When it started to get cold, it didn’t seem like a problem. When I was slipping and sliding on ice on the way to morning practice on Tuesday, things were starting to not look good. When they were requiring chains on 26 over the pass, it was looking worse. But on Wednesday we packed up and headed out via Tillamook, and two and a half slow hours later (Tim drove the van, Josh drove the expedition) we were turning up the heat at the little house.
Wow, does that entry floor get cold in winter, and those heaters that warm the rooms up so quickly in summer take quite some time longer when it’s below freezing outside. We got unpacked and hung out for a while and then headed to Wayfarer for dinner. Our last couple trips to Wayfarer had been disappointing, so this one was less so – when your expectations are low, it’s hard to be disappointed. On the plus side, the plating was better than last time. On the other hand, the quality of the food was just disappointing – Carnival Cruise level food, which seems a little low for the prices they’re charging. On the other hand the boys enjoyed the food and it was fun to be there as a family.
Back at the house it was game time, of course. Josh requested pepper, which I had mixed feelings about because I pretty much never win at pepper, and if you’re not going to win what is the point of playing? We played several rounds and everybody else won and some people even won twice, which is just what I expected except that in one game Josh tried to win by giving me his last card, the blue 6, and I was able to play my last card back at him, the blue 5, making him a loser and winning my only game of the night. It was so totally excellent that I had to get up and do the dance of joy.
Did I mention we brought sissy firestarters and lighters (and they had matches), so much to Tim’s disappointment we did not have to use the toaster to light the fire. But we did forget one thing, unfortunately – the turkey. We were able to get a very nice minimally processed one at the Mariner Market, coming to our rescue for the first of two times.
Thanksgiving day started slow and stayed slow – perfect. We woke the boys up in time to go to Pig’n’Pancake for brunch – well, it was only brunch because they hadn’t had any breakfast. It was lunch by the clock. After lunch it was time for more relaxing, which came to an abrupt end when Dave discovered that there is no salt at the little house. Pepper, sugar, herbs, spices… but no salt. So off I went to the Mariner, and once again it had what we needed – a big box of kosher salt. After the turkey was safely in the oven, Dave and I went out for two more geocaches – the one at the cannon that we hadn’t been able to find last summer, and new one near the Rock With The Hole in It. Yay for geocaching! The weather, which was much warmer but highly variable, was absolutely gorgeous so we went for a short walk on the beach. The most interesting thing we saw were some variations on stairs from the beach – one house had the last section cantilevered, so it could be raised like a drawbridge to avoid riff-raff. Another favorite was a house where the lower section had probably been washed away and had been replaced by a rope tied to the upper section to help you pull yourself up to it.
After a while we went back to the house which now smelt delightfully of turkey, and Dave finished the dinner while I tried to make more counter space. Oddly, the trailer has more counter space than the house, but we made it work by bringing in the round folding table from the living room. Dinner was wonderful – I really enjoyed having dark meat (we usually just have white meat in the trailer) and Dave had made real mashed potatoes on Tuesday night which reheated very well.
After dinner I plugged into the tunes on my phone and did dishes for just ages. It was very relaxing. Once I was done with dinner it was time to go to our bedroom where the TV is and watch Punkin’ Chunkin’ on Discovery Channel. If you’ve not watched this, you won’t be able to understand how we watched pumpkins flying through the air for two hours and were ready for more. If you have, you’ll understand why Tim wants an air cannon and Dave wants a trebuchet.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Bonus Round!
Tim had finished all the milk with his cereal yesterday, so I got up and went to Surfcrest to get some. Surfcrest is right next to Waves of Grain, so I stopped in there and got breakfast goodies: marionberry scone, blueberry streusel muffin, cinnamon roll, sticky bun. Also bought a bag of granola. WoG is the place to be on a Sunday morning for sure. Getting Tim out of bed when there’s a cinnamon roll and chocolate milk for breakfast is very easy.
Packing went smoothly and took just over an hour. We were on the road by 10:10. We got home and unloaded the car, and Tim and Dave changed the catboxes. Then Dave and I headed over to Crumbled Rock Winery, where Mike and Patti Green (Deux Vert) were pouring their Tempranillo and Macindoe’s 2009 Melon, along with the Julia Staigers and Gerard Koschal of Crumbled Rock pouring their ’07 and ’08 Pinot Noir, and Mike and Robin Murto pouring their Cleo’s Hill ’06 Pinot noir and ’09 Pinot Gris. The Melon was terrific, a worthy successor to the ’08, and we went ahead and bought a whole case this time, rather than buying a half case and having to go back a few weeks later for more. The Pinot Gris was also very nice. All the rest of the wines except the Crumbled Rock ’08 PN are already well represented in our collection.
Crumbled Rock, Cleo’s Hill and Deux Vert Vineyards have got to be 6 of my favorite winemakers of all times. They’re all growers, and very fun to spend time with. Mike Green, Patti and Robin all greeted us like we were cousins they hadn’t seen for a while, and as always made us feel we’d made their day by showing up. They were serving fresh foccacia from their wood fired oven and we were glad to have stopped by. The only thing that would have made the visit more perfect is if the Murtos had been standing next to each other so I could have started them talking about whether the ’08 PN is ready to release (she says no, he says yes). That would have been fun to listen to.
Since we were practically in Dundee, we headed to Dundee Bistro for a late lunch, but there was a half hour wait. DB is very good, but not that good. So instead we headed over to Farm to Fork, where we got a nice table on the patio and had a yummy lunch. Dave’s sandwich needed the bread toasted, but my olive tapenade, goat cheese, arugula and radish on a baguette with a cup of summer squash soup was just delightful. After lunch we thought we might head home, but instead decided to revisit Sokol Blosser winery. Going left from Farm to Fork would have been very hard, as the Dundee light was causing its usual massive traffic jam, but there was no traffic in the direction we wanted to go.
When we got to Sokol Blosser the parking lot and tasting room were both very full, but we were able to find a space in the lot for our car and a space at the tasting room counter for ourselves. Our pourer was very personable and managed to keep on top of things even in the crowd. In fact all of their pourers were very good, from what I could tell. If only the wines had been the same. We did enjoy their dessert Riesling and ’05 Dundee Hills pinot noir, but the other offerings were not our style. It’s funny, because when we were at Newman’s they’d poured us a glass of the ’07 Dundee Hills, and after seeing we weren’t crazy about it replaced it with a nice ’06 Walnut City. So our feelings about Sokol Blosser didn’t change after visiting the tasting room, which is not a pretty as I remembered it.
After that it was time to head home and finish the unpacking, which took about the same time it took to pack. And that really is the end of the vacation blog.
Packing went smoothly and took just over an hour. We were on the road by 10:10. We got home and unloaded the car, and Tim and Dave changed the catboxes. Then Dave and I headed over to Crumbled Rock Winery, where Mike and Patti Green (Deux Vert) were pouring their Tempranillo and Macindoe’s 2009 Melon, along with the Julia Staigers and Gerard Koschal of Crumbled Rock pouring their ’07 and ’08 Pinot Noir, and Mike and Robin Murto pouring their Cleo’s Hill ’06 Pinot noir and ’09 Pinot Gris. The Melon was terrific, a worthy successor to the ’08, and we went ahead and bought a whole case this time, rather than buying a half case and having to go back a few weeks later for more. The Pinot Gris was also very nice. All the rest of the wines except the Crumbled Rock ’08 PN are already well represented in our collection.
Crumbled Rock, Cleo’s Hill and Deux Vert Vineyards have got to be 6 of my favorite winemakers of all times. They’re all growers, and very fun to spend time with. Mike Green, Patti and Robin all greeted us like we were cousins they hadn’t seen for a while, and as always made us feel we’d made their day by showing up. They were serving fresh foccacia from their wood fired oven and we were glad to have stopped by. The only thing that would have made the visit more perfect is if the Murtos had been standing next to each other so I could have started them talking about whether the ’08 PN is ready to release (she says no, he says yes). That would have been fun to listen to.
Since we were practically in Dundee, we headed to Dundee Bistro for a late lunch, but there was a half hour wait. DB is very good, but not that good. So instead we headed over to Farm to Fork, where we got a nice table on the patio and had a yummy lunch. Dave’s sandwich needed the bread toasted, but my olive tapenade, goat cheese, arugula and radish on a baguette with a cup of summer squash soup was just delightful. After lunch we thought we might head home, but instead decided to revisit Sokol Blosser winery. Going left from Farm to Fork would have been very hard, as the Dundee light was causing its usual massive traffic jam, but there was no traffic in the direction we wanted to go.
When we got to Sokol Blosser the parking lot and tasting room were both very full, but we were able to find a space in the lot for our car and a space at the tasting room counter for ourselves. Our pourer was very personable and managed to keep on top of things even in the crowd. In fact all of their pourers were very good, from what I could tell. If only the wines had been the same. We did enjoy their dessert Riesling and ’05 Dundee Hills pinot noir, but the other offerings were not our style. It’s funny, because when we were at Newman’s they’d poured us a glass of the ’07 Dundee Hills, and after seeing we weren’t crazy about it replaced it with a nice ’06 Walnut City. So our feelings about Sokol Blosser didn’t change after visiting the tasting room, which is not a pretty as I remembered it.
