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.