Today started with a walk on the beach, but not right away – low tide wasn’t until 11, so when I got up a little before 8 we were still cut off. I heated up my hot chocolate from yesterday, checked my e-mail, and did a little facebook chatting with Josh while waiting for dry sands. It was important to get down to the beach to do a little sand documentation. One of these days I’m going to actually go back and look at the sand documentation pictures to do a little comparing. Dave got up just as I was heading out so he had some time to himself. I walked to the carriage road and back and documented things.
When I got back Dave was just finishing his breakfast of fruit salad and English muffin. I finished off the fruit salad and we made our plan. Saturday in Cannon Beach is always something of a zoo, and we figured today would be pretty bad, given that it is going to be that rare bird, a day when you can go to the beach without a sweatshirt – and also that it’s going to be over 90 inland. We had a couple of geochaches that we wanted to notch on our belts before we go back to the real world. I had loaded all the local spots into the gps last night, so we put the phone in Tim’s room and hopped in the car.
The caches we went to today were all kind of fun because they took us places we might not have gone to, but were glad to found. The first place was the Cannon Beach water tower. The cache was a pretty easy find for Dave, but the water tower itself was the star. In the cache description it says the tower is ominous, and I didn’t understand how that could be until we came to it. It’s huge, and somehow it is ominous – you can’t help thinking about what would happen if it were to suddenly spring a giant leak. Other than that it’s mostly just huge, and now we’ve been there, and we know what that gate leads to.
Next cache: A Great View of South Cannon beach. Everything – the cache description, the path to the beach – started to feel very familiar, and just as we got to where the cache is hidden we both realized that we’d been there before, but hadn’t marked it as found on geocaching.com. So we got back in the car and after the people moved their stroller out of the way we continued on.
I have to stop here a minute and talk about strollers. When Josh and Tim were that size, we had these things called umbrella strollers, because they folded up into a small package that looked – you guessed it – like a rather unwieldy umbrella, except that it had two handles and four wheels. OK, maybe it looked nothing like an umbrella, but it was very small and compact and took up almost no room in the car or the restaurant or even on the sidewalk in its fully unfolded, child-carrying state. This is not what people are pushing around the crowded sidewalks or, in the case of the previous paragraph, parking in the middle of the street and so it is completely impassable. No, today’s strollers are more like SUVs to the umbrella stroller’s cooper mini. 3 or 4 15” diameter all-terrain wheels; enough nylon and webbing to outfit an expedition to the Himalayas, all-weather canopies, and I think I saw cupholders as well. In most cases the child is refusing to ride in the thing, so dad is pushing the stroller while mom carries the child. Also, I have not seen a single one off-road – mostly they are just clogging up the restaurants and sidewalks. What is the point?
Well, once the blockage had been removed we headed to our last stop. We’d tried to get to this one before, but had been going at it from the wrong direction & been defeated by the steep slope. Dave had done some more research and found the correct entrance (take Spruce Street from the entrance to Midtown) and so we parked the car ad went to find the cache and coincidentally explore one of Cannon Beach’s little known treasures, Haystack Hill State Park. It runs along the west side of 101, starting pretty much due east of haystack rock. It’s a beautiful bit of old-growth forest in the middle of all these houses. While we were there the sun was shining, a very, very small breeze was blowing, and pine needles were falling from the trees almost like a light rain. A nice path led pretty much directly to the cache. We continued on the path past the cache and found it amusing that it was clear that the cache was the destination for most people – beyond it the path was much more overgrown as there were fewer feet to keep it open. I have to give credit where it’s due, also – I found the cache entirely thanks to the GPS, which clearly was trying to redeem itself after the debacle on the two bridges hike yesterday. Dave was 15 or so feet in the completely wrong direction.
It would have been a very quiet walk back, except the ocean is very noisy. For some reason this trip I am noticing the constant noise of the waves more than I have in previous years. It’s loud, and it’s everywhere! As we were walking back I called Tim – that’s why we put the phone in his room – and woke him up, as he’d said he wanted to come to Bill’s with us for lunch. He had to make a very long groaning noise into the phone and whine a lot about being awakened at such an early hour – it was only 10:30. We got home a little before 11, changed into sandals, and went to get some lunch. Here’s the trick: Bill’s doesn’t open until 11:30, but if you wait until 11:30 you may not be able to find parking. On the other hand, things have not been as crowded this year as in some previous years. So we got to town a little after 11 and there were plenty of spaces, and then we went and hung out in the bookstore until it was time to go to lunch. At the bookstore I found a book for Tim called “Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction”, which shows how to make miniature crossbows out of a pen, a pencil, and a rubber band – things like that.
Lunch at Bill’s was its usual good self, enhanced by being able to say dunkelweizen again. I love to say dunkelweizen. After lunch Tim hit Osby’s (Osborn’s ice cream) for his first and only cone this trip, and I hit Bruce’s for some more salt licorice, to which I am quite addicted. Then we stopped at the game store and got Sumdoku, which is kind of like bananagrams with numbers. We picked up the car and on the way home we also stopped at Icefire to look at their seconds, and fell in love with a vase that has a slightly uneven rim and some air bubbles. It’s a gorgeous mix of green, purple, and blue – kind of like deep ocean – and because of its imperfections was actually affordable. I am very excited to finally have something from there.
When we got home it was hot! It was also naptime for Dave. I wanted to get one more beach walk in and also get a closer look the glass-fronted, roof-garden-topped monster mansion going in just south of Arcadia beach. On the other hand, the tide was already partway in – the waves were lapping at the rock to the north – and things would only get worse. But I decided to go anyway. We’d discovered that the long-distance radios worked all the way to the rock with a hole in it (formerly known as the Rock WAHIT, except Dave pointed out that it should be the Rock WAHII, which I don’t like as much), so I decided I would take a radio instead of my phone, the radio being cheaper to replace if I fell in. I made it around the point to the north with minimal foot wetting. The sand was pretty warm, so when the waves came up they got kind of warm too, which was nice. I got around hug point, although I did have to hug the point and time it so the waves weren’t coming over the low place. Once I got around Hug Point I realized that if I walked all the way to Arcadia Beach, I would not be able to get back and would need someone to come pick me up. So I tried to radio the house, but the radio didn’t work. I thought maybe it was because I was right behind the wall of rock, so I kept going. I did get all the way to Arcadia beach and did get a close look at the glass fronted mansion – the Pella window bird has definitely been there. Unfortunately I could not get anyone on the radio, neither on the beach nor in the ocean nor in the parking lot. And when I walked across the dry sand to get to the parking lot it got in my sandals.