After that it was time to head home and finish the unpacking, which took about the same time it took to pack. And that really is the end of the vacation blog.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Day 7
Dave wanted me to put in that he learned an important lesson at the Irish Table restauarant on Thursday night – don’t drink espresso after dinner. Although he enjoyed watching the meteors from 4-5 am with his eyes wide open, he wouldn’t mind not doing it again. And speaking of dinner, one of the weird things about coming this late in the summer is that the sun sets about an hour earlier than we’re used to, at about 8. And at 8 we’re usually either at dinner or on the way home from dinner. So Dave and I haven’t seen the sunset from the house this year. The one evening we were home (fruit salad night) it was raining, so no sunset then.
I got up very early this morning (5:55!) partly because I thought it was Sunday morning. As I’ve mentioned before, the tides are backwards this trip – the very low tides occur in the early (as in 2-4 am) hours and the low tides during the day just aren’t that low (3’). So the carriage road at Hug Point has been cut off even at low tide in the afternoon. Low tide (-.1) this morning was at 3:30, and high tide wasn’t until 10:30, so I figured at 6 things would still be pretty dry, and I was right. I was able to get up on to the carriage road, and also got to watch the clouds reflect the sunrise – they were all gray when I first got up, the slowly turned pink at the top, then all the way as the sun got higher behind the cliffs.
I saw some interesting things. First, the rock that I have been thinking is the mushroom rock – a rock with a large cap that’s been eroded underneath – isn’t the mushroom rock at all! The mushroom rock, it turns out, is much smaller and has been under water every time I’ve walked by this year. It was out today, although not far enough to get a picture of its mushroominess. Also, it is a very bad year for starfish. I only saw two on my whole walk. And it’s not a great year for anemones, either – there were bare patches on some of the rocks that would usually be crowded with anemones. There’s a thick tan foam on the waves the almost looks like the foam on cappuccino; I wonder if it has anything to do with the poor amount of sea creatures? I hope not.
I had a wonderful walk and stayed dry until the very end. I had walked out on the rocks in front of the cavejust to the south of us to take a picture of one of the lone starfish, and was standing holding my camera with one foot lower than the other when I saw a larger wave coming in. Long time readers may remember a time when this happened before, and in the process of trying (unsuccessfully) to keep my feet dry I dropped my brand new camera in the ocean. This time I was much closer to home, so I didn’t really care if my foot got wet, and also I had the camera on a strap around my wrist. So I stood there and watched the wave come in, and just as I was thinking it wasn’t going to go over the top of the boot, it did. Cold! So I squished up the stairs (remember, waterproof boots keep water in as well as they keep it out) and rinsed off, and sat down with a cup of tea for some morning alone time.
A note about breakfast – we brought 3 boxes of cereal (two cracklin’ oat bran and one Quaker granola, akak Quaker 100% natural, aka Grandma cereal) and 1 bag of English muffins for breakfast. Since Tim only at breakfast half or less of the time (usually he just goes straight from bed to lunch) that was more than enough.
After Dave woke up and we both had some breakfast and noodle around, we headed to town at about 10:30. Saturday s in Cannon Beach tend to be very crowded, and parking is almost impossible after noon. So our new thing is to go to town earlier on Saturday and hang out until lunch time. With our new obsession of geocaching, there was no problem filling the time. We parked in the secret back lot, which was a little more than half full, and walked to Haystack Rock. Our plan had been to walk on the beach, but we found a nice road that runs between the beach and the houses – houses on one side, grassy dune on the other. Much nicer than walking on Hemlock St, and in some ways nicer than the beach – no sand in your shoes. At Jackson St the road we were on ended, so we headed down to the beach and walked another quarter mile or so to Haystack Rock. We didn’t actually go to the rock, because it was high tide and because that’s not where the geocache is. It was nice to be looking for a cache out in the open. 9 feet of error is way more manageable than 36. The cache is hidden very nicely but pretty easy to spot, which I did. We left a car but I don’t remember what we took. Next stop was a cache that is in the parking lot of a business in midtown. It’s very cleverly hidden right out in the open. The cache itself is a 35 mm film container (remember those) with a roll of paper in it to record your find. The folks in the business in whose lot it is hidden get a huge kick out of watching people find it. I’m not sure we would have found it so fast if he hadn’t told me that I was right on top of it. Dave actually found it when he looked at where I was standing. The guy said we had gotten to it much quicker than most people. We were pleased.
From midtown we headed up Hemlock to town, but at Jackson realized we could go the back way. It’s a little bit of extra walking but way worth it. The weather was partly cloudy and when the sun would come out it was nice and warm. I spent a lot of time taking my jacket off and putting it back on. We were people on a mission now, because we were headed for Bill’s for lunch and the window of opportunity is about ½ hour – too early and they’re not open yet; too late and you have to wait for a seat. Tim had opted to stay home, so we were able to sit on the grownup side at my favorite table – the one with phone and gps signal.
After lunch we headed out and found two more caches – one by the water treatment plant and one almost to midtown on Spruce. Both were fairly easy finds. The water treatment plant one was especially nice. We followed a path along the sewage treatment lagoons and then it was just a short path into the woods. You might think that sounds unpleasant, but if you didn’t know what they were you’d think they were nice little ponds, complete with ducks. The other one was fun because it’s just off the road and barely camouflaged by a very suspicious looking stack of wood just off the path. It made us both laugh.
Then we headed back to downtown to visit Mr. Wine Know It All, aka Mr WKIA. We cut across at the street next to the Presbyterian church and discovered a secret parking lot. I’m not going to say anymore about where it is, but it didn’t have any private parking signs and it was mostly empty at 1 pm on Saturday. That discovery alone would have made geocaching worthwhile, even if it weren’t so much fun.
Mr WKIA was having a tasting of Zerba wines and our friend Dan from NW Wine Club (who is almost singlehandedly responsible for this wine thing) was pouring. The wines were all ok, and we bought a bottle of Mourvedre, but in general they tasted like ok Washington wines. After that it was time to head back to the house where I had my very first nap of the vacation on the bed in our room with the windows open and the sun pouring in through the skylights. It was a totally excellent nap. When I woke up Dave was heading down to the beach to try to get to the carriage road and Tim was taking his skim board. I stayed up to finish the laundry.
Once the laundry was done I headed down. Dave had made it across the carriage road and was back playing catch with Tim. I walked around for a while. I went to look at the starfish I saw this morning but it was gone. I hope it moved off on its own. Then I sat and watched Dave and Tim play catch. Eventually they’d had enough, so Tim went and did a little more skim boarding and I took some pictures. Then Dave and Tim went up to start the shower process, and I sat and played with the sand for a while. When I went up, Dave was in the shower so I sat on the deck until he got out. I needed to wash off my feet and shoes but if I’d done it while Dave was in the shower you would have been able to hear him yell at Haystack Rock. There’s not much water pressure here.
Once we were all showered and neatly dressed and wearing shoes that aren’t held together by duct tape it was time to head off to Wayfarer for dinner. Now Wayfarer used to be one of our favorite restaurants. The food, while not spectacular, was always interesting and well prepared. But when we went last year they had a new menu, missing most of our favorites. And the food wasn’t that good, considering what they were charging. But we wanted to give them one more chance this year, so we thought we’d go on a Saturday when they’d have their A-team on. It was a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. The first is that even though it is in Midtown, parking was bad. Dave dropped us off and found a parking space out past Icefire. When they brought the menu it was the same as last year, and there wasn’t really anything on it that interested me. Last year Tim had a roasted corn salad that we’d all tasted and liked, so I thought I’d have that as an appetizer and then have the prime rib special. Tim had the salad, a cup of the spicy chicken and rice soup, and the fish & chips. Dave had the crab, spinach and artichoke dip and the filet. Tim enjoyed the corn salad, but it turned out to be mostly a spinach salad with too much overly sweet dressing. Dave’s steak was underdone and undersalted, and the veggies that came with the meal were barely steamed and served pretty much plain. My prime rib was ok, not great. Tim’s soup was ok, and his fish and chips were excellent. In addition to the mediocre food, our reservations were at 6:30 and the restaurant had many many crying whining children. So if we were going to go again, we’d get later reservations on a weeknight. But honestly, the food was so disappointing I don’t think we’ll be back. Dessert, on the other hand, was still very good.
We are out of sissy firestarters and Tim didn’t chop any wood today, so no fire tonight. We’re also out of milk, so no cereal tomorrow. It must be almost time to go home. Faithful readers will notice two omissions this year: No beach bikes, and no watching the glass blowing at Icefire. I’d asked Tim about beach bikes early in the week and he’d given a non-committal answer, and given the lack of very low tides, I didn’t push it. We’d talked about maybe going this afternoon, but when it came to be time nobody had the energy. No parent, I should say. So no beach bikes. And since Icefire usually happened in conjunction with beach bikes, no Icefire either. Another thing there hasn’t been is raccoons. Not any at all. And the seagulls that used to sit on the roof were only here once. I don’t know what happened to the seagull we had several years ago that would actually come and rap on the glass with its beak looking for food, but it hasn’t been around either.
Finally, there was no dread pirate. Since Josh is always the dread right before the game ends, there is no way for the game to end without him. So we didn’t start one.
And that’s the end of the beach.
I got up very early this morning (5:55!) partly because I thought it was Sunday morning. As I’ve mentioned before, the tides are backwards this trip – the very low tides occur in the early (as in 2-4 am) hours and the low tides during the day just aren’t that low (3’). So the carriage road at Hug Point has been cut off even at low tide in the afternoon. Low tide (-.1) this morning was at 3:30, and high tide wasn’t until 10:30, so I figured at 6 things would still be pretty dry, and I was right. I was able to get up on to the carriage road, and also got to watch the clouds reflect the sunrise – they were all gray when I first got up, the slowly turned pink at the top, then all the way as the sun got higher behind the cliffs.
