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.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
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.
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