got about halfway there when Dave and Josh pulled up next to us to give us a ride the rest of the way, which was good because I, at least, was tired. When we got there the parking lot had lots of open spaces, which was weird for two reasons – first, the only time I’ve ever seen more than one open space there is when it is closed, and second, when we got in the restaurant was pretty much full. But we weren’t going to look a gift space in the mouth. The food was the usual yummy Pig’n food, but there was one sad part. For years, Tim and I have been sharing one adult and one child portion of pigs in blankets (3 pigs and 1 pig, respectively) which gave us each 2 pigs which is perfect for me. Tim is now too big and hungry to do that anymore, so I had to order the adult version by myself, which is a pig too far.
After lunch Tim went to EVOO to see if they had bread left (the bread wasn’t out yet). Then he and Josh walked back to the van and headed home. Dave and I went to the mariner market for cheese and milk, then stopped at Waves of Grain in Tolovana for bread. Unfortunately they are closed on Wednesdays. So we headed on home and called EVOO to reserve a loaf of Bob’s Daily Bread, and also to call the Bistro to make reservations for 4 at 6:30 on Friday, and the Pig’n to see if I had left my sunglasses there (I had). By this time the rain, which had started as a drizzle at the mariner market, was coming down pretty good.
While we were at Pig’n I had licked my lips and discovered just how much I’d been sweating, so I took a shower and started the first load of coastal laundry. I wrested the computer out of Josh’s facebook-chatting fingers and worked on this blog for a while. Meanwhile Dave took his afternoon nap. I also read for a while and had a very short nap also, after moving one load out of the washer and another load in. I had thought it was earlier than it turned out to be, so I jumped in the car and headed to town, needing to be at Pig’n before they closed at three. I got there a little after, but they were still waiting for the last customers to leave. When I walked in the young woman behind the counter looked at me and said, “sunglasses?” I nodded, but then saw that those weren’t my sunglasses at all. So there was a sunglass mystery.
I headed across the street to EVOO to get the bread, and noticed that the streets were pretty much deserted. So I sent Dave a text to tell him I’d be in town for a while, and drove down the street. There were lots and lots of parking spaces on the street, and hardly anybody on the sidewalks – really nice. Also, the rain had stopped. So I parked in front of Bruce’s candy and went in a got some clandestine licorice wheels. Tim loves them and is not supposed to have them because of his braces, so I have been abstaining myself. But Tim hadn’t wanted to come into town, so I was able to indulge. I walked around town for about an hour, mostly looking for puzzles. They used to have quite some puzzles here, but they have all disappeared. Josh and I like doing puzzles, and I thought it would be a fun way to pass the time while it rained. But I just couldn’t find any that were less than 1000 pieces and not dopey. Next year we should bring the balloon race puzzle.
I got home and read for a few minutes (completely forgetting about the laundry), and then it was time to make dinner. Yes, it was one of our traditional eating-in nights: fruit salad, bread, and cheese. Although I have a watermelon, I left it out, because I’ve made the last two fruit salads without and everyone but me likes it better that way. This was a particularly fine fruit salad, highlighted by white nectarines, really ripe peaches, and a liberal amount of Ferrari-Carrano Eldorado gold sweet wine. I was a little concerned that Tim might be able to taste the alcohol in the wine – it’s less sweet than last year’s Adelsheim Glace - but he seemed to think it was just fine. We also shared a bottle of sparkling muscat, which was perfect and, I thought, picked up the flavor of the white nectarines. Before I started making the fruit salad I put the three cherries that were left in the colander for Gull Dukat. Two were fine, but one was about half rotten. We were surprised to see that the gull spat out the bad one. It seemed like they didn’t taste them, just gulped them whole, but apparently not. Who knew?
At dinner Josh brought up the old tradition of Sumo, which we used to play on the beach all the time. You draw a big circle in the sand and then two people get in and try to push each other out of the circle. One of my favorite memories is of Luke Miller, Josh’s 5th and 6th grade teacher, winning his matches with the boys by just picking them up and dropping them outside. We haven’t played for a few years, and I am probably not going to be able to play anymore since the boys are so huge, but next time we’re all down on the beach there needs to be some Sumo for sure.
You may be noticing a recurring theme of gigantic boys here. I think it’s because at home we don’t walk around together very much, but here we get out of the car and head in to a restaurant or a shop or something, and all I’m seeing are the backs of their heads. When Dave picked us up on the way to the Pig’n, I ended up sitting behind him because my legs are the shortest. I knew it would happen eventually, but Tim has grown so much since March that I was really not prepared for it.
Dave has started the fire with Tim’s wood, and Tim is out here texting and looking at a book about fish. I think it’s time to put down the blog and do some interacting. Also, for those of you who miss the food travelogue side of things, check out Dave’s blog: http://dave-foodandwine.blogspot.com/
Interaction Addendum: first Tim and I played canoe, a game of strategy and lots of counting squares. Tim and Dave really like it, but it is not my kind of game. Too much waiting and too much thinking. I think I would have won, but I got too irritated and gave up. Josh joined us at this point, because he was able to sit by the wall and have the laptop in his lap to stay in touch with his people. We played two games of Yahtzee, in which Tim got a yahtzee but didn’t use it as a yahtzee, and Josh got a yahtzee, and Dave got a yahtzee, and I did not get a yahtzee because I never do. Tim won the first game and I won the second. Dave didn’t win any, even though he was using the yahtzee application on his iPhone, which makes a noise like the Chairman from Iron Chef America moving his head when you shake it. And in case you are not impressed enough with the fact that there is a yahtzee application for the iPhone, you should also know that the dice are not determined by a random number generator, there is a physics engine in it that calculates how they would really go based on how you shake the phone. Really. It turned out to be handy that Dave, who went between Josh and me, could take his turn while Josh was deep in contemplation of what, exactly, he was going to do with the dice he ended up with. Tim got about 400 text messages while we were playing.
Then it was time to play “I’m going to Bubby’s House” with everybody but Josh. Altimeter, barometer, Cessna, digits, Elmo, flight plan, goose grease, helicopter, ice cream, Jehosophat, Klondike bar, llama, maintenance crew, nunchuks, Otis, P, the letter P, and Quill Pen. At Quill pen Tim got a phone call from an unknown person at 10:30 at night and had to leave, so once again we got stopped at Q.
Now, back to this morning. Dave and I both slept poorly last night, probably because of the fabulous chocolate dessert. I started waking up every 15 minutes or so at about 5:30, and finally got up at 7. It was another beautiful day and the tide was out pretty far. There were already lots of people on the beach – apparently word got out that today was the very low tide. I did some bible reading, ate some breakfast, played a game of Sudoku and watched the clouds come in. Dave got up a while after and got ready to go try to find the Arch of Arch Cape for himself. After he left the clouds sort of started breaking up, and I got Tim up so he could have some breakfast before we headed out for the beach bikes.