It’s only about 1.6 miles on 101 from Arcadia Beach to the house, so I figured it wouldn’t be too bad a walk. Although it was hot in the sun, the sun was usually behind the trees, and the road hadn’t heated up that much. It would have been quite a nice walk, actually, except for two things: the cars whiz by very fast and very close, and the sand was rubbing under the sandal straps. I stopped several times to try to get rid of the sand, but it didn’t work. I realized what I should have done was to take my sandals off in the water and rinse them, and then climb to the parking lot and dry my feet on the grass before putting the sandals back on. So if I get stuck at Arcadia beach again I’ll know what to do. An advantage of walking back was that I got to see the glass mansion from the other side as well, but not up very close because it had no trespassing signs everywhere. The whole walk took a little under two hours and was a good thing.
When I got back to the house it was HOT and getting hotter. Usually the floor to ceiling walls of glass facing the ocean are nice in the afternoon because it gets all warm and cozy. Today it was just hot. I took a nap in the brown chair anyway, waking up periodically to unstick myself. When I woke up Dave was taking a shower and Tim was napping on the couch (he stays up all night and sleeps all day; tomorrow morning when he has to get up and do packing it’s going to be quite a shock). I started to do some blog writing, but then Dave reminded me that our dinner reservations were at 6, not 7, so I needed to hop into the shower and get ready.
Tonight’s dinner was at EVOO, which they say Ee Vee Oh Oh. It’s a fun place to go because it’s dinner theater – one of those places where everybody sits around the stovetop and they cook and talk in front of you. We got the end seats on the south end of the table – right next to the convection ovens. No, of course they don’t have air conditioning. Yow, it was warm in that corner. But the dinner was fun anyway – Bob the chef and his wife Lenore have a good patter that they do, and Bob was especially fun because he’d had a large coffee and was pretty amped up. The dinner is three entrees, complete with starch and veggies, and a dessert. We started with a deconstructed eggplant parmagiana, served with buffalo mozzarella and Umbrian lentils that had been cooked in a mushroom broth and a roasted tomato jam that was basically tomatoes roasted in a little olive oil & balsamic reduction, tossed with basil. I thought the tomato jam was super yummy – but was it better than the lentils? Depends on which one you were eating. Bob uses coriander where most people would use black pepper, and it gives a light fruity spiciness to everything that I really like.
Second course was a pan seared halibut (finished in the oven) with homemade spaghettini and a pancetta-mushroom sauté made with salt-cured lemons that was really, really good. For me it would have been spectacular if the pancetta had been less salty – both last night and tonight I found the pancetta a little overwhelming. There were shavings of real parmesan cheese with it, and everything was drizzled with olive oil. I liked it, but not as much as the first course – my fish was overcooked by about a minute. Fortunately in between the courses there is lots of talking and cooking, so you have a little time to recover. Third course was a prime rib (technically, a choice rib) that had been rubbed with a spice mix called “the flavors of southern Spain” (available soon at their store) and also trimmed so that it didn’t have the fat blobs that you usually leave on your plate. This was both good and bad – good, because the fat blobs are kind of gross looking. Bad because the strip of meat on the other side of the fat, which he cut away to use later, is my favorite part of the prime rib. He served it with a spinach and corn sauté, and a pickled beet-pickled horseradish slaw that I found indescribably delicious and Dave thought was ok.
All three courses came with wine pairings, mostly from southern Oregon because Bob prefers the big reds. The first was a blend, the second a Grenache, and the third a zinfandel made in southern Oregon with eastern Washington fruit. None of the wines was particularly outstanding (especially compared to last night’s Gigondas) and the Zin just wasn’t up to snuff. Dessert was a berry tart, a good example of one if you like that sort of thing, which I don’t particularly, served with a frozen greek yogurt that was out of this world. When we got up to leave I noticed some folks who’d left earlier hadn’t finished their yogurts, and I almost went back to grab my spoon and finish theirs up.
I realize that overall this doesn’t read as a sparkling review, and some of that may have to do with having been so hot and sweaty through the meal. And the food isn’t quite up to Newman’s, although there were some real flashes of brilliance. But I would go there again, and I would very much recommend it to anyone who likes food - you will learn a lot, and eat a lot, and have a great time. Also I would strongly recommend making up a special occasion, because then they will put a hybrid candle/sparkler in your dessert and chef Bob will light it with an industrial blowtorch.
It was good to walk back to the car in the cool air, although when we got home the house was still pretty warm. Tim had enjoyed his spaghetti and especially enjoyed being alone in the house and watching TV and listening to the kind of music he likes. He wanted to have a fire, but it was pretty late (after 9:30) when we got home and also still very warm inside. So Dave made a command decision of no fire, which was a good decision but kind of too bad on our last night. We tried out the new Sumdoku game, which is like bananagrams in that you make a kind of scrabble crossword only with numbers. But it’s not like bananagrams in that everybody builds on the same puzzle and takes turns. This has the drawbacks that you have to wait through other peoples’ turns and sometimes they ruin your plan. We played two games and the second one was both slower and more fun than the first as we kind of figured out how it worked. I won both games, although the second was closer than the first. The game has long periods of thinking and waiting and everyone was starting to fall asleep, so I thought a game of trouble would wake folks up. It was a game without a lot of honking, and with a lot of times when we were all popping on the pop-o-matic looking for sixes, but Dave won easily. Tim and I had a very tight finish, but once again a string of 6s towards the end propelled me to 2nd place. I then pronounced myself a three-time winner, but Dave pointed out that I did not win at trouble. It only felt like it because it was a come-from-behind kind of exciting finish.
