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.