I always forget that it’s only a short drive into town from here, compared to the 20 minutes it takes coming in from Nehalem at Thanksgiving. So we got to town very early, which was not a bad thing because midtown was completely parked up. Again, I blame the article in the Oregonian about the low tides. We circled around for several circles and eventually found a spot. The other thing I always forget is that even though they say they’ll open at 9:30, they don’t really mean it. Between the guy being late (and it was a different guy, too), his not knowing if he could take a traveler’s check from the other family that was there, and the general slowness of only having one person there, it was almost 10 by the time we got onto the beach. This was very disappointing to me, because low tide was actually at 8:40. A good thing that happened with the new guy is that he wasn’t as particular about getting the correct bike size, so he gave Tim and I the same size bikes, which meant that Tim’s bike was actually a little too small for him. This happy circumstance means that I have a whole nother year before I have the smallest bike.
While we’d been sitting on the bench in front of the bike place the sun had been shining on us, and I’d been starting to wonder if I’d made bad clothing choices. I had on a long-sleeved thermal shirt and zip front hooded sweatshirt, and I was hot. But as soon as we got on the beach and turned the cycles to the south, I started thinking I had erred in the other direction, because it was seriously windy and quite cool. We battled our way south. I was really struggling, even though you’d think with Curves and swimming I’d be in better shape. Tim wasn’t having any trouble, but the wind was just fierce. We made it to the rock with a hole in it, but by then the tide was pretty far in, so we didn’t stop. I’d climbed around in there on my walk on Monday, and Tim didn’t care about stopping. Just a little past Jockey Cap (that is, about 5 minutes later) I asked Tim how far he wanted to go – I wasn’t sure I would make it to the carriage road. He suggested that we split up, so he could go as fast as he could and maybe get to the house. I thought that was a great idea – that way he would stop laughing at my pitiful puffing and sweating. By the time he got to the carriage road, though, the tide was in too far.
He left his bike and went over the carriage road, but by the time I got there he’d come back. We turned around and headed back. Oh joy! Oh bliss! With the wind at our backs we were practically flying. Pretty soon all memory of the struggle to get there had faded, and I was starting to wonder why I hadn’t gone further. We zoomed up the beach, chasing seagulls and being the envy of all the kids on the beach. We stopped at Haystack Rock to take pictures and call Dave to tell him it was time for him and Josh to head for the Pig’n. I gave Tim my camera so he could take a picture of me in front of Haystack Rock, as is traditional. He decided to also take a movie of my while he was riding in circles around me. I got queasy just watching. He said it would teach me not to make him take pictures.
We returned the bikes and started walking towards the Pig’n. We got about halfway there when Dave and Josh pulled up next to us to give us a ride the rest of the way, which was good because I, at least, was tired. When we got there the parking lot had lots of open spaces, which was weird for two reasons – first, the only time I’ve ever seen more than one open space there is when it is closed, and second, when we got in the restaurant was pretty much full. But we weren’t going to look a gift space in the mouth. The food was the usual yummy Pig’n food, but there was one sad part. For years, Tim and I have been sharing one adult and one child portion of pigs in blankets (3 pigs and 1 pig, respectively) which gave us each 2 pigs which is perfect for me. Tim is now too big and hungry to do that anymore, so I had to order the adult version by myself, which is a pig too far.
After lunch Tim went to EVOO to see if they had bread left (the bread wasn’t out yet). Then he and Josh walked back to the van and headed home. Dave and I went to the mariner market for cheese and milk, then stopped at Waves of Grain in Tolovana for bread. Unfortunately they are closed on Wednesdays. So we headed on home and called EVOO to reserve a loaf of Bob’s Daily Bread, and also to call the Bistro to make reservations for 4 at 6:30 on Friday, and the Pig’n to see if I had left my sunglasses there (I had). By this time the rain, which had started as a drizzle at the mariner market, was coming down pretty good.
While we were at Pig’n I had licked my lips and discovered just how much I’d been sweating, so I took a shower and started the first load of coastal laundry. I wrested the computer out of Josh’s facebook-chatting fingers and worked on this blog for a while. Meanwhile Dave took his afternoon nap. I also read for a while and had a very short nap also, after moving one load out of the washer and another load in. I had thought it was earlier than it turned out to be, so I jumped in the car and headed to town, needing to be at Pig’n before they closed at three. I got there a little after, but they were still waiting for the last customers to leave. When I walked in the young woman behind the counter looked at me and said, “sunglasses?” I nodded, but then saw that those weren’t my sunglasses at all. So there was a sunglass mystery.
I headed across the street to EVOO to get the bread, and noticed that the streets were pretty much deserted. So I sent Dave a text to tell him I’d be in town for a while, and drove down the street. There were lots and lots of parking spaces on the street, and hardly anybody on the sidewalks – really nice. Also, the rain had stopped. So I parked in front of Bruce’s candy and went in a got some clandestine licorice wheels. Tim loves them and is not supposed to have them because of his braces, so I have been abstaining myself. But Tim hadn’t wanted to come into town, so I was able to indulge. I walked around town for about an hour, mostly looking for puzzles. They used to have quite some puzzles here, but they have all disappeared. Josh and I like doing puzzles, and I thought it would be a fun way to pass the time while it rained. But I just couldn’t find any that were less than 1000 pieces and not dopey. Next year we should bring the balloon race puzzle.
I got home and read for a few minutes (completely forgetting about the laundry), and then it was time to make dinner. Yes, it was one of our traditional eating-in nights: fruit salad, bread, and cheese. Although I have a watermelon, I left it out, because I’ve made the last two fruit salads without and everyone but me likes it better that way. This was a particularly fine fruit salad, highlighted by white nectarines, really ripe peaches, and a liberal amount of Ferrari-Carrano Eldorado gold sweet wine. I was a little concerned that Tim might be able to taste the alcohol in the wine – it’s less sweet than last year’s Adelsheim Glace - but he seemed to think it was just fine. We also shared a bottle of sparkling muscat, which was perfect and, I thought, picked up the flavor of the white nectarines. Before I started making the fruit salad I put the three cherries that were left in the colander for Gull Dukat. Two were fine, but one was about half rotten. We were surprised to see that the gull spat out the bad one. It seemed like they didn’t taste them, just gulped them whole, but apparently not. Who knew?