After that it was pretty late and the moon had set (we missed it in the excitement of the end of the trouble game). We need to be up early tomorrow to pack and head home (booo! booo!) so we’re all calling it a night. Thanks for joining us!
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Cache as Cache Can
A leftover from last night’s dinner. One of the peculiarities of the house – I would even call it a flaw – is the kitchen window, or rather, the lack of one. The table has 4 chairs around it – two on each end, and two on the long side facing the ocean. Unfortunately what they face is not the picture window or wall of glass that you might expect – it is a wall, with a large painting that might be of the cove to the north. When we were setting the table for last night’s dinner it seemed even crazier than usual that we would sit where you can’t see the ocean (there is window next to the table, but it faces the trees) while this beautiful evening was winding down into a gorgeous sunset . We thought about eating dinner on the little table that we play games on, but it’s too small. There’s a card table in the closet in the master bedroom, but it’s hard to get out. So we just moved the rocking chair that sits in front of the fireplace out of the way, and moved the kitchen table. We did have to close the blinds, but you can see through them, and it was nice to have true oceanfront dining right in our own place.
This morning started with a bout of frustration when my laptop wouldn’t connect with the internet. In addition to checking for comments on my blog posts I had also planned to look up some geocaches, but even though my phone and Dave’s iPad were connecting without any problems, the laptop would not. I rebooted it several times and turned its wireless on and off to no avail. Finally Dave reset the access point, which solved the problem. Unfortunately as part of my pointless troubleshooting I had told the computer to forget the network, so I had to re-enter the 20 digit network key. Oddly, it’s harder on the computer than on the phone, because the computer doesn’t tell you what you’ve typed.
Once I was reconnected I was able to look for some caches, and after a yummy breakfast of leftover fruit salad we headed out. There are quite a few caches along 101 through Oswald West State Park, so we thought we’d head down there. But first I wanted to try a cache called Zig Zag, which is off of Falcon Cove Rd. We drove to Falcon Cove road and took the leftt onto Elk Flat road, going past a school and through a gate with a wonderful “please scoop” sign on it. The road seemed very long and Dave got a little crabby about the branches scraping his car, but we made it safely to the turn around/parking area . The description of the cache says, “Find a trail through the forest until reaching a lookout point. From there a source to descend should reveal itself.” Dave found the trail, and we hiked along it – it’s very pretty – and sure enough, the source to descend revealed itself – a series of ropes tied to trees leading down a steep path a hundred feet or so straight down to where the ocean boiled itself around some big rocks in a beautiful, secluded cove. I couldn’t even bring myself to walk over to where the first rope was, but Dave did and decided it was not a good idea – we could go down, he thought, but he wasn’t sure we could go back up. We had plenty of cell phone signal (Dave was getting texts from Josh about cool things he’d found in the college library while we were there), but we didn’t want to end up as a rescue statistic on the pages of the Cannon Beach Gazette. But the trip was definitely worth it, and when we got back to the parking area the view up the coastline to the north was spectacular. A side note is that I was looking at the cache description while I was writing this, and it’s possible that the cache is actually accessible without going down the cliff face. We may take Tim and go back there. A further side note after more research – you do have to go down the ropes. Never mind.
We had three more caches to find – well, 4, but when we looked at the description for the 4th it said “The reasoning for the 5 star difficulty is you will have to have a flashlight to find this cache. The 4.5 on terrain is due to the actual terrain, as well as the extreme fear factor. Here is a cache for the explorer in you. This cache is NOT CHILD FRIENDLY!!! DO NOT TAKE ANY CHILD UNDER 14 OR 5 FEET TALL WITH YOU!!! You as well must decide if you want to risk it all for a cache. One slip and it is 200 or more feet to the crashing surf below, and people HAVE died here, but don't let this scare you away from an unbelievable view of the cliffs you stand upon and the true darkness of the cache placement.” Since we didn’t have a flashlight and had already proven that we were not interested in risking a fall to the crashing surf below, it was a no-brainer to take this one off our to-do list. Fortunately the other three were all child-friendly. The first was the most frustrating, as both the GPS and Dave’s phone did not want it to be where it was. We looked at the hint, and spent quite some time trying to look nonchalant as we scrutinized a stone wall. Eventually I found the cache which was so small we couldn’t even get the log out of it. Not very satisfying. The second cache was at the Neahkanie West Trailhead, and was one of my favorite kinds – the big ammo box hidden under a large piece of bark. The large pieces of bark never look natural, so they always make me laugh. There was some bridge construction between the first cache we found and the trailhead, and we kept getting stuck in the traffic from it, which was mostly just funny, since we were not in a hurry.
The third cache we found was one of the reasons we love geocaching. The cache itself was a tiny one hidden in a wall by a viewpoint. We’ve driven past the viewpoint many many many times, but we are not the type to stop at viewpoints, so we’d never stopped. Now we have, and it was another spectacular view – it overlooks all of Nehalem and Nehalem Bay, and although it was chilly and windy it’s a beautiful clear day and the view was fantastic. Dave was especially fond of this one, also, because I’ve had a run of finding all the caches, and he found this one. We try to be joyful when either of us finds the cache, but it’s easier when you’re the one who found it.
By now we were most of the way to Manzanita, which is good because Dave needed to stop for gas and we knew there’s a gas station by the entrance to Nehalem Bay State Park. So we got gas, not without a little backing and filling since Dave’s car has the gas tank on the wrong side. With that taken care of, we went back to the house to pick up Tim and then it was off to the Pig’n, home of PigAtCannon free wifi and also good breakfasts. We were a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to find parking and that there would be a long line, but neither turned out to be a problem. We parked in the back lot and walked up to Pig’n and they had a table for us right away. Tim and I had pigs in blankets (2.5 for me, 3.5 for Tim). Dave had eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, and a side order of 1 pancake, which he also finished with Tim’s assistance. I do love Pig’n, even though they’ve stopped carrying the chai.