I saw some interesting things. First, the rock that I have been thinking is the mushroom rock – a rock with a large cap that’s been eroded underneath – isn’t the mushroom rock at all! The mushroom rock, it turns out, is much smaller and has been under water every time I’ve walked by this year. It was out today, although not far enough to get a picture of its mushroominess. Also, it is a very bad year for starfish. I only saw two on my whole walk. And it’s not a great year for anemones, either – there were bare patches on some of the rocks that would usually be crowded with anemones. There’s a thick tan foam on the waves the almost looks like the foam on cappuccino; I wonder if it has anything to do with the poor amount of sea creatures? I hope not.
I had a wonderful walk and stayed dry until the very end. I had walked out on the rocks in front of the cavejust to the south of us to take a picture of one of the lone starfish, and was standing holding my camera with one foot lower than the other when I saw a larger wave coming in. Long time readers may remember a time when this happened before, and in the process of trying (unsuccessfully) to keep my feet dry I dropped my brand new camera in the ocean. This time I was much closer to home, so I didn’t really care if my foot got wet, and also I had the camera on a strap around my wrist. So I stood there and watched the wave come in, and just as I was thinking it wasn’t going to go over the top of the boot, it did. Cold! So I squished up the stairs (remember, waterproof boots keep water in as well as they keep it out) and rinsed off, and sat down with a cup of tea for some morning alone time.
A note about breakfast – we brought 3 boxes of cereal (two cracklin’ oat bran and one Quaker granola, akak Quaker 100% natural, aka Grandma cereal) and 1 bag of English muffins for breakfast. Since Tim only at breakfast half or less of the time (usually he just goes straight from bed to lunch) that was more than enough.
After Dave woke up and we both had some breakfast and noodle around, we headed to town at about 10:30. Saturday s in Cannon Beach tend to be very crowded, and parking is almost impossible after noon. So our new thing is to go to town earlier on Saturday and hang out until lunch time. With our new obsession of geocaching, there was no problem filling the time. We parked in the secret back lot, which was a little more than half full, and walked to Haystack Rock. Our plan had been to walk on the beach, but we found a nice road that runs between the beach and the houses – houses on one side, grassy dune on the other. Much nicer than walking on Hemlock St, and in some ways nicer than the beach – no sand in your shoes. At Jackson St the road we were on ended, so we headed down to the beach and walked another quarter mile or so to Haystack Rock. We didn’t actually go to the rock, because it was high tide and because that’s not where the geocache is. It was nice to be looking for a cache out in the open. 9 feet of error is way more manageable than 36. The cache is hidden very nicely but pretty easy to spot, which I did. We left a car but I don’t remember what we took. Next stop was a cache that is in the parking lot of a business in midtown. It’s very cleverly hidden right out in the open. The cache itself is a 35 mm film container (remember those) with a roll of paper in it to record your find. The folks in the business in whose lot it is hidden get a huge kick out of watching people find it. I’m not sure we would have found it so fast if he hadn’t told me that I was right on top of it. Dave actually found it when he looked at where I was standing. The guy said we had gotten to it much quicker than most people. We were pleased.
From midtown we headed up Hemlock to town, but at Jackson realized we could go the back way. It’s a little bit of extra walking but way worth it. The weather was partly cloudy and when the sun would come out it was nice and warm. I spent a lot of time taking my jacket off and putting it back on. We were people on a mission now, because we were headed for Bill’s for lunch and the window of opportunity is about ½ hour – too early and they’re not open yet; too late and you have to wait for a seat. Tim had opted to stay home, so we were able to sit on the grownup side at my favorite table – the one with phone and gps signal.
After lunch we headed out and found two more caches – one by the water treatment plant and one almost to midtown on Spruce. Both were fairly easy finds. The water treatment plant one was especially nice. We followed a path along the sewage treatment lagoons and then it was just a short path into the woods. You might think that sounds unpleasant, but if you didn’t know what they were you’d think they were nice little ponds, complete with ducks. The other one was fun because it’s just off the road and barely camouflaged by a very suspicious looking stack of wood just off the path. It made us both laugh.
Then we headed back to downtown to visit Mr. Wine Know It All, aka Mr WKIA. We cut across at the street next to the Presbyterian church and discovered a secret parking lot. I’m not going to say anymore about where it is, but it didn’t have any private parking signs and it was mostly empty at 1 pm on Saturday. That discovery alone would have made geocaching worthwhile, even if it weren’t so much fun.
Mr WKIA was having a tasting of Zerba wines and our friend Dan from NW Wine Club (who is almost singlehandedly responsible for this wine thing) was pouring. The wines were all ok, and we bought a bottle of Mourvedre, but in general they tasted like ok Washington wines. After that it was time to head back to the house where I had my very first nap of the vacation on the bed in our room with the windows open and the sun pouring in through the skylights. It was a totally excellent nap. When I woke up Dave was heading down to the beach to try to get to the carriage road and Tim was taking his skim board. I stayed up to finish the laundry.
Once the laundry was done I headed down. Dave had made it across the carriage road and was back playing catch with Tim. I walked around for a while. I went to look at the starfish I saw this morning but it was gone. I hope it moved off on its own. Then I sat and watched Dave and Tim play catch. Eventually they’d had enough, so Tim went and did a little more skim boarding and I took some pictures. Then Dave and Tim went up to start the shower process, and I sat and played with the sand for a while. When I went up, Dave was in the shower so I sat on the deck until he got out. I needed to wash off my feet and shoes but if I’d done it while Dave was in the shower you would have been able to hear him yell at Haystack Rock. There’s not much water pressure here.
Once we were all showered and neatly dressed and wearing shoes that aren’t held together by duct tape it was time to head off to Wayfarer for dinner. Now Wayfarer used to be one of our favorite restaurants. The food, while not spectacular, was always interesting and well prepared. But when we went last year they had a new menu, missing most of our favorites. And the food wasn’t that good, considering what they were charging. But we wanted to give them one more chance this year, so we thought we’d go on a Saturday when they’d have their A-team on. It was a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. The first is that even though it is in Midtown, parking was bad. Dave dropped us off and found a parking space out past Icefire. When they brought the menu it was the same as last year, and there wasn’t really anything on it that interested me. Last year Tim had a roasted corn salad that we’d all tasted and liked, so I thought I’d have that as an appetizer and then have the prime rib special. Tim had the salad, a cup of the spicy chicken and rice soup, and the fish & chips. Dave had the crab, spinach and artichoke dip and the filet. Tim enjoyed the corn salad, but it turned out to be mostly a spinach salad with too much overly sweet dressing. Dave’s steak was underdone and undersalted, and the veggies that came with the meal were barely steamed and served pretty much plain. My prime rib was ok, not great. Tim’s soup was ok, and his fish and chips were excellent. In addition to the mediocre food, our reservations were at 6:30 and the restaurant had many many crying whining children. So if we were going to go again, we’d get later reservations on a weeknight. But honestly, the food was so disappointing I don’t think we’ll be back. Dessert, on the other hand, was still very good.
We are out of sissy firestarters and Tim didn’t chop any wood today, so no fire tonight. We’re also out of milk, so no cereal tomorrow. It must be almost time to go home. Faithful readers will notice two omissions this year: No beach bikes, and no watching the glass blowing at Icefire. I’d asked Tim about beach bikes early in the week and he’d given a non-committal answer, and given the lack of very low tides, I didn’t push it. We’d talked about maybe going this afternoon, but when it came to be time nobody had the energy. No parent, I should say. So no beach bikes. And since Icefire usually happened in conjunction with beach bikes, no Icefire either. Another thing there hasn’t been is raccoons. Not any at all. And the seagulls that used to sit on the roof were only here once. I don’t know what happened to the seagull we had several years ago that would actually come and rap on the glass with its beak looking for food, but it hasn’t been around either.
Finally, there was no dread pirate. Since Josh is always the dread right before the game ends, there is no way for the game to end without him. So we didn’t start one.
And that’s the end of the beach.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Day 6
I actually slept in until 8:30 this morning, which was nice. I finished up the fruit salad and then Dave and I headed out to do some geocaching. We had a good time, but it was also frustrating. Both of us were trying to use our phones, and while they’re pretty good, they were mostly defeated in the trees. We started out at a brand new cache just south of here at the cannon. Unfortunately we couldn’t get our phones to agree on where it was, and one of the geocaching apps that I actually paid for on my phone kept insisting we were two miles away. We looked for about 20 minutes, but were too frustrated to keep going, so we hopped in the car to go to the next place. On the way there my phone informed me that there was an update available for the geocaching app that wasn’t working, so I downloaded and it fixed the problem. Technology is amazing, isn’t it?
The next site was just before the tunnel, and now both of my geocaching apps were giving me the same information. Unfortunately the phone couldn’t give me any better accuracy than about 30 feet, and didn’t seem to be able to make up its mind. At one point it looked like it wanted me to go out onto the mouth of the tunnel, above the road. Fortunately Dave found the cache before I worked up the courage to go out there. We left one of our plastic cars and got a plastic saber-toothed tiger, or some similar animal.