At dinner Josh brought up the old tradition of Sumo, which we used to play on the beach all the time. You draw a big circle in the sand and then two people get in and try to push each other out of the circle. One of my favorite memories is of Luke Miller, Josh’s 5th and 6th grade teacher, winning his matches with the boys by just picking them up and dropping them outside. We haven’t played for a few years, and I am probably not going to be able to play anymore since the boys are so huge, but next time we’re all down on the beach there needs to be some Sumo for sure.
You may be noticing a recurring theme of gigantic boys here. I think it’s because at home we don’t walk around together very much, but here we get out of the car and head in to a restaurant or a shop or something, and all I’m seeing are the backs of their heads. When Dave picked us up on the way to the Pig’n, I ended up sitting behind him because my legs are the shortest. I knew it would happen eventually, but Tim has grown so much since March that I was really not prepared for it.
Dave has started the fire with Tim’s wood, and Tim is out here texting and looking at a book about fish. I think it’s time to put down the blog and do some interacting. Also, for those of you who miss the food travelogue side of things, check out Dave’s blog: http://dave-foodandwine.blogspot.com/
Interaction Addendum: first Tim and I played canoe, a game of strategy and lots of counting squares. Tim and Dave really like it, but it is not my kind of game. Too much waiting and too much thinking. I think I would have won, but I got too irritated and gave up. Josh joined us at this point, because he was able to sit by the wall and have the laptop in his lap to stay in touch with his people. We played two games of Yahtzee, in which Tim got a yahtzee but didn’t use it as a yahtzee, and Josh got a yahtzee, and Dave got a yahtzee, and I did not get a yahtzee because I never do. Tim won the first game and I won the second. Dave didn’t win any, even though he was using the yahtzee application on his iPhone, which makes a noise like the Chairman from Iron Chef America moving his head when you shake it. And in case you are not impressed enough with the fact that there is a yahtzee application for the iPhone, you should also know that the dice are not determined by a random number generator, there is a physics engine in it that calculates how they would really go based on how you shake the phone. Really. It turned out to be handy that Dave, who went between Josh and me, could take his turn while Josh was deep in contemplation of what, exactly, he was going to do with the dice he ended up with. Tim got about 400 text messages while we were playing.
Then it was time to play “I’m going to Bubby’s House” with everybody but Josh. Altimeter, barometer, Cessna, digits, Elmo, flight plan, goose grease, helicopter, ice cream, Jehosophat, Klondike bar, llama, maintenance crew, nunchuks, Otis, P, the letter P, and Quill Pen. At Quill pen Tim got a phone call from an unknown person at 10:30 at night and had to leave, so once again we got stopped at Q.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Day 3
Started a little later than yesterday – I slept in until 6:30! Given that we didn’t go to bed until midnight, it’s a little less sleep than I would have liked. That’s the drawback to the room we’re sleeping in now – the skylights let in the light (imagine that), and given that it was a beautiful, clear morning, lots of light was coming in. I was happy to be up, though, when I looked outside and saw that not only was it a beautiful blue sky day but the tide was waaay out – further out than yesterday, and it wasn’t even low tide yet!
I had decided last night that I would head south this morning. Although on the Cape we always turned left, here we always go right, because the rocks are much more interesting. But given the lowness of the tide I was determined to find the Arch for which Arch Cape is named. The problem is, Arch Cape Creek is between here and the purported arch, and I wasn’t able to find any way over it in my internet searching yesterday. So I decide to wear my Mions, which are waterproof but sturdy sandal/shoe hybrids, and some fuzzy warm socks. The creek isn’t far from here – about ¾ mile. The land slopes up gently from the beach, too, which meant that the sun was already hitting the sand. It’s very thickly settled, without any interesting rocks, which is why we rarely go that way.
When I got to the creek I was pleased to see that it wasn’t more than 6 or so inches deep and sandy on the bottom. My memory of it was that it was deeper and rocky on the bottom. Since it was sandy I could just take off my shoes and walk across, which I did. On the other side of the creek are several monoliths with sand between them, much like the one at the north end of our cove or the north end of Arcadia beach. Unfortunately once I was across I discovered that I had chosen to cross too close to the ocean – there was no way around the monolith without scrambling over rocks, which I did not want to do. So I had to cross back over and then cross back further inland – and that water was really, really cold! It was hard to convince myself to cross back, but I was a woman on a mission, so I did, but my legs hurt all the way up to my teeth from the cold. I wiped my feet off with my warm socks and put my shoes back on without them.
Once across it’s a very nice area with lots of large interesting boulders. I headed south, then suddenly wondered if I had already missed the arch. I turned around and sure enough I had. It’s sort of a stealth arch. It’s not that it’s small – it must be at least 12 feet high and 8 feet across – it’s just that it is tucked into the side of the hill in a way that makes it really easy to miss. I scrambled through it and took lots of pictures. Scrambling through it was kind of odd, because of course it is a volcanic arch, and it sort of reminded me of clambering over boulders in the caves at lava beds. Except it’s above ground, totally out in the open, and all of the rocks are covered with barnacles. Still…
Once I had documented the arch I continued south. Once you pass the creek and the interesting rocks, and get past the very tall hill inland that the tunnel goes through, the land flattens out and gets to look pretty much like the part between our house and the creek, except not as densely packed with houses. Also the border between beach and not beach is a much higher and steeper version of our own rock talus, so even though the houses are much closer to the beach than we are it would be harder to get to. I walked for quite some time, and this led to a difficult question for a goal-oriented walker like myself – how far is far enough? The big problem with walking is that however far you walk, that is how far you have to walk to get back. So you can be walking along feeling fine, and then on the way back you find out you have gone much too far. I continued walking and pondering how far I would go, and eventually came to where I could see that I would not be able to go any further – I think it was the outcropping on the north end of Short Sands beach, but I am not sure. One thing that was interesting about this part of the walk is that there were many rock and water filled depressions in the sand – kind of like tide pools, but completely separated from the ocean by a wide expanse of beach. I’m not sure (1) how those happen and (2) how the very small (1.5” or less) fish that live in there don’t get swept out to sea when the tide is going out. Although I think they may be suckermouth fish that suck onto the rocks.
The walk home was pretty uneventful, except that when I crossed the creek I discovered that wearing my shoes without socks had made sores on the tops of two of my toes. Wahoo! So I walked barefoot for a while until I came to a driftwood log that I could sit on to wipe off my feet and put my socks and shoes back on. Altogether I was gone about 2.5 hours. When I got back to the beach below the house Dave was outside on the porch waving. Turned out he’d had a busy morning too – a walk up towards Arcadia beach and a conference call with work about his upcoming trip to New York. Then an amazing thing happened – Josh woke up before Tim. Tim is now officially a teenager and didn’t wake up until almost 11. At which point he poured and ate a giant bowl of cereal, which gave all of us the chance to tell him that we were headed out to lunch shortly and eating breakfast probably wasn’t a great idea. Tim was thrilled to have all of us tell him.