After Pig’n we headed to the chocolate café, which made me wish I had only eaten 2 pigs in blankets, or maybe even just 1. Tim got a milkshake and I got the hot chocolate. Two things about that: first, it is a family joke that whenever I try a milkshake, I always say that it is too sweet. Not so about Tim’s milkshake. Second, one of the things we miss about Heather’s restauarant (which has been gone from Cannon Beach for lo these many years) aside from the correctly named Fantastic Grilled Cheese Sandwich (oh, it was, it was) is the dark, rich hot chocolate. We’ve learned to make the grilled cheese at home, and we’ve now found a replacement for the hot chocolate. It was so rich and so dark and so good, but on top of pig’n I couldn’t even get halfway through it. We took it home and put it in the fridge – if it makes it that long, I’ll have it with breakfast tomorrow.
Now, a little history. Last year Dave and I went to look for the two bridges cache, which is a very pretty hike over two bridges (aha!) that leaves from very close to where we pick up the keys for the little house. We found the place where we thought the cache should be, but couldn’t find it, and when we looked at the logs for the cache no-one else had been able to find it for some time either. But when we looked this year, several people had found it and there were better descriptions of how to get there. Plus, we had the Garmin GPSmap 60CSx, which we bought pretty much specifically to find this cache. We convinced Tim to come along since he needed to get out and move around a little. We easily found the trailhead and a better parking place than last time, just around the corner by the sign for 3rd St. The cache isn’t far from the road – about .15 miles as the crow flies- and we set off with high hopes.
The first of the two bridges is a suspension bridge, which makes Dave very nervous. It made him especially nervous this time because Tim found the bounciness of the bridge irresistible. We probably could have left Tim there and come back a couple hours later to find him still happily making monkey noises and bouncing up and down. The second bridge is just a standard wooden bridge, so unremarkable that I didn’t even notice it on the way out. We hiked up the path (and it is up – you gain quite a bit of elevation in not very much time) and got to the fallen tree which is in the cache description. We even found a big old growth tree on the east side of the path. We spent quite a lot of time there. Dave found a stick and poked it into all the spaces around the roots, of which there were many. Tim had gone on up the path for quite a way, then headed back and crept up on us. He thought it was very funny to sneak up behind me and then make a noise just as I’d stuck my hand in under the tree where I couldn’t see. I did not think it was funny at all.
After we had gotten very frustrated at not finding the cache AGAIN, Dave looked more closely at the description and discovered that we had gone too far. Here I will point out that the Garmin GPSmap 60CSx, bought specifically to find this cache, was no help at all once we got within about 50 feet of the cache. It couldn’t decide whether we were 7 feet from the cache or 100, and would change its mind every 30 seconds or so about which direction we should go in. Arg! Very disappointing. Anyway, we went back down the path a bit (if you’ve gone around a switchback, you’ve gone too far, which we had) and found the right big old growth tree on the east side of the path – significantly smaller than the tree we’d been looking at. Dave started poking around the front, and I went around to the back and there, not really hidden under the piece of bark, was the nalgene bottle we were looking for. YAY!!! We documented the find with a photo, and then much to Tim’s sorrow we decided to continue along the trail. The trail is very cool; it goes over the tunnel. Where the cache is you can hear the ocean, but while you’re going over the tunnel you’re behind the hill, so you can’t hear the ocean, and then you can hear it again. We weren’t sure how long the trail was or where it came out, so once we got to where you could hear the ocean and see cars along 101 we turned around. (Further research when we got home showed that the trail comes out on 101 between Cove Beach Rd and Falcon Cove Rd; we plan to look for the trailhead at a future time). Tim was pleased to be headed back – it was past his nap time.
On the trail are many trees which have fallen across the trail, which someone has come through and cut with a chainsaw. Most of the cut ends are covered with moss and tree ears, but one of them had 3 slugs on it. I took a picture of it when Dave suggested the title of “slugfest”. Going back Tim was in the lead, and it was a little like hiking with an eager Labrador – he’d run on ahead, then wait for us to catch up, then run on ahead again. I suggested that instead of waiting for us to catch up he should run back to us and then greet us with a goofy grin and pant loudly. He was not amused. The walk back was pretty uneventful until we got to the suspension bridge. Tim got there first and was having a great time bouncing it. I don’t mind the bouncing, but it was unclear if we’d be able to get Dave across. I did get a wonderful picture of Dave’s face as Tim threatened to bounce while Dave was on the bridge.
Speaking of pictures, Dave commented while we were walking back that I don’t put any pictures in the blog. I don’t because I spend quite some time just writing, and it seems like adding pictures would add even more time. Also it would make the blog take longer to download. But I am curious if faithful readers would enjoy having pictures (for example, I do have a picture of slugfest) along with the words.
Once we got back it was relaxing time. Although it’s sunny it really is quite chilly, so it was a perfect day to sit in the sun indoors with a breeze blowing through the screen door to the deck. The cherry I put out for the seagull (he’s been here two mornings in a row) before we left for the hike had not been eaten when we got back. Maybe the seagull only eats in the morning. After some relaxing and reading time the gull did show up, and Dave had fun tossing it cherries and peanuts. It is fun to watch it catch them in mid-air. It’s kind of funny when the gull misses – it gives Dave a slightly irritated look, as if to say “hey, let’s throw them over the plate, yes?” Another thing that’s fun is to balance treats on the backs of the chairs – the gull can’t quite figure out how to get up there and keeps sliding down the arms. They’re not the most coordinated or graceful birds out there.
After relaxing time we all went to Newman’s at 988 for dinner. Many, many years ago this was called Puliccci’s, and we never went there. More recently, but still long ago, we took the boys there and did not enjoy it. Since then Dave and I have gone several times and liked it very much, but this was Tim’s first time back. It won’t be his last. The guys started with a 3 cheese ravioli appetizer, which was perfectly fine, but my polenta with wild mushrooms, garlic, eggplant, goat cheese and a balsamic reduction was the single best food I have had all week. The layers of flavor, especially combined with our 2008 Chateau de St Cosme Gigondas, was of sock-removing quality. Oh yeah. Next course, a crab salad for me, was a little weak – Tim’s grilled romaine salad and Dave’s wild mushroom soup were better. Entrees – duck breast and foie gras for me, medallions of beef for Tim, rack of lamb for Dave – all super yummy. Tim even enjoyed the foie gras, although we didn’t tell him what it was until after he really liked it (we used the same technique with smoked tongue several years ago at a Tapas place in Boston, with similar results). Desserts rounded out the meal, with Tim proclaiming his chocolate pot de crème even better than Irish Table’s. Did I mention the Gigondas? Dave had a vintage port with his cheese plate for dessert that did not remind me too much of Nyquil. Tim drove home with the beautiful crescent moon shining in the window. This is a good time indeed.