The next cache we wanted to try and find was along the Oregon Coast Trail, originating out of Arch Cape. Sounds easy, except last year I spent several hours trying to find information on the web about just where the trailhead is. I never did figure it out, but got the impression that to find it you’d need to drive out past ACPS (the rental agent for the house) on Shingle Mill Road, so we headed out that way. Meanwhile I was trying to enter the coordinates for the cache into Lee, my car GPS, since (1) my phone was running out of batteries and (2) it wouldn’t work in the trees anyway. So I wasn’t helping Dave look. We got to the end of Shingle Mill Rd and didn’t see anything – well, Dave thought he might have, but didn’t see it on the way back. So we drove back to 101 and headed south through the tunnel, but both came to the conclusion that that wasn’t right either. So we decided to give Shingle Mill another try, and this time Dave found the trailhead!
We parked the car with no little difficulty, walking that fine line between getting far enough off the road without falling in to a ditch. The trail starts with a wonderful suspension bridge. At least I thought it was wonderful – Dave liked the way it looked but wasn’t completely crazy about the way it bounced when you were on it (kind of like the bridge on the way down to the beach here, but more). Also I forgot to mention that the weather was beautiful – sunny and not too cool. So we hiked for a while along the trail, not very far (Lee kept saying we were .2 miles away for the longest time). It is a beautiful trail, very well maintained and very deserted, heading up the side of Neahkanie mountain through beautiful woods. Lee and Dave’s iPhone were pretty much in agreement about where we were supposed to go… until we got there. Then they wouldn’t give us better than about 20 feet accuracy, and although we looked in every hole in every tree, we didn’t find the cache. It turns out, though, that the last several people who have looked have not found it either, so it may not be there.
At that point it was time to head back and get Tim and go to town for lunch. We got there a little before noon, and once again it was not very parked up. Since it was sunny we thought we’d eat outside at Seaons, where we’d had some very good soup and sandwiches a few months ago. It was nice eating outside and the food was ok, not as good as we remembered it. As we were finishing up, though, it started to get cooler, and by the time we got back out on the main street it had completely fogged over and it was cold! Tim was determined to have his Osborn’s ice cream though – first time this trip. While he and Dave bought Tim’s ice cream I went into White Bird and found some earrings for Lynn, and then we headed to a few more shops to look for crocs for Dave, since his were wearing out. Unfortunately crocs don’t seem to be a Cannon Beach kind of footwear, so we were unsuccessful.
We headed home, hoping it would be clear, but it wasn’t. I read for a while, I’m not sure what Dave and Tim did besides fly helicopters and try to crash them on my head. It seemed to be getting lighter, so we all headed down to the beach. I took my camera so I could do the annual documenting of the sands, and Tim and Dave took their baseball gloves and a ball. So I took my pictures, using Dave as a reference point, and Tim climbed around on the rocks. Then I kept going towards Hug Point, and they went back to play catch. I walked almost to the carriage road, but the afternoon low tides are still too high to make it out there. SO I came back, trying to get my feet used to being in the cold water. Meanwhile the sun would come out, then it would refog, then get sunny again. When I got back I started digging a hole, and Tim came and helped, so Dave went up to shower. We dug a pretty good hole, then filled it in and moved closer to the water so we could dig one that would have water at the bottom and we could make dripstone. We did a little dripstoning, but were having more fun digging and making the hole collapse, so we did that for a while. Then we went into the water to rinse our hands.
All I did was rinse my hands, but I could see that Tim was being inexorably drawn deeper and deeper into the icy water. I stayed in up to my ankles or so, but he slowly and steadily worked his way in for total immersion. The water is so cold that when you first put your feet in your teeth hurt, but I guess he was having water withdrawal. He had a fun time bouncing around in the waves for a while, and then we headed up to the house. My feet were completely frozen, so I can’t even imagine what he felt like. Needless to say he took the first shower, and then wrapped up in a blanket in front of the heater. I took my shower and built a buckycube, and then it was time to head off to the Stephanie Inn, an adults-only dinner.
Unlike Newman’s, which has both a prix fixe and a choose-your-own menu, the Stepanie Inn has only prix fixe, and does it in two seatings – so everybody eats the same thing at the same time. We chose the earlier seating, at 6, because 8:30 felt too late. I’m hoping Dave will be keeping his food and wine blog, so I’m not going to describe the meal in any great detail. The Stephanie Inn is supposed to be the most upscale hotel in Cannon Beach, and their 4 course pix fixe dinner is much praised. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re food snobs, or because the assistant chef was in charge, but overall the meal was disappointing. It was all good, but Dave cooks as well or better. We still had our socks on when we left, which was too bad. But it was a fun meal and we will go back and try it again when the head chef is in charge.
Meanwhile Tim was having another sad evening by himself. Ok, not really. He ate my leftover noodles from the Bistro and I’m not sure what else, and was happily vegging out in front of the TV when we got home. Then it was time for some helicoptering – including the first mid-air collision – and some pepper. We played 5 games and I won the most. Which was good, because last time we played I didn’t win at all, so I feel I’ve regained my pepper mojo.
Tomorrow is our last day already, and we have several plans, depending on the weather and the parking. In past years, parking has been bad in town all week, and downright impossible on Saturdays. So we’re curious what will happen tomorrow, given that there’s been easy parking all week, but now it’s a three day weekend. Stay tuned!
The next site was just before the tunnel, and now both of my geocaching apps were giving me the same information. Unfortunately the phone couldn’t give me any better accuracy than about 30 feet, and didn’t seem to be able to make up its mind. At one point it looked like it wanted me to go out onto the mouth of the tunnel, above the road. Fortunately Dave found the cache before I worked up the courage to go out there. We left one of our plastic cars and got a plastic saber-toothed tiger, or some similar animal.
The next cache we wanted to try and find was along the Oregon Coast Trail, originating out of Arch Cape. Sounds easy, except last year I spent several hours trying to find information on the web about just where the trailhead is. I never did figure it out, but got the impression that to find it you’d need to drive out past ACPS (the rental agent for the house) on Shingle Mill Road, so we headed out that way. Meanwhile I was trying to enter the coordinates for the cache into Lee, my car GPS, since (1) my phone was running out of batteries and (2) it wouldn’t work in the trees anyway. So I wasn’t helping Dave look. We got to the end of Shingle Mill Rd and didn’t see anything – well, Dave thought he might have, but didn’t see it on the way back. So we drove back to 101 and headed south through the tunnel, but both came to the conclusion that that wasn’t right either. So we decided to give Shingle Mill another try, and this time Dave found the trailhead!
We parked the car with no little difficulty, walking that fine line between getting far enough off the road without falling in to a ditch. The trail starts with a wonderful suspension bridge. At least I thought it was wonderful – Dave liked the way it looked but wasn’t completely crazy about the way it bounced when you were on it (kind of like the bridge on the way down to the beach here, but more). Also I forgot to mention that the weather was beautiful – sunny and not too cool. So we hiked for a while along the trail, not very far (Lee kept saying we were .2 miles away for the longest time). It is a beautiful trail, very well maintained and very deserted, heading up the side of Neahkanie mountain through beautiful woods. Lee and Dave’s iPhone were pretty much in agreement about where we were supposed to go… until we got there. Then they wouldn’t give us better than about 20 feet accuracy, and although we looked in every hole in every tree, we didn’t find the cache. It turns out, though, that the last several people who have looked have not found it either, so it may not be there.
At that point it was time to head back and get Tim and go to town for lunch. We got there a little before noon, and once again it was not very parked up. Since it was sunny we thought we’d eat outside at Seaons, where we’d had some very good soup and sandwiches a few months ago. It was nice eating outside and the food was ok, not as good as we remembered it. As we were finishing up, though, it started to get cooler, and by the time we got back out on the main street it had completely fogged over and it was cold! Tim was determined to have his Osborn’s ice cream though – first time this trip. While he and Dave bought Tim’s ice cream I went into White Bird and found some earrings for Lynn, and then we headed to a few more shops to look for crocs for Dave, since his were wearing out. Unfortunately crocs don’t seem to be a Cannon Beach kind of footwear, so we were unsuccessful.
We headed home, hoping it would be clear, but it wasn’t. I read for a while, I’m not sure what Dave and Tim did besides fly helicopters and try to crash them on my head. It seemed to be getting lighter, so we all headed down to the beach. I took my camera so I could do the annual documenting of the sands, and Tim and Dave took their baseball gloves and a ball. So I took my pictures, using Dave as a reference point, and Tim climbed around on the rocks. Then I kept going towards Hug Point, and they went back to play catch. I walked almost to the carriage road, but the afternoon low tides are still too high to make it out there. SO I came back, trying to get my feet used to being in the cold water. Meanwhile the sun would come out, then it would refog, then get sunny again. When I got back I started digging a hole, and Tim came and helped, so Dave went up to shower. We dug a pretty good hole, then filled it in and moved closer to the water so we could dig one that would have water at the bottom and we could make dripstone. We did a little dripstoning, but were having more fun digging and making the hole collapse, so we did that for a while. Then we went into the water to rinse our hands.
All I did was rinse my hands, but I could see that Tim was being inexorably drawn deeper and deeper into the icy water. I stayed in up to my ankles or so, but he slowly and steadily worked his way in for total immersion. The water is so cold that when you first put your feet in your teeth hurt, but I guess he was having water withdrawal. He had a fun time bouncing around in the waves for a while, and then we headed up to the house. My feet were completely frozen, so I can’t even imagine what he felt like. Needless to say he took the first shower, and then wrapped up in a blanket in front of the heater. I took my shower and built a buckycube, and then it was time to head off to the Stephanie Inn, an adults-only dinner.