Our original plan was to head to Warren House, home of the sunny beer garden, since it was sunny. But Dave had a feeling her remembered that Warren House (like many other places) is not open on Tuesdays, and when he called there his suspicions were confirmed. So we decided we’d take two cars and go to the Cannon Beach Café, which has replaced the old Gower Street Bistro, which filled the space where JP’s restaurant was when JPs moved downtown. The restaurant looks pretty much identical to how it did when it was the Gower St Bistro, but the food is pretty pedestrian, and I don’t think we’ll need to go back. Tim had a Caesar salad which looked very good but turned out to be made with blue cheese dressing, for example.
We’d brought two cars so the boys could head home after lunch, while Dave and I walked into town. The weather had turned overcast and breezy, but still pretty comfortable. We walked through town, stopping at various stores. We went to Henry & Maggies, AKA the Wek store, and I found the coolest bag for my laptop there. It is the best looking computer bag ever and I am very pleased with it. We also went to El Mundo for Men, where we found some nice T-shirts for Tim to wear to the big city, and a good looking shirt for Dave with sleeves that may end up being too short. We also stopped in at Gepettos to see if they had personalized key chains with my name on them, which they did not (they were out). They did have personalized bicycle license plates and rubber bracelets though.
We walked back to the car and decided to check out the farmer’s market, a new thing happening in the midtown parking lot Tuesdays from 2-6. I’d read about it in the gazette, and an interesting feature is that instead of having several prepared food vendors, local restaurants rotate through serving a meal. We had thought we might go there for dinner tonight, but we checked out the offering (meatball sub, salad) and decided that we’ve had enough disappointing food. So we’re going to go to Newmans and leave the boys here for mac & cheese and hotdogs.
When we got back to the house Dave was going to have his nap on the deck, but it had gotten too chilly and windy and the gardeners were here. So he came in and had a nap in my usual chair, while I worked on writing this up, after kicking Josh off the computer and making him crabby. It has been nice having the laptop out here in the front room, because Josh likes to facebook chat with his friends and make witty comments to the rest of us that make you feel like he’s interacting.
- Pelican Interlude –
Thanks to the endangered species act and the banning of DDT, the California Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis californicus) has made a remarkable comeback. And thanks to our being here much earlier than usual, we are seeing astonishing numbers of them as they make their way northward. They’re terrific, often cruising in groups of 6 or more, with their giant wingspans (up to 7 feet) and klingon battle cruiser prototype build.
- End pelican interlude –
We spent the afternoon in the house. Josh went onto Dave’s computer in the bedroom and watched TV there too, with Tim. I took a nap in my usual chair once Dave woke up from his. Before my nap we saw two interesting things. First, a bald eagle flew right past our window. It was kind of like when you’re at an aquarium and a shark glides right past you. After that the beach ranger pickup truck drove by. We don’t know why, but as it was still about halfway between high and low tide it was a little challenging for it going north from our cove – it kind of fell into the hole that’s right by the big rock. I suspected it would be coming back soon, since the carriage road around Hug Point really isn’t passable for pickup trucks. Dave went and got his camera with the big lens to take a picture of it when it came back, but then he was looking at his camera settings when it came back. Fortunately I saw it, so we have documented evidence of the ranger truck at our house.
At 6:45 we left for Newman’s restaurant, leaving the boys to fend for themselves, which turned out to be not such a good idea since Josh ate my leftover steak from last night, which wouldn’t have been bad except it had been in the car since last night’s dinner. Anyway, our dinner was way better than that. We’d hoped to have the 5 course prix fixe dinner with wine pairings, but it turned out that the dishes they were offering didn’t hit our spots. So we settled on lamb (Dave) and duck breast (me), with a bottle of Anam Cara ’06 Nicholas Estate Pinot Noir. Dave liked his lamb so much that he actually picked the bones up and gnawed on them in the restaurant – a first for him and a strong endorsement of the meal. He also had a roasted pear and foie gras appetizer that was fabulous. For dessert I started out with a chocolate torte, and he started out with a vanilla bean crème brulee, but halfway through we each decide we liked the other’s better, and switched. What is interesting is that 2 years ago we would have started out with the things switched.
We got home to find the house nicely cleaned up and Tim seriously underfed – he’d had hotdogs for dinner and nothing else. Fortunately there was some leftover black bean salad, so he finished that off and had some oreos for dessert and felt much better. He and Dave went out to chop some firewood – Tim was chopping and Dave was keeping him company – and the raccoon came! It is totally unafraid of everything, even the coat hanger that Tim waved at it. I don’t know why Tim thought a raccoon would be afraid of a coat hanger – maybe it is like the devil and landscaping.
Dave has started a fire using sissy firestarter and wood that Tim chopped. He is definitely living the good life this year. Tim is putting the finishing touches on cleaning the kitchen, Josh is in the bedroom facebook chatting, and I am thinking about tomorrow’s beach bike ride. A good second full day at the beach.
I had decided last night that I would head south this morning. Although on the Cape we always turned left, here we always go right, because the rocks are much more interesting. But given the lowness of the tide I was determined to find the Arch for which Arch Cape is named. The problem is, Arch Cape Creek is between here and the purported arch, and I wasn’t able to find any way over it in my internet searching yesterday. So I decide to wear my Mions, which are waterproof but sturdy sandal/shoe hybrids, and some fuzzy warm socks. The creek isn’t far from here – about ¾ mile. The land slopes up gently from the beach, too, which meant that the sun was already hitting the sand. It’s very thickly settled, without any interesting rocks, which is why we rarely go that way.
When I got to the creek I was pleased to see that it wasn’t more than 6 or so inches deep and sandy on the bottom. My memory of it was that it was deeper and rocky on the bottom. Since it was sandy I could just take off my shoes and walk across, which I did. On the other side of the creek are several monoliths with sand between them, much like the one at the north end of our cove or the north end of Arcadia beach. Unfortunately once I was across I discovered that I had chosen to cross too close to the ocean – there was no way around the monolith without scrambling over rocks, which I did not want to do. So I had to cross back over and then cross back further inland – and that water was really, really cold! It was hard to convince myself to cross back, but I was a woman on a mission, so I did, but my legs hurt all the way up to my teeth from the cold. I wiped my feet off with my warm socks and put my shoes back on without them.
