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!