Unlike Newman’s, which has both a prix fixe and a choose-your-own menu, the Stepanie Inn has only prix fixe, and does it in two seatings – so everybody eats the same thing at the same time. We chose the earlier seating, at 6, because 8:30 felt too late. I’m hoping Dave will be keeping his food and wine blog, so I’m not going to describe the meal in any great detail. The Stephanie Inn is supposed to be the most upscale hotel in Cannon Beach, and their 4 course pix fixe dinner is much praised. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re food snobs, or because the assistant chef was in charge, but overall the meal was disappointing. It was all good, but Dave cooks as well or better. We still had our socks on when we left, which was too bad. But it was a fun meal and we will go back and try it again when the head chef is in charge.
Meanwhile Tim was having another sad evening by himself. Ok, not really. He ate my leftover noodles from the Bistro and I’m not sure what else, and was happily vegging out in front of the TV when we got home. Then it was time for some helicoptering – including the first mid-air collision – and some pepper. We played 5 games and I won the most. Which was good, because last time we played I didn’t win at all, so I feel I’ve regained my pepper mojo.
Tomorrow is our last day already, and we have several plans, depending on the weather and the parking. In past years, parking has been bad in town all week, and downright impossible on Saturdays. So we’re curious what will happen tomorrow, given that there’s been easy parking all week, but now it’s a three day weekend. Stay tuned!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Day 5
I have to start with after last night’s blog when we played two games of Yahtzee and I won the first one! It was about time that I got to win something.
Back to today. I woke up at 7:30 or so. Once the sun starts coming in the skylights of our bedroom, I’m up. It was kind of nice to be the only one up – both Date and Tim slept in today – Dave not as long as Tim, and Tim not as long as he would have liked. The laughing ladies (minus Colleen, who is in Michigan dropping her daughter Sarah off at college) were supposed to arrive at 10:30, and we figured Tim should be up and dressed and breakfasted before they got here. (A brief note about time. The bird clock is broken, so the only clock in the living room/kitchen area is on the stove, which isn’t visible from most of the living room. So mostly I have no idea what time it is, which is how yesterday I was still in my loungewear when it was time to go to Newman’s). They arrived at the appointed time. Laurel came alone, Kay brought her niece and nephew, and Patti brought Kenzie and Suzanne and Bailey Moore, a friend of Suzanne’s. We hung out on the porch for a while, then headed in to the sunnzy beer garden at Warren House. Ok, not really, because the kids can’t go in the sunny beer garden, so we sat on the sunny deck.
Wow, was it sunny! It was almost too hot to sit out there, and many of us got “a little color” while we waited for the food. Our waitress had some trouble getting the pea salad or chips part of the order right, but eventually everybody had all their food. It was a fun time. After lunch Kay took her charges to a beach that you didn’t have to climb down to, and the rest of us went back to the little house and hung out on the beach. Dave took a walk, Tim climbed around, and the girls did girl beach things. Kenzie took lots of pictures of our picturesque rocks. Eventually Dave & Tim decided they needed to go into town for another helicopter and more buckyballs. We needed more buckyballs because I lost one, and neither Tim nor I can play with the set knowing there’s one missing. When you make your shapes, there is an empty space. It’s not good.
The rest of us stayed down on the beach. Patti and I got our exercise throwing the giant frisbee at imaginary people so the other person had to run after it. Then we sat on the blanket and chatted and sweated until we had had enough. Because it was really hot today – like 80 or so – with no breeze down on the beach. It was odd to be there without all the big kids – Breanna is in Spokane, and Mikaila is in Fort Collins. But it was good to get caught up and compare notes. Apparently girls take many much more clothes to college than boys.
As Patti & Laurel were leaving, Tim and Dave got back from town with their goodies. Dave had found a helicopter a size up from Tim’s that is radio controlled (Tim’s is infrared/line of sight, which meant that when he accidentally flew it behind the chair it stopped going and crashed). It was so hot in the house and I’d gotten so sweaty playing throw-the-frisbee (you can’t really call it catch) that I took a shower and then sat outside in my loungewear reading. Oddly, even though today was warmer, the weather was nicer yesterday. Today we had lots of high cirrus, which would periodically thicken and block the sun, where yesterday was just clear blue sky.
Our plan for tonight was to go to The Irish Table, which is Midtown in the space formerly occupied by the Midtown Café. It shares space with the Sleepy Monk Coffee roaster and is only open for dinner, at which point the Sleepy Monk has presumably gone to sleep. They don’t take reservations, but you can call after 5:30 and get on the waiting list, and they’ll give you an approximate time to come. When you get there, they ask if you if you have a reservation, which I guess is different from not taking reservations. Anyway, they told us 7, but when we got there our table wasn’t ready so we sat outside in the sun. Dave had a Murphy’s Stout while we waited, and it was very pleasant.
We finally got in after about 20 minutes, and it was well worth the wait. The service was friendly and attentive, and the food was excellent. Standouts – the House Salad, which Tim had; the curried lentil soup, which Dave had; and the curried mussels, which I had. Also the Chocolate Pot which Tim had for desseet, which he said is better than the fallen chocolate soufflé at Wayfarer – high praise indeed.
After dinner it was time for me to work on the blog, and for Tim and Dave to duel to a tie in Farkle. They’re waiting for their helicopters to charge and then it will be airport time here. Meanwhile, I think I will read a good book. Oh – and the peaches are finally done!
Back to today. I woke up at 7:30 or so. Once the sun starts coming in the skylights of our bedroom, I’m up. It was kind of nice to be the only one up – both Date and Tim slept in today – Dave not as long as Tim, and Tim not as long as he would have liked. The laughing ladies (minus Colleen, who is in Michigan dropping her daughter Sarah off at college) were supposed to arrive at 10:30, and we figured Tim should be up and dressed and breakfasted before they got here. (A brief note about time. The bird clock is broken, so the only clock in the living room/kitchen area is on the stove, which isn’t visible from most of the living room. So mostly I have no idea what time it is, which is how yesterday I was still in my loungewear when it was time to go to Newman’s). They arrived at the appointed time. Laurel came alone, Kay brought her niece and nephew, and Patti brought Kenzie and Suzanne and Bailey Moore, a friend of Suzanne’s. We hung out on the porch for a while, then headed in to the sunnzy beer garden at Warren House. Ok, not really, because the kids can’t go in the sunny beer garden, so we sat on the sunny deck.
Wow, was it sunny! It was almost too hot to sit out there, and many of us got “a little color” while we waited for the food. Our waitress had some trouble getting the pea salad or chips part of the order right, but eventually everybody had all their food. It was a fun time. After lunch Kay took her charges to a beach that you didn’t have to climb down to, and the rest of us went back to the little house and hung out on the beach. Dave took a walk, Tim climbed around, and the girls did girl beach things. Kenzie took lots of pictures of our picturesque rocks. Eventually Dave & Tim decided they needed to go into town for another helicopter and more buckyballs. We needed more buckyballs because I lost one, and neither Tim nor I can play with the set knowing there’s one missing. When you make your shapes, there is an empty space. It’s not good.
The rest of us stayed down on the beach. Patti and I got our exercise throwing the giant frisbee at imaginary people so the other person had to run after it. Then we sat on the blanket and chatted and sweated until we had had enough. Because it was really hot today – like 80 or so – with no breeze down on the beach. It was odd to be there without all the big kids – Breanna is in Spokane, and Mikaila is in Fort Collins. But it was good to get caught up and compare notes. Apparently girls take many much more clothes to college than boys.
As Patti & Laurel were leaving, Tim and Dave got back from town with their goodies. Dave had found a helicopter a size up from Tim’s that is radio controlled (Tim’s is infrared/line of sight, which meant that when he accidentally flew it behind the chair it stopped going and crashed). It was so hot in the house and I’d gotten so sweaty playing throw-the-frisbee (you can’t really call it catch) that I took a shower and then sat outside in my loungewear reading. Oddly, even though today was warmer, the weather was nicer yesterday. Today we had lots of high cirrus, which would periodically thicken and block the sun, where yesterday was just clear blue sky.
Our plan for tonight was to go to The Irish Table, which is Midtown in the space formerly occupied by the Midtown Café. It shares space with the Sleepy Monk Coffee roaster and is only open for dinner, at which point the Sleepy Monk has presumably gone to sleep. They don’t take reservations, but you can call after 5:30 and get on the waiting list, and they’ll give you an approximate time to come. When you get there, they ask if you if you have a reservation, which I guess is different from not taking reservations. Anyway, they told us 7, but when we got there our table wasn’t ready so we sat outside in the sun. Dave had a Murphy’s Stout while we waited, and it was very pleasant.
We finally got in after about 20 minutes, and it was well worth the wait. The service was friendly and attentive, and the food was excellent. Standouts – the House Salad, which Tim had; the curried lentil soup, which Dave had; and the curried mussels, which I had. Also the Chocolate Pot which Tim had for desseet, which he said is better than the fallen chocolate soufflé at Wayfarer – high praise indeed.
After dinner it was time for me to work on the blog, and for Tim and Dave to duel to a tie in Farkle. They’re waiting for their helicopters to charge and then it will be airport time here. Meanwhile, I think I will read a good book. Oh – and the peaches are finally done!