Once across it’s a very nice area with lots of large interesting boulders. I headed south, then suddenly wondered if I had already missed the arch. I turned around and sure enough I had. It’s sort of a stealth arch. It’s not that it’s small – it must be at least 12 feet high and 8 feet across – it’s just that it is tucked into the side of the hill in a way that makes it really easy to miss. I scrambled through it and took lots of pictures. Scrambling through it was kind of odd, because of course it is a volcanic arch, and it sort of reminded me of clambering over boulders in the caves at lava beds. Except it’s above ground, totally out in the open, and all of the rocks are covered with barnacles. Still…
Once I had documented the arch I continued south. Once you pass the creek and the interesting rocks, and get past the very tall hill inland that the tunnel goes through, the land flattens out and gets to look pretty much like the part between our house and the creek, except not as densely packed with houses. Also the border between beach and not beach is a much higher and steeper version of our own rock talus, so even though the houses are much closer to the beach than we are it would be harder to get to. I walked for quite some time, and this led to a difficult question for a goal-oriented walker like myself – how far is far enough? The big problem with walking is that however far you walk, that is how far you have to walk to get back. So you can be walking along feeling fine, and then on the way back you find out you have gone much too far. I continued walking and pondering how far I would go, and eventually came to where I could see that I would not be able to go any further – I think it was the outcropping on the north end of Short Sands beach, but I am not sure. One thing that was interesting about this part of the walk is that there were many rock and water filled depressions in the sand – kind of like tide pools, but completely separated from the ocean by a wide expanse of beach. I’m not sure (1) how those happen and (2) how the very small (1.5” or less) fish that live in there don’t get swept out to sea when the tide is going out. Although I think they may be suckermouth fish that suck onto the rocks.
The walk home was pretty uneventful, except that when I crossed the creek I discovered that wearing my shoes without socks had made sores on the tops of two of my toes. Wahoo! So I walked barefoot for a while until I came to a driftwood log that I could sit on to wipe off my feet and put my socks and shoes back on. Altogether I was gone about 2.5 hours. When I got back to the beach below the house Dave was outside on the porch waving. Turned out he’d had a busy morning too – a walk up towards Arcadia beach and a conference call with work about his upcoming trip to New York. Then an amazing thing happened – Josh woke up before Tim. Tim is now officially a teenager and didn’t wake up until almost 11. At which point he poured and ate a giant bowl of cereal, which gave all of us the chance to tell him that we were headed out to lunch shortly and eating breakfast probably wasn’t a great idea. Tim was thrilled to have all of us tell him.
Our original plan was to head to Warren House, home of the sunny beer garden, since it was sunny. But Dave had a feeling her remembered that Warren House (like many other places) is not open on Tuesdays, and when he called there his suspicions were confirmed. So we decided we’d take two cars and go to the Cannon Beach Café, which has replaced the old Gower Street Bistro, which filled the space where JP’s restaurant was when JPs moved downtown. The restaurant looks pretty much identical to how it did when it was the Gower St Bistro, but the food is pretty pedestrian, and I don’t think we’ll need to go back. Tim had a Caesar salad which looked very good but turned out to be made with blue cheese dressing, for example.
We’d brought two cars so the boys could head home after lunch, while Dave and I walked into town. The weather had turned overcast and breezy, but still pretty comfortable. We walked through town, stopping at various stores. We went to Henry & Maggies, AKA the Wek store, and I found the coolest bag for my laptop there. It is the best looking computer bag ever and I am very pleased with it. We also went to El Mundo for Men, where we found some nice T-shirts for Tim to wear to the big city, and a good looking shirt for Dave with sleeves that may end up being too short. We also stopped in at Gepettos to see if they had personalized key chains with my name on them, which they did not (they were out). They did have personalized bicycle license plates and rubber bracelets though.
We walked back to the car and decided to check out the farmer’s market, a new thing happening in the midtown parking lot Tuesdays from 2-6. I’d read about it in the gazette, and an interesting feature is that instead of having several prepared food vendors, local restaurants rotate through serving a meal. We had thought we might go there for dinner tonight, but we checked out the offering (meatball sub, salad) and decided that we’ve had enough disappointing food. So we’re going to go to Newmans and leave the boys here for mac & cheese and hotdogs.
When we got back to the house Dave was going to have his nap on the deck, but it had gotten too chilly and windy and the gardeners were here. So he came in and had a nap in my usual chair, while I worked on writing this up, after kicking Josh off the computer and making him crabby. It has been nice having the laptop out here in the front room, because Josh likes to facebook chat with his friends and make witty comments to the rest of us that make you feel like he’s interacting.
- Pelican Interlude –
Thanks to the endangered species act and the banning of DDT, the California Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis californicus) has made a remarkable comeback. And thanks to our being here much earlier than usual, we are seeing astonishing numbers of them as they make their way northward. They’re terrific, often cruising in groups of 6 or more, with their giant wingspans (up to 7 feet) and klingon battle cruiser prototype build.
- End pelican interlude –
We spent the afternoon in the house. Josh went onto Dave’s computer in the bedroom and watched TV there too, with Tim. I took a nap in my usual chair once Dave woke up from his. Before my nap we saw two interesting things. First, a bald eagle flew right past our window. It was kind of like when you’re at an aquarium and a shark glides right past you. After that the beach ranger pickup truck drove by. We don’t know why, but as it was still about halfway between high and low tide it was a little challenging for it going north from our cove – it kind of fell into the hole that’s right by the big rock. I suspected it would be coming back soon, since the carriage road around Hug Point really isn’t passable for pickup trucks. Dave went and got his camera with the big lens to take a picture of it when it came back, but then he was looking at his camera settings when it came back. Fortunately I saw it, so we have documented evidence of the ranger truck at our house.
At 6:45 we left for Newman’s restaurant, leaving the boys to fend for themselves, which turned out to be not such a good idea since Josh ate my leftover steak from last night, which wouldn’t have been bad except it had been in the car since last night’s dinner. Anyway, our dinner was way better than that. We’d hoped to have the 5 course prix fixe dinner with wine pairings, but it turned out that the dishes they were offering didn’t hit our spots. So we settled on lamb (Dave) and duck breast (me), with a bottle of Anam Cara ’06 Nicholas Estate Pinot Noir. Dave liked his lamb so much that he actually picked the bones up and gnawed on them in the restaurant – a first for him and a strong endorsement of the meal. He also had a roasted pear and foie gras appetizer that was fabulous. For dessert I started out with a chocolate torte, and he started out with a vanilla bean crème brulee, but halfway through we each decide we liked the other’s better, and switched. What is interesting is that 2 years ago we would have started out with the things switched.