After dinner we were all pretty tired, so we didn’t play any of our usual games. Dave and Tim made a nice fire (as they have every night) and we turned off all the lights to watch the moon set. Once again it turned very orange and went down as a flame. Tonight the folks on the other side of the point to the south have their floodlights shining on the ocean, which is a waste of electricity and also contributes to light pollution, but is kind of cool anyway. It lights up the whitecaps of the waves, so they seem to sort of appear out of nowhere.
While we were watching the moonset, Tim was finding that you could download the bro-stache from the geico commercial (is the man with the bro-stache invited to the party? Only if he’s ready to rock) and then had to go check his look in the mirror. There will be a little helicopter flying, but it’s going to be an early bedtime for this blogger.
This morning started with a bout of frustration when my laptop wouldn’t connect with the internet. In addition to checking for comments on my blog posts I had also planned to look up some geocaches, but even though my phone and Dave’s iPad were connecting without any problems, the laptop would not. I rebooted it several times and turned its wireless on and off to no avail. Finally Dave reset the access point, which solved the problem. Unfortunately as part of my pointless troubleshooting I had told the computer to forget the network, so I had to re-enter the 20 digit network key. Oddly, it’s harder on the computer than on the phone, because the computer doesn’t tell you what you’ve typed.
Once I was reconnected I was able to look for some caches, and after a yummy breakfast of leftover fruit salad we headed out. There are quite a few caches along 101 through Oswald West State Park, so we thought we’d head down there. But first I wanted to try a cache called Zig Zag, which is off of Falcon Cove Rd. We drove to Falcon Cove road and took the leftt onto Elk Flat road, going past a school and through a gate with a wonderful “please scoop” sign on it. The road seemed very long and Dave got a little crabby about the branches scraping his car, but we made it safely to the turn around/parking area . The description of the cache says, “Find a trail through the forest until reaching a lookout point. From there a source to descend should reveal itself.” Dave found the trail, and we hiked along it – it’s very pretty – and sure enough, the source to descend revealed itself – a series of ropes tied to trees leading down a steep path a hundred feet or so straight down to where the ocean boiled itself around some big rocks in a beautiful, secluded cove. I couldn’t even bring myself to walk over to where the first rope was, but Dave did and decided it was not a good idea – we could go down, he thought, but he wasn’t sure we could go back up. We had plenty of cell phone signal (Dave was getting texts from Josh about cool things he’d found in the college library while we were there), but we didn’t want to end up as a rescue statistic on the pages of the Cannon Beach Gazette. But the trip was definitely worth it, and when we got back to the parking area the view up the coastline to the north was spectacular. A side note is that I was looking at the cache description while I was writing this, and it’s possible that the cache is actually accessible without going down the cliff face. We may take Tim and go back there. A further side note after more research – you do have to go down the ropes. Never mind.
We had three more caches to find – well, 4, but when we looked at the description for the 4th it said “The reasoning for the 5 star difficulty is you will have to have a flashlight to find this cache. The 4.5 on terrain is due to the actual terrain, as well as the extreme fear factor. Here is a cache for the explorer in you. This cache is NOT CHILD FRIENDLY!!! DO NOT TAKE ANY CHILD UNDER 14 OR 5 FEET TALL WITH YOU!!! You as well must decide if you want to risk it all for a cache. One slip and it is 200 or more feet to the crashing surf below, and people HAVE died here, but don't let this scare you away from an unbelievable view of the cliffs you stand upon and the true darkness of the cache placement.” Since we didn’t have a flashlight and had already proven that we were not interested in risking a fall to the crashing surf below, it was a no-brainer to take this one off our to-do list. Fortunately the other three were all child-friendly. The first was the most frustrating, as both the GPS and Dave’s phone did not want it to be where it was. We looked at the hint, and spent quite some time trying to look nonchalant as we scrutinized a stone wall. Eventually I found the cache which was so small we couldn’t even get the log out of it. Not very satisfying. The second cache was at the Neahkanie West Trailhead, and was one of my favorite kinds – the big ammo box hidden under a large piece of bark. The large pieces of bark never look natural, so they always make me laugh. There was some bridge construction between the first cache we found and the trailhead, and we kept getting stuck in the traffic from it, which was mostly just funny, since we were not in a hurry.
The third cache we found was one of the reasons we love geocaching. The cache itself was a tiny one hidden in a wall by a viewpoint. We’ve driven past the viewpoint many many many times, but we are not the type to stop at viewpoints, so we’d never stopped. Now we have, and it was another spectacular view – it overlooks all of Nehalem and Nehalem Bay, and although it was chilly and windy it’s a beautiful clear day and the view was fantastic. Dave was especially fond of this one, also, because I’ve had a run of finding all the caches, and he found this one. We try to be joyful when either of us finds the cache, but it’s easier when you’re the one who found it.
By now we were most of the way to Manzanita, which is good because Dave needed to stop for gas and we knew there’s a gas station by the entrance to Nehalem Bay State Park. So we got gas, not without a little backing and filling since Dave’s car has the gas tank on the wrong side. With that taken care of, we went back to the house to pick up Tim and then it was off to the Pig’n, home of PigAtCannon free wifi and also good breakfasts. We were a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to find parking and that there would be a long line, but neither turned out to be a problem. We parked in the back lot and walked up to Pig’n and they had a table for us right away. Tim and I had pigs in blankets (2.5 for me, 3.5 for Tim). Dave had eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, and a side order of 1 pancake, which he also finished with Tim’s assistance. I do love Pig’n, even though they’ve stopped carrying the chai.