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Day 4
When I woke up is was cloudy and foggy, but with a feeling in the air that it wouldn’t last. The weather forecast said cool and completely cloudy in the morning, partly cloudy in the afternoon. So I figured we’d hang out here in the morning and get some laundry done, then go in to town for lunch at JPs and then do some geocaching in Ecola State Park. Thing is it completely cleared up by 10, so we should have gotten Tim up and headed out before lunch, but we didn’t. So we hung around and played with buckyballs and waited for the laundry to be done, and then went to lunch. JPs was very good – they had a spaghettis soup, which Dave and Tim had and said tasted like high-class beefaroni. That’s a good thing. After lunch we headed up to Ecola and started looking for our first geocache. We both have geocaching apps on our phones, but there’s something of a learning curve. Plus, it is much harder to use them in the trees, which makes them less accurate, than it was in the wide open spaces of OSP. It’s just not that helpful when it tells you you’re 10 feet away – plus or minus 26 feet. Also because of yesterday’s rain the trail to the first one we went to find was very slippery. Tim got bored of the part where we stand around saying “it’s got to be around here somewhere” and took off to go exploring, but didn’t tell us. So after a while when he didn’t come back we had parental mental images of him having fallen off a cliff, which freaked us out. So we went looking for him and yelling his name, and eventually heard him yelling back at us. Then we were really freaked out because he was ¾ of the way up a steep cliff. We met him back in the parking lot and took him in to town, where he could walk around on level ground and buy chocolate milk at the Mariner market.
We drove back out to the viewpoint parking place and decided we’d try a different cache. It was up the crescent beach trail a short way and was pretty easy to find, except at that time I didn’t know how to figure out how much error my gps might be showing, so I was in a very wrong place. Dave found the cache and we took a plastic frog and left a plastic car.
Then we went back to the first place and spent a very long time slipping around in the mud and following little paths that went nowhere. Eventually I completely misinterpreted something someone who had found the cache had written and crawled under some trees branches and found the cache. When Dave came, he just pushed the branches aside, which was a much easier solution. The cache is called “Jim’s viewpoint”, and it did indeed have a very nice view of the ocean.
Feeling successful, we drove back to town, picked up Tim (somewhat chocolate stained) and headed back to the house. It is an absolutely gorgeous day – sunny and warm – and we put the solar shades down and had the door open. Everything is better when it Is sunny.
Tonight’s dinner destination was Newman’s at 988. Chef John Newman used to be the executive chef at the Stephanie Inn, but about 5 years ago opened his own place in Midtown. It is very small, and is probably the most interesting food in Cannon Beach. They offer a 5 course prix fixe menu, and that’s what we like to get if it sounds at all good. Tonight it was centered around a wonderful grilled Chinook salmon, so we went for it. One of the fun things about the prix fixe dinner is that you can get the wine pairing with it – a different wine for every course. Dave and I shared one pairing, which was a good thing because the pours were quite generous – if we’d each had one, we would have had to send a cab for Tim to come drive us home.
Because Tim did not go with us. Traditionally Josh and Tim always had a dinner without us – when they were younger, we’d get a sitter, and lately they’d just stay home and have mac’n’cheese’n’dogs. This year we brought some leftover spaghetti for Tim, and he had a very nice evening on his own. The only thing is we forgot to chop any wood, so no fire tonight.
Tomorrow the Laughing Ladies (who used to be the New Moms) (except Colleen, who is in Michigan dropping Sarah off) are coming out. The weather is supposed to be beautiful, so we are looking forward to a great day.
We drove back out to the viewpoint parking place and decided we’d try a different cache. It was up the crescent beach trail a short way and was pretty easy to find, except at that time I didn’t know how to figure out how much error my gps might be showing, so I was in a very wrong place. Dave found the cache and we took a plastic frog and left a plastic car.
Then we went back to the first place and spent a very long time slipping around in the mud and following little paths that went nowhere. Eventually I completely misinterpreted something someone who had found the cache had written and crawled under some trees branches and found the cache. When Dave came, he just pushed the branches aside, which was a much easier solution. The cache is called “Jim’s viewpoint”, and it did indeed have a very nice view of the ocean.
Feeling successful, we drove back to town, picked up Tim (somewhat chocolate stained) and headed back to the house. It is an absolutely gorgeous day – sunny and warm – and we put the solar shades down and had the door open. Everything is better when it Is sunny.
Tonight’s dinner destination was Newman’s at 988. Chef John Newman used to be the executive chef at the Stephanie Inn, but about 5 years ago opened his own place in Midtown. It is very small, and is probably the most interesting food in Cannon Beach. They offer a 5 course prix fixe menu, and that’s what we like to get if it sounds at all good. Tonight it was centered around a wonderful grilled Chinook salmon, so we went for it. One of the fun things about the prix fixe dinner is that you can get the wine pairing with it – a different wine for every course. Dave and I shared one pairing, which was a good thing because the pours were quite generous – if we’d each had one, we would have had to send a cab for Tim to come drive us home.
Because Tim did not go with us. Traditionally Josh and Tim always had a dinner without us – when they were younger, we’d get a sitter, and lately they’d just stay home and have mac’n’cheese’n’dogs. This year we brought some leftover spaghetti for Tim, and he had a very nice evening on his own. The only thing is we forgot to chop any wood, so no fire tonight.
Tomorrow the Laughing Ladies (who used to be the New Moms) (except Colleen, who is in Michigan dropping Sarah off) are coming out. The weather is supposed to be beautiful, so we are looking forward to a great day.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Day 3
Started off with quite some work. I woke up about 7:30 and decided it was time to stop procrastinating the peaches. At home we get an assembly line going, with Tim dipping the peaches in boiling water, dave removing the skins, and me cutting the peaches and putting them in the fruit dryer. There was no way that was going to happen here – there’s just not enough floor or counter space, and the setup would mean we’d be passing the sticky dripping peaches all over. So I set up a little peach station and did it all by myself. Fortunately there weren’t all that many peaches left, so it only took about an hour and was fun in that mind-shut-off way that things like that are. After peaches I had breakfast, and then it was time to geocache.
Yes, it was raining and no, that didn’t stop us. The tides aren’t very good this week – the very low tides are in the early hours of the morning (as in 1 am), and the low tides during the day aren’t very low. So today was our best chance at it, and we have plenty of rain gear. The first one we went to was north, towards hug point. One weird thing was that I was concerned about getting around the rock to the north of our cove but Dave wasn’t at all. Some time between when I walked to it Sunday night and he walked there Monday, the part to the west of the rock had filled with sand. I always thought the sand moved during storms, but there was no storm. So I don’t know what the deal is. We were both worried about whether we could get across the carriage road (turns out we couldn’t), but fortunately the cache was near the waterfall. I won’t say where, but there was some climbing involved. Dave took on path that wasn’t very steep but had a sheer dropoff to one side of the narrow path, while I took another that was steep but had no drop-offs. Dave found the cache! We’d forgotten to bring our swag. So we just made a note in the log and headed back down.
Much like the swim Ben and I did in Maine, when we turned around to walk to the next point we were walking head into the rain and wind. And it was a little like the swim in that you’d look up to get your bearings, then put your head down and walk a while, then look up an spot again. And again like the swim, it was a little over a mile from the first point to the second. We trudged along past our house. The cache was showing inland a bit, so I thought it might be by the stream that’s a kind of by the Arch Cape Deli (which is closed, by the way) and that’s where it turned out to be. There’s a nice path leading to a road and a little wooden bridge, and the cache is right around there. Once again dave found the cache – I’m saying it’s because he had the only GPS. We have several, but only one has a waterproof suit, and after sending my last phone for a swim I wasn’t about to take my new one out in the rain! Again like Maine, the final leg of the journey with the wind at our backs was very pleasant.
We got home and took showers and woke Tim and went into town for Pig’n. We also needed to stop at EVOO for bread (not ready yet, so we reserved a loaf to pick up later) and to Mr. Wine Know-it-All for a wine to go with tonight’s fruit salad, and to get some more buckyballs to cut down on the grabbing of buckyballs away from each other. They didn’t have any more silver ones so we got black ones, which are pretty cool looking.
We got home and had some buckyball time, and also played a little pepper. We played about 6 or 8 games. Dave won and Tim won and I did not win even one time. I hate pepper. OK, I don’t really, but it doesn’t seem right that I got completely skunked at farkle last night and then couldn’t win any pepper this afternoon. We may need to play some Trouble tonight. Also while we were home we found out from Debbie that they have started storing firewood in the garage, so we made a nice fire. At least it was nice once it stopped filling the room with smoke. The chimney has issues on windy days, and we’d judged today’s wind to be ok. We were wrong. So we had the door open most of the afternoon.
Once they’d finished beating me at pepper it was time to go back in to town to pick up the bread. On the way we stopped at the farmer’s market in the midtown parking lot – a rather soggy collection of a few stalls, but we got some nice strawberries and blackberries. Then it was on to EVOO to get the bread. But when we got there they were very apologetic because the bread wasn’t ready – in fact it was still sitting on the table doing its final rise. Bob the Baker said it would be ready at 5 – about an hour. So what to do in town for an hour? Dave had the very good idea of heading over to Bill’s, where he had a 2x4 stout and a cup of clam chowder and I had a half pint of foggy notion weissbier. It was a very nice interlude. One thing about the weather being so terrible today (cold, windy, actual rain, not drizzle) is that town is pretty much completely deserted – no problem parking, no crowds. As Dave said, “if the weather wasn’t so awful, I’d wish the weather was awful all the time”. (English majors – does that last sentence require the sunjunctive?) After Bill’s we visited some of our favorite shops, including a very successful stop at Maggie and Henry’s, where I got 2 sweaters, a vest, and a light jacket. Then we went back and got the bread, and headed home. When we got there, Tim was watching TV and flying his helicopter.