We got home to find the house nicely cleaned up and Tim seriously underfed – he’d had hotdogs for dinner and nothing else. Fortunately there was some leftover black bean salad, so he finished that off and had some oreos for dessert and felt much better. He and Dave went out to chop some firewood – Tim was chopping and Dave was keeping him company – and the raccoon came! It is totally unafraid of everything, even the coat hanger that Tim waved at it. I don’t know why Tim thought a raccoon would be afraid of a coat hanger – maybe it is like the devil and landscaping.
Dave has started a fire using sissy firestarter and wood that Tim chopped. He is definitely living the good life this year. Tim is putting the finishing touches on cleaning the kitchen, Josh is in the bedroom facebook chatting, and I am thinking about tomorrow’s beach bike ride. A good second full day at the beach.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Day 2
Started very early for me. I woke up at 5:30 and looked out to see that the tide was already pretty far out. I’d left my clothes in the front room, so I got up and got dressed and headed out. Today was not the lowest tide of the trip – that’s tomorrow – but still supposed to be quite low, so it was a good time to walk. It was foggy looking to the north, but not at the house, and the sky was broken clouds. I debated about my sunglasses but left them behind. I go on this walk every year – north from the house, past Hug Point (walking way out towards the ocean), past Arcadia Beach, to Jockey Cap and The Rock With a Hole in It. I had a brief scare when my camera wouldn’t turn on – what’s the point of walking all that way if you can’t take pictures? Fortunately the battery door had come slightly open and when I closed it things were fine. The sand is really high, as I mentioned in day 1, so things are actually not as interesting as they would be in a lower sand year. For example, the rock-that-looks-like-a-mushroom doesn’t really look like one, because the stalk part is mostly buried. And there are hardly any of the sand bar/pool areas that are so fun to play in. But with the tide way out there are some cool exposed rocks that you don’t usually get to see, so the walk was interesting.
The other thing that was interesting is that between Arcadia Beach and Jockey Cap there were many (5 or 6, but at 7 am that’s many) people out clamming. They pound on the sand with a stick, and then if they see what they are looking for (which I don’t know what that is) they jam a tube about 6 inches in diameter down into the sand, and then pull it up and look for clams. They try a couple of times, and then either get a clam or give up and move on to the next place. It leaves the beach looking like it has been attacked by some sort of giant sand mole.
The tide was out far enough that I could actually walk right up to Jockey Cap, which has some of the largest mussels and starfish on it I’ve ever seen. Probably because usually you can’t get to it. The Holey Rock beyond was in fine shape too, although rockier behind than I was expecting. As I approached those two huge rocks, the sun rose over the cliffs and lit the tops of them. It was really cool looking, especially with the fog all lit up behind them. And one seagull was sitting exactly where the sun would light it up when it spread its wings. Nice.
At this point I was thinking I’d made a real mistake in not wearing my sunglasses, since it’s about an hour walk back and the sun was now over the cliffs. But it turned out not to be a problem, because shortly after I turned around to walk back the clouds started to build up and the fog came in. By the time I got past Arcadia beach it started to rain. Fortunately I am a veteran of the 2009 MHA Howard Jones meet, and a little rain is no big deal. And I was wearing a rain coat. I even went past the house to go see the big rocks to the south, which I walked all the way around. I was a few minutes too late, so I got a little water over the tops of my shoes.
When I got back to the house it was 8:10, and Dave was up. I went back to bed and slept for an hour, and when I got up again Tim was also up. I had some cacklin’ for breakfast and read for a while. Meanwhile, Dave had gotten the password information from the rental folks and did some IT work to fix the wireless access point, so now we are able to get on the internet. Good thing he’s a wireless guru!
At 11 it was time to wake Josh up to get ready to go into town for lunch. He woke up fairly ungrumpily, and at 11:30 we headed in to town for our traditional First Lunch at Bill’s Tavern. In fact, our vacation is so full of traditions that there is barely time to get everything done. So we headed in, and there was lots of parking and lots of space at Bill’s. They have a sign that says, “if you’re in a hurry you don’t belong here”, but in recent years that hasn’t been the case – the service has been downright speedy. But this year, the service actually was quite relaxed. Not quite as relaxed as the service at Mo’s last night, but then our server wasn’t a magician either. Last night’s server made things appear out of thin air and made the boys’ lettuce squeak, which pretty much made up for the slow service.
Some of you may still be on tenterhooks wondering if Osborn’s is closed permanently, or if they were just closed because it was Sunday. Well, you’ll have to wait, because we still don’t know – we didn’t get that far north into town. After lunch we went to the mariner market for a few necessities (sunscreen, a toothbrush for me, sissy firestarters), then into midtown to check on beach bikes opening time, which since they were closed today we don’t know, and to look at the restaurant that has gone in where Gower Street Bistro was (not sure, sandwiches, breakfast stuff, may be good), and to make reservations for dinner at the Wayfarer.
Then it was time to go home. Josh drove home, and then after everyone got out I continued on. I want to walk south at one of the low tide days, but I can’t figure out how to get south of Arch Cape Creek. First I tried Shingle Mill Rd, but it ends still north of the creek. Then I drove south through the tunnel and found a road which more or less goes where I want, but it doesn’t have any public beach access. So I think I may need to just put on waterproof shoes and wade across the creek. There is a trail which goes over a bridge, but I think it is too far inland, and this is seriously the rainforest – where there aren’t trails, you can’t go.
When I got back to the house it was time for naps or facebooking or reading or watching TV or whatever. Dave napped on the deck, I napped in my favorite chair, and eventually Josh took my laptop out on the deck and sat in the sun communing with his people. When I woke up I spent a little time surfing the internet, trying to find a way across the creek. Then I went down to the beach to dig a hole. I made a nice dripstone castle. Tim and Dave came down and played catch for a while, then Tim worked on dripstone with me while Dave took a short walk. Then an amazing thing happened – Josh came down! He has not come down this early for years! He and Dave played catch for a while, the Dave went up and Josh and Tim played for a while. Tim’s throwing has gotten way better this year.
Eventually we all came up and got ready for Wayfarer. We had gone online and seen that they had completely redone their menu, removing all of our favorite things, particularly the stuffed mushroom appetizer and the 20 oz ribeye that Tim and I used to split. We are not sure, but we think that they may have gotten a new chef, because for the first time ever Wayfarer did not live up to expectations. As usual we ate way too much, and Tim had a fabulous spinach, bacon, and roasted corn salad, but the overall experience left something to be desired. But we had an exceptionally good time anyway, with lots of laughing and even singing. Also we developed the phrase “Bubby wouldn’t laugh”, meaning that in normal company people might think something was funny, but in the pantheon of funny, that wasn’t it. Even my joke about holding my ear to indicate that I needed to visit the restroom (ir al bano) didn’t measure up.