After Pig’n we headed to the chocolate café, which made me wish I had only eaten 2 pigs in blankets, or maybe even just 1. Tim got a milkshake and I got the hot chocolate. Two things about that: first, it is a family joke that whenever I try a milkshake, I always say that it is too sweet. Not so about Tim’s milkshake. Second, one of the things we miss about Heather’s restauarant (which has been gone from Cannon Beach for lo these many years) aside from the correctly named Fantastic Grilled Cheese Sandwich (oh, it was, it was) is the dark, rich hot chocolate. We’ve learned to make the grilled cheese at home, and we’ve now found a replacement for the hot chocolate. It was so rich and so dark and so good, but on top of pig’n I couldn’t even get halfway through it. We took it home and put it in the fridge – if it makes it that long, I’ll have it with breakfast tomorrow.
Now, a little history. Last year Dave and I went to look for the two bridges cache, which is a very pretty hike over two bridges (aha!) that leaves from very close to where we pick up the keys for the little house. We found the place where we thought the cache should be, but couldn’t find it, and when we looked at the logs for the cache no-one else had been able to find it for some time either. But when we looked this year, several people had found it and there were better descriptions of how to get there. Plus, we had the Garmin GPSmap 60CSx, which we bought pretty much specifically to find this cache. We convinced Tim to come along since he needed to get out and move around a little. We easily found the trailhead and a better parking place than last time, just around the corner by the sign for 3rd St. The cache isn’t far from the road – about .15 miles as the crow flies- and we set off with high hopes.
The first of the two bridges is a suspension bridge, which makes Dave very nervous. It made him especially nervous this time because Tim found the bounciness of the bridge irresistible. We probably could have left Tim there and come back a couple hours later to find him still happily making monkey noises and bouncing up and down. The second bridge is just a standard wooden bridge, so unremarkable that I didn’t even notice it on the way out. We hiked up the path (and it is up – you gain quite a bit of elevation in not very much time) and got to the fallen tree which is in the cache description. We even found a big old growth tree on the east side of the path. We spent quite a lot of time there. Dave found a stick and poked it into all the spaces around the roots, of which there were many. Tim had gone on up the path for quite a way, then headed back and crept up on us. He thought it was very funny to sneak up behind me and then make a noise just as I’d stuck my hand in under the tree where I couldn’t see. I did not think it was funny at all.
After we had gotten very frustrated at not finding the cache AGAIN, Dave looked more closely at the description and discovered that we had gone too far. Here I will point out that the Garmin GPSmap 60CSx, bought specifically to find this cache, was no help at all once we got within about 50 feet of the cache. It couldn’t decide whether we were 7 feet from the cache or 100, and would change its mind every 30 seconds or so about which direction we should go in. Arg! Very disappointing. Anyway, we went back down the path a bit (if you’ve gone around a switchback, you’ve gone too far, which we had) and found the right big old growth tree on the east side of the path – significantly smaller than the tree we’d been looking at. Dave started poking around the front, and I went around to the back and there, not really hidden under the piece of bark, was the nalgene bottle we were looking for. YAY!!! We documented the find with a photo, and then much to Tim’s sorrow we decided to continue along the trail. The trail is very cool; it goes over the tunnel. Where the cache is you can hear the ocean, but while you’re going over the tunnel you’re behind the hill, so you can’t hear the ocean, and then you can hear it again. We weren’t sure how long the trail was or where it came out, so once we got to where you could hear the ocean and see cars along 101 we turned around. (Further research when we got home showed that the trail comes out on 101 between Cove Beach Rd and Falcon Cove Rd; we plan to look for the trailhead at a future time). Tim was pleased to be headed back – it was past his nap time.
On the trail are many trees which have fallen across the trail, which someone has come through and cut with a chainsaw. Most of the cut ends are covered with moss and tree ears, but one of them had 3 slugs on it. I took a picture of it when Dave suggested the title of “slugfest”. Going back Tim was in the lead, and it was a little like hiking with an eager Labrador – he’d run on ahead, then wait for us to catch up, then run on ahead again. I suggested that instead of waiting for us to catch up he should run back to us and then greet us with a goofy grin and pant loudly. He was not amused. The walk back was pretty uneventful until we got to the suspension bridge. Tim got there first and was having a great time bouncing it. I don’t mind the bouncing, but it was unclear if we’d be able to get Dave across. I did get a wonderful picture of Dave’s face as Tim threatened to bounce while Dave was on the bridge.
Speaking of pictures, Dave commented while we were walking back that I don’t put any pictures in the blog. I don’t because I spend quite some time just writing, and it seems like adding pictures would add even more time. Also it would make the blog take longer to download. But I am curious if faithful readers would enjoy having pictures (for example, I do have a picture of slugfest) along with the words.
Once we got back it was relaxing time. Although it’s sunny it really is quite chilly, so it was a perfect day to sit in the sun indoors with a breeze blowing through the screen door to the deck. The cherry I put out for the seagull (he’s been here two mornings in a row) before we left for the hike had not been eaten when we got back. Maybe the seagull only eats in the morning. After some relaxing and reading time the gull did show up, and Dave had fun tossing it cherries and peanuts. It is fun to watch it catch them in mid-air. It’s kind of funny when the gull misses – it gives Dave a slightly irritated look, as if to say “hey, let’s throw them over the plate, yes?” Another thing that’s fun is to balance treats on the backs of the chairs – the gull can’t quite figure out how to get up there and keeps sliding down the arms. They’re not the most coordinated or graceful birds out there.