Last week Tim drove us to Carlton, where we picked up some manchego and triple cream cheese at the Horseradish. That, a piece of cheddar, and a very nice half bottle of Matello Riesling made a wonderful accompaniment to the fruit salad I made when we got home. However a note for next year is to not only bring a bread knife, but also to bring a sharp knife or two for cutting up the fruit, instead of bludgeoning it to death with the knife-shaped objects in the drawer.
After dinner Tim and Dave had several cube-building races with the buckyballs. Dave won in the head to head challenge, but Tim timed it, and then beat Dave’s time. After that it was time for some Trouble, and it was an excellent game. Dave won, and I finally did not come in last. It was a hard fought battle with no clear winner until the very end, and several thrilling reversals of fortune. After that it was once again time for reading and watching TV.
I haven’t had a nap yet. It’s supposed to rain again tomorrow, so I have big plans for one.
Yes, it was raining and no, that didn’t stop us. The tides aren’t very good this week – the very low tides are in the early hours of the morning (as in 1 am), and the low tides during the day aren’t very low. So today was our best chance at it, and we have plenty of rain gear. The first one we went to was north, towards hug point. One weird thing was that I was concerned about getting around the rock to the north of our cove but Dave wasn’t at all. Some time between when I walked to it Sunday night and he walked there Monday, the part to the west of the rock had filled with sand. I always thought the sand moved during storms, but there was no storm. So I don’t know what the deal is. We were both worried about whether we could get across the carriage road (turns out we couldn’t), but fortunately the cache was near the waterfall. I won’t say where, but there was some climbing involved. Dave took on path that wasn’t very steep but had a sheer dropoff to one side of the narrow path, while I took another that was steep but had no drop-offs. Dave found the cache! We’d forgotten to bring our swag. So we just made a note in the log and headed back down.
Much like the swim Ben and I did in Maine, when we turned around to walk to the next point we were walking head into the rain and wind. And it was a little like the swim in that you’d look up to get your bearings, then put your head down and walk a while, then look up an spot again. And again like the swim, it was a little over a mile from the first point to the second. We trudged along past our house. The cache was showing inland a bit, so I thought it might be by the stream that’s a kind of by the Arch Cape Deli (which is closed, by the way) and that’s where it turned out to be. There’s a nice path leading to a road and a little wooden bridge, and the cache is right around there. Once again dave found the cache – I’m saying it’s because he had the only GPS. We have several, but only one has a waterproof suit, and after sending my last phone for a swim I wasn’t about to take my new one out in the rain! Again like Maine, the final leg of the journey with the wind at our backs was very pleasant.
We got home and took showers and woke Tim and went into town for Pig’n. We also needed to stop at EVOO for bread (not ready yet, so we reserved a loaf to pick up later) and to Mr. Wine Know-it-All for a wine to go with tonight’s fruit salad, and to get some more buckyballs to cut down on the grabbing of buckyballs away from each other. They didn’t have any more silver ones so we got black ones, which are pretty cool looking.
We got home and had some buckyball time, and also played a little pepper. We played about 6 or 8 games. Dave won and Tim won and I did not win even one time. I hate pepper. OK, I don’t really, but it doesn’t seem right that I got completely skunked at farkle last night and then couldn’t win any pepper this afternoon. We may need to play some Trouble tonight. Also while we were home we found out from Debbie that they have started storing firewood in the garage, so we made a nice fire. At least it was nice once it stopped filling the room with smoke. The chimney has issues on windy days, and we’d judged today’s wind to be ok. We were wrong. So we had the door open most of the afternoon.
Once they’d finished beating me at pepper it was time to go back in to town to pick up the bread. On the way we stopped at the farmer’s market in the midtown parking lot – a rather soggy collection of a few stalls, but we got some nice strawberries and blackberries. Then it was on to EVOO to get the bread. But when we got there they were very apologetic because the bread wasn’t ready – in fact it was still sitting on the table doing its final rise. Bob the Baker said it would be ready at 5 – about an hour. So what to do in town for an hour? Dave had the very good idea of heading over to Bill’s, where he had a 2x4 stout and a cup of clam chowder and I had a half pint of foggy notion weissbier. It was a very nice interlude. One thing about the weather being so terrible today (cold, windy, actual rain, not drizzle) is that town is pretty much completely deserted – no problem parking, no crowds. As Dave said, “if the weather wasn’t so awful, I’d wish the weather was awful all the time”. (English majors – does that last sentence require the sunjunctive?) After Bill’s we visited some of our favorite shops, including a very successful stop at Maggie and Henry’s, where I got 2 sweaters, a vest, and a light jacket. Then we went back and got the bread, and headed home. When we got there, Tim was watching TV and flying his helicopter.
Last week Tim drove us to Carlton, where we picked up some manchego and triple cream cheese at the Horseradish. That, a piece of cheddar, and a very nice half bottle of Matello Riesling made a wonderful accompaniment to the fruit salad I made when we got home. However a note for next year is to not only bring a bread knife, but also to bring a sharp knife or two for cutting up the fruit, instead of bludgeoning it to death with the knife-shaped objects in the drawer.
After dinner Tim and Dave had several cube-building races with the buckyballs. Dave won in the head to head challenge, but Tim timed it, and then beat Dave’s time. After that it was time for some Trouble, and it was an excellent game. Dave won, and I finally did not come in last. It was a hard fought battle with no clear winner until the very end, and several thrilling reversals of fortune. After that it was once again time for reading and watching TV.
I haven’t had a nap yet. It’s supposed to rain again tomorrow, so I have big plans for one.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Day 2
Day 2
Today was just amazing. It started slow and kept on going the same way, which is just what I needed. Dave and I got up around 8 and dawdled around and had some breakfast. I also got more peaches out of the dryer, leaving just one tray to finish up. We got Tim up around 9 and had him get ready. The forecast for today was for clouds early, followed by showers in the afternoon. When I first got up it was clear but had been getting cloudier, so we thought we’d head into town and noodle around a bit, have lunch, and be home when the rains came. Much of our plan worked out. First stop was in midtown, to check out the new Irish restaurant. It looks delightful. Also next door to it is a new hardware store and public house, which is a real hardware store with beer on tap. An interesting combination and one we hope will succeed.
Then we headed downtown, where our first job was to get Tim something to eat, so we thought we’d head to the Cannon Beach cookie company. Dave and I had breakfasted there during his sabbatical, and they had good breakfast pastries. But when we got there, CBCC was no longer – it was somebody’s café, or something, and it wasn’t even open. So we kept moving north and came to Season’s café where Tim had a fresh out of the oven cinnamon coffeecake muffin (very, very yummy) and chocolate milk. Then we wandered around town for a bit, going in and out of stores looking for swag for geocaching and enjoying the sun, which was supposed to be gone by afternoon. In the place that used to be the explora-store there is a new toy store that had some excellent toys. We got a remote control helicopter that really flies, some buckyball magnets that are way cool to play with, and the chicken flicken game that is more fun to talk aout than to play, although it is fun to play. We spent the afternoon playing with our new toys and Dave took some time to read and nap on the deck, because it turned out to be a completely gorgeous sunny day, with no clouds all the way down to the horizon.
Dave and I were going to do a little geocaching but the tides (which are not very good this trip) did not cooperate. We will try again tomorrow. Ok, more about the bucky balls. They are little metal balls, about the size of a standard bb, made of “rare eart metal”. They’re magnetic. They’re fantastic. They come in a 6x6x6 cube, and getting them back in that shape takes lots of concentration. You can make some shapes out of them, like hexagons, that are very stable and want to stick together – if you stick two hexagons together they’s come apart as two hexagons. Well,, it’s more fun to play with than to read about.
For dinner we headed out to the Bistro, “memorable meals of honorable mention”, The food there is always good, and they have delicious desserts, And even though the lights are kind of dim, the service was pretty quick. They have a quirky wine list, and the wines tend to be somewhat unusual, and usually not the best. Tonight we had an Alsatian pinot gris which was not an exception.
After dinner we came home and made a fire, played a game of farkle, and now it’s time to do some heavy relaxing
Today was just amazing. It started slow and kept on going the same way, which is just what I needed. Dave and I got up around 8 and dawdled around and had some breakfast. I also got more peaches out of the dryer, leaving just one tray to finish up. We got Tim up around 9 and had him get ready. The forecast for today was for clouds early, followed by showers in the afternoon. When I first got up it was clear but had been getting cloudier, so we thought we’d head into town and noodle around a bit, have lunch, and be home when the rains came. Much of our plan worked out. First stop was in midtown, to check out the new Irish restaurant. It looks delightful. Also next door to it is a new hardware store and public house, which is a real hardware store with beer on tap. An interesting combination and one we hope will succeed.
Then we headed downtown, where our first job was to get Tim something to eat, so we thought we’d head to the Cannon Beach cookie company. Dave and I had breakfasted there during his sabbatical, and they had good breakfast pastries. But when we got there, CBCC was no longer – it was somebody’s café, or something, and it wasn’t even open. So we kept moving north and came to Season’s café where Tim had a fresh out of the oven cinnamon coffeecake muffin (very, very yummy) and chocolate milk. Then we wandered around town for a bit, going in and out of stores looking for swag for geocaching and enjoying the sun, which was supposed to be gone by afternoon. In the place that used to be the explora-store there is a new toy store that had some excellent toys. We got a remote control helicopter that really flies, some buckyball magnets that are way cool to play with, and the chicken flicken game that is more fun to talk aout than to play, although it is fun to play. We spent the afternoon playing with our new toys and Dave took some time to read and nap on the deck, because it turned out to be a completely gorgeous sunny day, with no clouds all the way down to the horizon.