On the way home we listened to some favorite veggie tales tunes, concluding with a family sing-along to “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything”. Interestingly, we think that Tim is the only one who hasn’t been to Boston in the fall, but we are not completely sure. Then it was time for sunset, which had been looking very promising. I forgot to mention, although I’m not sure how I could have, that the weather today was completely fabulous. After lunch it completely cleared out, and although chilly it was just as clear and calm as we have ever seen. So we were really hoping for a green flash. Dave and I went out on the porch to wait and try to take pictures of the boys through the glass, but they kept hiding. Unfortunately the usual thick cloud layer was the re over the ocean, so the sun sank into clouds, and no green flash. It is still weird to see how far north the sun is setting.
After that Josh hooked the computer up to the stereo and played some favorite tunes (one donut a day, hamster dance, selected shorts from freecreditreport.com commercials). Tim and Dave played a game of canoe (Tim won handily) and I sat in my chair. Now we’re winding down from a truly great day at the coast – and the tide will be even lower tomorrow!
Wildlife addendum: The raccoon has now visited twice. The first time it was not scared off by Dave's yelling (although we were all quite startled) but fled when we got out the terrifying stuffed raccoon. It reappeared tonight and was not scared off by the terrifying stuffed raccoon, but was scared off by Dave's yelling. Tomorrow we may be held prisoner if neither of those things work. We have only seen one gull on th edeck railing so far, and it is clearly neither Gul Dukat nor Gul Darheel from last year, because when Tim threw a cherry for it there was a long time where it tried to work up the nerve to actually jump down onto the deck and get the cherry - either of last year's gulls would not have hesitated.
The other thing that was interesting is that between Arcadia Beach and Jockey Cap there were many (5 or 6, but at 7 am that’s many) people out clamming. They pound on the sand with a stick, and then if they see what they are looking for (which I don’t know what that is) they jam a tube about 6 inches in diameter down into the sand, and then pull it up and look for clams. They try a couple of times, and then either get a clam or give up and move on to the next place. It leaves the beach looking like it has been attacked by some sort of giant sand mole.
The tide was out far enough that I could actually walk right up to Jockey Cap, which has some of the largest mussels and starfish on it I’ve ever seen. Probably because usually you can’t get to it. The Holey Rock beyond was in fine shape too, although rockier behind than I was expecting. As I approached those two huge rocks, the sun rose over the cliffs and lit the tops of them. It was really cool looking, especially with the fog all lit up behind them. And one seagull was sitting exactly where the sun would light it up when it spread its wings. Nice.
At this point I was thinking I’d made a real mistake in not wearing my sunglasses, since it’s about an hour walk back and the sun was now over the cliffs. But it turned out not to be a problem, because shortly after I turned around to walk back the clouds started to build up and the fog came in. By the time I got past Arcadia beach it started to rain. Fortunately I am a veteran of the 2009 MHA Howard Jones meet, and a little rain is no big deal. And I was wearing a rain coat. I even went past the house to go see the big rocks to the south, which I walked all the way around. I was a few minutes too late, so I got a little water over the tops of my shoes.
When I got back to the house it was 8:10, and Dave was up. I went back to bed and slept for an hour, and when I got up again Tim was also up. I had some cacklin’ for breakfast and read for a while. Meanwhile, Dave had gotten the password information from the rental folks and did some IT work to fix the wireless access point, so now we are able to get on the internet. Good thing he’s a wireless guru!
At 11 it was time to wake Josh up to get ready to go into town for lunch. He woke up fairly ungrumpily, and at 11:30 we headed in to town for our traditional First Lunch at Bill’s Tavern. In fact, our vacation is so full of traditions that there is barely time to get everything done. So we headed in, and there was lots of parking and lots of space at Bill’s. They have a sign that says, “if you’re in a hurry you don’t belong here”, but in recent years that hasn’t been the case – the service has been downright speedy. But this year, the service actually was quite relaxed. Not quite as relaxed as the service at Mo’s last night, but then our server wasn’t a magician either. Last night’s server made things appear out of thin air and made the boys’ lettuce squeak, which pretty much made up for the slow service.
Some of you may still be on tenterhooks wondering if Osborn’s is closed permanently, or if they were just closed because it was Sunday. Well, you’ll have to wait, because we still don’t know – we didn’t get that far north into town. After lunch we went to the mariner market for a few necessities (sunscreen, a toothbrush for me, sissy firestarters), then into midtown to check on beach bikes opening time, which since they were closed today we don’t know, and to look at the restaurant that has gone in where Gower Street Bistro was (not sure, sandwiches, breakfast stuff, may be good), and to make reservations for dinner at the Wayfarer.
Then it was time to go home. Josh drove home, and then after everyone got out I continued on. I want to walk south at one of the low tide days, but I can’t figure out how to get south of Arch Cape Creek. First I tried Shingle Mill Rd, but it ends still north of the creek. Then I drove south through the tunnel and found a road which more or less goes where I want, but it doesn’t have any public beach access. So I think I may need to just put on waterproof shoes and wade across the creek. There is a trail which goes over a bridge, but I think it is too far inland, and this is seriously the rainforest – where there aren’t trails, you can’t go.
When I got back to the house it was time for naps or facebooking or reading or watching TV or whatever. Dave napped on the deck, I napped in my favorite chair, and eventually Josh took my laptop out on the deck and sat in the sun communing with his people. When I woke up I spent a little time surfing the internet, trying to find a way across the creek. Then I went down to the beach to dig a hole. I made a nice dripstone castle. Tim and Dave came down and played catch for a while, then Tim worked on dripstone with me while Dave took a short walk. Then an amazing thing happened – Josh came down! He has not come down this early for years! He and Dave played catch for a while, the Dave went up and Josh and Tim played for a while. Tim’s throwing has gotten way better this year.
Eventually we all came up and got ready for Wayfarer. We had gone online and seen that they had completely redone their menu, removing all of our favorite things, particularly the stuffed mushroom appetizer and the 20 oz ribeye that Tim and I used to split. We are not sure, but we think that they may have gotten a new chef, because for the first time ever Wayfarer did not live up to expectations. As usual we ate way too much, and Tim had a fabulous spinach, bacon, and roasted corn salad, but the overall experience left something to be desired. But we had an exceptionally good time anyway, with lots of laughing and even singing. Also we developed the phrase “Bubby wouldn’t laugh”, meaning that in normal company people might think something was funny, but in the pantheon of funny, that wasn’t it. Even my joke about holding my ear to indicate that I needed to visit the restroom (ir al bano) didn’t measure up.