After relaxing time we all went to Newman’s at 988 for dinner. Many, many years ago this was called Puliccci’s, and we never went there. More recently, but still long ago, we took the boys there and did not enjoy it. Since then Dave and I have gone several times and liked it very much, but this was Tim’s first time back. It won’t be his last. The guys started with a 3 cheese ravioli appetizer, which was perfectly fine, but my polenta with wild mushrooms, garlic, eggplant, goat cheese and a balsamic reduction was the single best food I have had all week. The layers of flavor, especially combined with our 2008 Chateau de St Cosme Gigondas, was of sock-removing quality. Oh yeah. Next course, a crab salad for me, was a little weak – Tim’s grilled romaine salad and Dave’s wild mushroom soup were better. Entrees – duck breast and foie gras for me, medallions of beef for Tim, rack of lamb for Dave – all super yummy. Tim even enjoyed the foie gras, although we didn’t tell him what it was until after he really liked it (we used the same technique with smoked tongue several years ago at a Tapas place in Boston, with similar results). Desserts rounded out the meal, with Tim proclaiming his chocolate pot de crème even better than Irish Table’s. Did I mention the Gigondas? Dave had a vintage port with his cheese plate for dessert that did not remind me too much of Nyquil. Tim drove home with the beautiful crescent moon shining in the window. This is a good time indeed.
After dinner we were all pretty tired, so we didn’t play any of our usual games. Dave and Tim made a nice fire (as they have every night) and we turned off all the lights to watch the moon set. Once again it turned very orange and went down as a flame. Tonight the folks on the other side of the point to the south have their floodlights shining on the ocean, which is a waste of electricity and also contributes to light pollution, but is kind of cool anyway. It lights up the whitecaps of the waves, so they seem to sort of appear out of nowhere.
While we were watching the moonset, Tim was finding that you could download the bro-stache from the geico commercial (is the man with the bro-stache invited to the party? Only if he’s ready to rock) and then had to go check his look in the mirror. There will be a little helicopter flying, but it’s going to be an early bedtime for this blogger.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Hutchsons & Associate
Today started out slowly and stayed that way, to a large degree. Then again pretty much the whole goal here on the coast is to not hurry. Once again by 7:30 the sun was shining in the skylights, so it was time to get up, eat breakfast, shower, and start a load of laundry. It’s a measure of how slowly things go that I started the laundry about 9:30 and didn’t finish it until after dinner tonight. Then it was time to putz around the house doing some minor straightening up and even playing a few rounds of kenken – my first this week.
At about 10 Hutchisons & Associate arrived – Liz, Vera, Vida, and Paul O’Day (Paul is the associate). They had to be imported for beach biking, since Tim is now too strong and fast to be held back to the slow pace of the mother, and Dave would prefer not to do it at all. We headed out to the beach bike rental place and got there and out on the beach around 10:30, which was perfect timing. It was our first beautiful day today – chilly, but sunny and not too windy. The kids headed off down the beach at quite a clip, while Liz and I peddled sedately and yacked up a storm. Liz is still recovering from chemo and radiation, so we had to go slowly and take a many breaks – absolutely perfect. It has been years since beach biking has not been an endurance race, and I must say I vastly prefer the chat-and-pause version. We got back to the bike place around 11:30 and went to Icefire, the glass blowing place, but they weren’t on fire. It seems that they have a seconds sale every labor day weekend, and shut down a few days in advance to prepare. So we went to the Bald Eagle coffee shop instead (tea for me, Italian cream soda for Liz) while we waited for the young people. They showed up about 12:10, looking quite pleased with themselves. Tim managed to flip his bike twice, Paul once – and Tim made it all the way to the carriage road at Hug Point.
Once we were all together we took off for Warren House pub, one of my favorite places. They open at noon and we got there around noon-twenty and were able to get two tables next to each other on the deck. They have a sunny beer garden, as I’ve mentioned before, but we had minors with us. Unlike last time we took a large group there, this waitress wrote down all the orders and there was no confusion about who had pea salad and who had chips. I had half a bbq pork sandwich and a cup of the very interesting spicy peanut chicken soup (which had no peanuts), and could have easily eaten a whole sandwich. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food and conversation, and it was nice to be out in the sun – even if it was a little too warm when there was no breeze.
On the way home I completely miscalculated the tides, and dropped the young people off at Hug Point, thinking they could walk home on the beach. Although it was almost 2 hours until high tide, we were already cut off. So after a while I went to get them, and met them on the road. So they all went down to the beach at our house. They threw a lot of rocks into the water and seemed to have a good time. The adults stayed up and chatted. We tried to be on the deck but it was too cold, so we came inside and taught Liz how to play pepper. While she was learning I won a couple games, but once she figured it out that was the end of my winning. We played a few hands and then Vida came up, so we taught her to play too. (Vida is Josh’s age) . After a few more games we were ready to move on, and it was time for bananagrams. We played four or five rounds – Liz and I traded off winning. She and I could have kept playing forever but it was clear that Dave and Vida were flagging. Vida was very creative – one time she made almost all animal words – and both Liz and Dave habitually make longer words than I do. But in banangrams it’s not the size or complexity of the words, it’s how fast you can make them.
The visitors headed out around 4, and I had a short relaxing period and then headed to the kitchen to make dinner. Yes, tonight was our only non-breakfast meal at the house – fruit salad, cheese, salami, and a loaf of marsee baking take-and-bake bread that I picked up at Zupan’s last Wednesday. The real challenge to cooking in this house is that there is only a tiny patch of free counter space – maybe 12” wide by 15” deep, maybe smaller than that. The kitchen table is really too low to stand and cut up fruit at, and also this year it has a real cloth tablecloth on it, rather than the plastic ones of past years (We prefer the plastic ones – we like being able to just wipe up crumbs, spills, and other general messes). So the first 15 minutes or so of the cooking time was actually setup time – finding the cutting board and the bowl, figuring out where to put them, getting the trash can positioned, setting up the jambox to play the cooking music I wanted.
One thing we did this year was bring knives for cutting the fruit up as well as a bread knife, and it made a huge difference to be able to cut the fruit instead of bludgeoning it to death. Here’s what was in the fruit salad: peaches (yellow and white), dark cherries (lapins and sweethearts), and yellow watermelon from the Portland Farmer’s market, mangoes, blueberries from our bushes at home, pluots, bananas, apricots, the juice from an orange, and some brown sugar. With it we had two kinds of English cheddar, brie made from goat cheese and Columbus dry salami. The only thing that was not completely successful was the bread, which had been in the fridge and should have been brought to room temperature before baking, so it was a little underdone in the center. If it had been cooked correctly it would have been very good – certainly better than anything we could have gotten locally. Our wine match was not perfect – we remembered it as being sweeter than it was – but very tasty nonetheless, a rose from Gaga Winery in California. We don’t remember much about the wine, but we do remember that there was baseball on a large screen TV in the tasting room while we were tasting it.