Dave and I were going to do a little geocaching but the tides (which are not very good this trip) did not cooperate. We will try again tomorrow. Ok, more about the bucky balls. They are little metal balls, about the size of a standard bb, made of “rare eart metal”. They’re magnetic. They’re fantastic. They come in a 6x6x6 cube, and getting them back in that shape takes lots of concentration. You can make some shapes out of them, like hexagons, that are very stable and want to stick together – if you stick two hexagons together they’s come apart as two hexagons. Well,, it’s more fun to play with than to read about.
For dinner we headed out to the Bistro, “memorable meals of honorable mention”, The food there is always good, and they have delicious desserts, And even though the lights are kind of dim, the service was pretty quick. They have a quirky wine list, and the wines tend to be somewhat unusual, and usually not the best. Tonight we had an Alsatian pinot gris which was not an exception.
After dinner we came home and made a fire, played a game of farkle, and now it’s time to do some heavy relaxing
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Day 1
In the runup to this vacation, I haven’t been home for both a Friday and a Saturday night since July 24th, and before that, only 2 weekends since early June. I basically gave up on unpacking the toiletry bag. Also, we’ve been coming here every summer since Josh was 6 months old… and this year there is no Josh. So while it is always wonderful to be here, and I know we will have a good time, there’s part of me that just wanted to stay home. But the deposit is non-refundable, so here we are, and it is good.
Changes to the house: not many. New carpet, which looks exactly like the old carpet except that it is clean and not all bumpy around the edges. New solar shades on the front windows, not as good looking as the old ones, but in good working order and also they are supposed to keep things cooler in the afternoon when the sun comes in. Unfortunately that isn’t supposed to be a problem for several days. Also unfortunately, the house continues to get more and more run down – the fireplace is missing some bricks, the faucet on the sink still doesn’t work quite right, there’s just a feeling that things aren’t as well taken care of. But it is still beautiful and wonderful.
We packed all morning, but forgot several important items, mostly my bathrobe. We also didn’t bring the brio train stuff, which would have been fun to play with during the rainy days. On the other hand, this is the first time in several years that we have only brought one car, and space was a little tight, especially since we had to leave room for Tim in the back seat. And because we had to bring the fruit dryer.
Yes, the fruit dryer. Every year in August we get peaches to can and dry. Usually they come earlier in the summer, but because this year was so cold and rainy, they came on Monday. They are picked slighty underripe, so we couldn’t start canning until Thursday, and even then only 3/5 of them were ripe. Did I mention we got 100 pounds? So that left about 35 pounds (some were eaten) to dry, and they didn’t get ripe until Saturday afternoon. The fruit dryer, it turns out, only holds about 20 pounds, and it takes more than 24 hours to dry them. So we taped the trays together and brought the fruit dryer and 15 or so pounds of peaches along, and the first batch is happily finishing drying in the front bedroom. The front bedroom used to be Josh’s room and we have the door closed so the house doesn’t smell of drying peaches (which gets old after a very short time), so sometimes I think he’s in there sleeping. We’ll get the next batch drying tomorrow.
We got here, got unpacked, and headed out to Mo’s after Tim chopped the wood for tonight’s fire. You have to get to Mo’s pretty early to avoid the wait, and besides, we were all hungry. It wasn’t crowded at all and after a very short wait we got a window table. It’s quite chilly here and drizzling a little, but people were out on the beach anyway, all bundled up, huddled around their campfires. Only in Oregon. The food & service were both good. I had ribs, which is kind of unusual for Mo’s, but they were quite satisfactory. Dave had fish tacos, which were also fine, and Tim had clam strips. The French fries were unusually good, but the green beans that came with my ribs were really mediocre. This was especially noticeable because we’ve been getting fresh green beans in our CSA bag, and the difference was profound.
After dinner we went to Surfcrest market as we always do, but not for milk, which we brought from home. Last night Dave made apple pie, and it turns out Tim can’t eat pie without ice cream, unless it is pumpkin pie, in which case he needs frozen cool whip. Also he was having a huge chocolate milk craving, almost too much to bear. So we sent him into Surfcrest to get chocolate milk and vanilla ice cream. He came out with chocolate milk and chocolate ice cream, because they didn’t have vanilla ice cream and he didn’t like the other two flavors. We reminded him that the ice cream was for pie, and sent him back in to return it. He did get a quart of chocolate milk, which he drank right from the carton as soon as we got home. But before we went home, he drove us in to downtown (his first time on the S-curves) and got vanilla ice cream at the Mariner Market.
Once we got home and he’d finished his chocolate milk, it was time to light a fire. Since we discovered the sissy firestarters last year, this should have been a breeze. And it would have been, if either of the two lighters had worked. Or if there had been matches in the house. But there weren’t. Then Tim had a brilliant idea – use the toaster! Dave resisted as long as he could, but eventually gave in, which is how I got a picture of him kneeling on the hearth with a wad of newspaper stuck in the toaster. Yes, it worked, although Tim’s idea of using tongs to hold the paper would have been a good thing to do. The newspaper caught, Dave threw it in the fireplace, it lit the firestarter and now we are sitting facing a wonderful fire. Yes, facing it – it occurred to me that we could turn the chairs to face, not the blank window, but the fire. Quite an innovation.
And that’s all for tonight. We’ve all entered the 20 digit WEP key into our wireless devices, and can surf to our heart’s content.
Changes to the house: not many. New carpet, which looks exactly like the old carpet except that it is clean and not all bumpy around the edges. New solar shades on the front windows, not as good looking as the old ones, but in good working order and also they are supposed to keep things cooler in the afternoon when the sun comes in. Unfortunately that isn’t supposed to be a problem for several days. Also unfortunately, the house continues to get more and more run down – the fireplace is missing some bricks, the faucet on the sink still doesn’t work quite right, there’s just a feeling that things aren’t as well taken care of. But it is still beautiful and wonderful.
We packed all morning, but forgot several important items, mostly my bathrobe. We also didn’t bring the brio train stuff, which would have been fun to play with during the rainy days. On the other hand, this is the first time in several years that we have only brought one car, and space was a little tight, especially since we had to leave room for Tim in the back seat. And because we had to bring the fruit dryer.
Yes, the fruit dryer. Every year in August we get peaches to can and dry. Usually they come earlier in the summer, but because this year was so cold and rainy, they came on Monday. They are picked slighty underripe, so we couldn’t start canning until Thursday, and even then only 3/5 of them were ripe. Did I mention we got 100 pounds? So that left about 35 pounds (some were eaten) to dry, and they didn’t get ripe until Saturday afternoon. The fruit dryer, it turns out, only holds about 20 pounds, and it takes more than 24 hours to dry them. So we taped the trays together and brought the fruit dryer and 15 or so pounds of peaches along, and the first batch is happily finishing drying in the front bedroom. The front bedroom used to be Josh’s room and we have the door closed so the house doesn’t smell of drying peaches (which gets old after a very short time), so sometimes I think he’s in there sleeping. We’ll get the next batch drying tomorrow.
We got here, got unpacked, and headed out to Mo’s after Tim chopped the wood for tonight’s fire. You have to get to Mo’s pretty early to avoid the wait, and besides, we were all hungry. It wasn’t crowded at all and after a very short wait we got a window table. It’s quite chilly here and drizzling a little, but people were out on the beach anyway, all bundled up, huddled around their campfires. Only in Oregon. The food & service were both good. I had ribs, which is kind of unusual for Mo’s, but they were quite satisfactory. Dave had fish tacos, which were also fine, and Tim had clam strips. The French fries were unusually good, but the green beans that came with my ribs were really mediocre. This was especially noticeable because we’ve been getting fresh green beans in our CSA bag, and the difference was profound.
After dinner we went to Surfcrest market as we always do, but not for milk, which we brought from home. Last night Dave made apple pie, and it turns out Tim can’t eat pie without ice cream, unless it is pumpkin pie, in which case he needs frozen cool whip. Also he was having a huge chocolate milk craving, almost too much to bear. So we sent him into Surfcrest to get chocolate milk and vanilla ice cream. He came out with chocolate milk and chocolate ice cream, because they didn’t have vanilla ice cream and he didn’t like the other two flavors. We reminded him that the ice cream was for pie, and sent him back in to return it. He did get a quart of chocolate milk, which he drank right from the carton as soon as we got home. But before we went home, he drove us in to downtown (his first time on the S-curves) and got vanilla ice cream at the Mariner Market.
Once we got home and he’d finished his chocolate milk, it was time to light a fire. Since we discovered the sissy firestarters last year, this should have been a breeze. And it would have been, if either of the two lighters had worked. Or if there had been matches in the house. But there weren’t. Then Tim had a brilliant idea – use the toaster! Dave resisted as long as he could, but eventually gave in, which is how I got a picture of him kneeling on the hearth with a wad of newspaper stuck in the toaster. Yes, it worked, although Tim’s idea of using tongs to hold the paper would have been a good thing to do. The newspaper caught, Dave threw it in the fireplace, it lit the firestarter and now we are sitting facing a wonderful fire. Yes, facing it – it occurred to me that we could turn the chairs to face, not the blank window, but the fire. Quite an innovation.
And that’s all for tonight. We’ve all entered the 20 digit WEP key into our wireless devices, and can surf to our heart’s content.
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