On the way home we listened to some favorite veggie tales tunes, concluding with a family sing-along to “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything”. Interestingly, we think that Tim is the only one who hasn’t been to Boston in the fall, but we are not completely sure. Then it was time for sunset, which had been looking very promising. I forgot to mention, although I’m not sure how I could have, that the weather today was completely fabulous. After lunch it completely cleared out, and although chilly it was just as clear and calm as we have ever seen. So we were really hoping for a green flash. Dave and I went out on the porch to wait and try to take pictures of the boys through the glass, but they kept hiding. Unfortunately the usual thick cloud layer was the re over the ocean, so the sun sank into clouds, and no green flash. It is still weird to see how far north the sun is setting.
After that Josh hooked the computer up to the stereo and played some favorite tunes (one donut a day, hamster dance, selected shorts from freecreditreport.com commercials). Tim and Dave played a game of canoe (Tim won handily) and I sat in my chair. Now we’re winding down from a truly great day at the coast – and the tide will be even lower tomorrow!
Wildlife addendum: The raccoon has now visited twice. The first time it was not scared off by Dave's yelling (although we were all quite startled) but fled when we got out the terrifying stuffed raccoon. It reappeared tonight and was not scared off by the terrifying stuffed raccoon, but was scared off by Dave's yelling. Tomorrow we may be held prisoner if neither of those things work. We have only seen one gull on th edeck railing so far, and it is clearly neither Gul Dukat nor Gul Darheel from last year, because when Tim threw a cherry for it there was a long time where it tried to work up the nerve to actually jump down onto the deck and get the cherry - either of last year's gulls would not have hesitated.
Day 1
Ahhhhh.
It’s been quite the week leading up to getting here, and now that we are here and unpacked and full of Mo’s it’s almost too good to be true. In the leadup, I ended up working Tuesday and Wednesday instead of Monday and Wednesday, and on Thursday afternoon we left for the Mt Hood Howard Jones Memorial Open swim meet. This is always a great meet in the beautiful 50 meter outdoor pool at Mt Hood Community college in Gresham, but there’s a saying about it – it’s always too hot or too cold or too wet. And this year it was too cold and too wet. Friday afternoon it started raining during the 50 free and never stopped. And not your usual Oregon drizzle, either – real soaking rain. It rained on and off on Saturday, too, so when we packed up the trailer and headed home on Saturday night, I wasn’t too sorry to miss Sunday.
We got home at about 9:30, and immediately unloaded the trailer and started the laundry. When we’d originally made these plans I’d figured the meet would be over about 6:30 – well, I missed by two hours. We got to bed around midnight. This morning we got up around 8 and started in on laundry and packing. Dave was out of the house by 8:30 to take the trailer back to where it lives. Meanwhile I did house stuff and packing, and grocery shopping. I’m not sure what took so long to do, but we kept busy until 2, and at 2:30 were on the road. Josh drove the van with me as passenger, and Tim rode with Dave in his car. Next year maybe Tim will drive me in the van, and Josh can drive Dave. An exciting sight on the drive out was new construction at the site of the former Oney’s restaurant, which burned down a year or so again. Are they rebuilding? If we they do, and we go there again, will there be another fire? Stay tuned.
Josh and I got to the place where we pick up the keys at 4, but there were no keys. I tried calling the property managers, but got the answering machine. Eventually Josh noticed that there was a light in the house, so I went and rang the doorbell. The woman who answered the door was not who I expected to see – turns out she was housesitting. She called the cleaning person, who apparently is the only one not on vacation. Misty came to the house and let Dave in (we were still on the way). The house really looks much the same- the two big changes are the couch in the front room which has been recovered with a very odd patterned cover, and they put a new head thing on the old naugahide chair to cover the rip. The head thing is like a headrest on an airplane, and like most of those things it hits me in just the wrong spot, forcing my chin down into my chest. I thought it would be a nice addition for Dave of the tallness, but it makes sitting in that chair not real comfy for him either. Fortunately I don’t sit in that chair much anyway.
We unpacked in our now very quick fashion, and before we knew it it was time to head to Mo’s for the traditional first night dinner. 3 clam strip dinners, 1 deep fried oyster dinner. Dave needs to remember that at Mo’s the French fries beat the garlic mashed potatoes. After dinner we stopped at Surfcrest for milk and then drove up through town to look for changes, of which there weren’t many, except that while an unusual number of shops were open, Osborn’s ice cream was closed at 6:35. We’re hoping they’re just not open on Sunday.
When we got home around 7 the boys and Dave turned on the LAD-LAA game, and I went down to the beach for a preliminary sand report. The local sand is very high. The passage to the north is pretty much entirely filled in with sand, which means that we’ll be cut off for less time than usual. What’s exciting is that this week the tides are going to be unusually low (see Saturday’s Oregonian) and unusually late (ie, not at 5:30 am). So I am really looking forward to going on some serious walks. I walked up to where I could see the waterfall (fairly watery) and over to the other side of the cove as well. The path down from the house is the most overgrown I’ve ever seen it. In some places it is completely invisible. Fortunately it is overgrown with soft things, not blackberries, or it would be impassable. The bridge is getting more springy when you walk on it, which I think is not a good thing. And at the bottom, two huge pieces of driftwood were shoved up against the end of the walkway, so you kind of have to make a detour around them. The spring that empties out next to the path is very high, and visible among the rocks. It’s really pretty. While I was down there it was clearing up nicely, and so I climbed upon the black rock wall at the south end and just sat for a while, watching the clouds and the waves and the seagulls. It was good to stop.
Meanwhile, along with not having keys to the house, we don’t have the keys to the wireless network, so who knows when this will go out. Jeannie called a few minutes ago and said she would e-mail the code to Dave’s phone from work tomorrow, so maybe this will go out then. Meanwhile Dave is chopping wood for a fire, and I continue to unwind.
Josh came out wanting to play a game, so we played several games of pepper. Dave won most of them, including one very exciting round where he and Josh were both down to one card each. Josh played his last card to Dave, figuring Dave wouldn’t be able to respond, but it happened that he could. Josh took it fairly well. Then Tim and I played “I’m going to Bubby’s”, and I won when he said Quill instead of Quicksand. (Arab, balloon, clown, doom, egg salad sandwich, frog, gefilte fish, hat, ice cream, Josh, kookaburra, llama, mighty mouse, neanderthal, oreos, pineapple, quicksand). The boys watched a TV show about Somali pirates, Dave and I read for a while, and then it was bedtime.
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