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!