It ended up that tonight was a perfect night to have stayed home from a sun-and-moonset perspective. We bought the fruit for the fruit salad on Saturday, and on Monday I needed to make a best-guess estimate of when it would be ripe so we could make reservations for the non-home nights. The bananas would have preferred last night, the mangoes could have waited another day, but we needed to go to the Stephanie Inn last night to make sure we got the Chief Chef, so tonight was the night. And we were amply rewarded with the best sunset we have seen in years. There seemed to be a thin band of clouds on the horizon, but it turned out to actually be about a half-sun above the horizon, so it just made a dark band across the setting sun. We watched it all the way down to the horizon, but oddly there was no green flash. Dave got the dishes done around the sunset, and then we had a brief game interlude (farkle) before Tim wanted to go watch a TV show. Tim hasn’t watched any TV while we’ve been home, so we took a break. Also it was time for the moonset – a thin crescent, only a few days old, setting so far to the south that it went down vertically. The clouds had come up on the horizon by then, so it sank into them and ended up looking like a very strange bright orange tongue of fire in the distance – if we’d come out and not seen it setting, we would have been hard pressed to know what it was.
After Tim finished his TV show it was time to finish our farkle. When we paused, Tim and I were tied at 7,050 and Dave had 7,900. Given quite a bit of bad luck, when th e game ended some 3,000 points later (for them) I still had 7,050. See why farkle is not my game? It apparently wasn’t Tim’s game either tonight, because even though he was first to 10,000, Dave got 3,000 points in two rolls to win the game – we think he was using virtual cowhorns and intentionality. Tim immediately requested pepper – remember, last night he won 3 games in a row – to salve his wounded ego. Alas, it was not to be. He tried out a new strategy that involved picking up pretty much every card someone threw down in front of him, and it was not a success. Dave won twice in a row. Then Tim won. Then Dave won two more times. Do you notice a name missing from the list of winners? Yes, indeed. I did have one very good moment when I thwarted Dave’s going out on the red 6 with my piddly red 1, and I’m hanging on to that as my shining pepper moment. Then I made them play bananagrams, which Dave would have won if he hadn’t picked up a Q as his last tile. Victory, as Tim would say. At last.
That’s the end of the day, time to read by the fire and listen to the waves. Dave is also glowing with his success at the game table.
At about 10 Hutchisons & Associate arrived – Liz, Vera, Vida, and Paul O’Day (Paul is the associate). They had to be imported for beach biking, since Tim is now too strong and fast to be held back to the slow pace of the mother, and Dave would prefer not to do it at all. We headed out to the beach bike rental place and got there and out on the beach around 10:30, which was perfect timing. It was our first beautiful day today – chilly, but sunny and not too windy. The kids headed off down the beach at quite a clip, while Liz and I peddled sedately and yacked up a storm. Liz is still recovering from chemo and radiation, so we had to go slowly and take a many breaks – absolutely perfect. It has been years since beach biking has not been an endurance race, and I must say I vastly prefer the chat-and-pause version. We got back to the bike place around 11:30 and went to Icefire, the glass blowing place, but they weren’t on fire. It seems that they have a seconds sale every labor day weekend, and shut down a few days in advance to prepare. So we went to the Bald Eagle coffee shop instead (tea for me, Italian cream soda for Liz) while we waited for the young people. They showed up about 12:10, looking quite pleased with themselves. Tim managed to flip his bike twice, Paul once – and Tim made it all the way to the carriage road at Hug Point.
Once we were all together we took off for Warren House pub, one of my favorite places. They open at noon and we got there around noon-twenty and were able to get two tables next to each other on the deck. They have a sunny beer garden, as I’ve mentioned before, but we had minors with us. Unlike last time we took a large group there, this waitress wrote down all the orders and there was no confusion about who had pea salad and who had chips. I had half a bbq pork sandwich and a cup of the very interesting spicy peanut chicken soup (which had no peanuts), and could have easily eaten a whole sandwich. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food and conversation, and it was nice to be out in the sun – even if it was a little too warm when there was no breeze.
On the way home I completely miscalculated the tides, and dropped the young people off at Hug Point, thinking they could walk home on the beach. Although it was almost 2 hours until high tide, we were already cut off. So after a while I went to get them, and met them on the road. So they all went down to the beach at our house. They threw a lot of rocks into the water and seemed to have a good time. The adults stayed up and chatted. We tried to be on the deck but it was too cold, so we came inside and taught Liz how to play pepper. While she was learning I won a couple games, but once she figured it out that was the end of my winning. We played a few hands and then Vida came up, so we taught her to play too. (Vida is Josh’s age) . After a few more games we were ready to move on, and it was time for bananagrams. We played four or five rounds – Liz and I traded off winning. She and I could have kept playing forever but it was clear that Dave and Vida were flagging. Vida was very creative – one time she made almost all animal words – and both Liz and Dave habitually make longer words than I do. But in banangrams it’s not the size or complexity of the words, it’s how fast you can make them.
The visitors headed out around 4, and I had a short relaxing period and then headed to the kitchen to make dinner. Yes, tonight was our only non-breakfast meal at the house – fruit salad, cheese, salami, and a loaf of marsee baking take-and-bake bread that I picked up at Zupan’s last Wednesday. The real challenge to cooking in this house is that there is only a tiny patch of free counter space – maybe 12” wide by 15” deep, maybe smaller than that. The kitchen table is really too low to stand and cut up fruit at, and also this year it has a real cloth tablecloth on it, rather than the plastic ones of past years (We prefer the plastic ones – we like being able to just wipe up crumbs, spills, and other general messes). So the first 15 minutes or so of the cooking time was actually setup time – finding the cutting board and the bowl, figuring out where to put them, getting the trash can positioned, setting up the jambox to play the cooking music I wanted.
One thing we did this year was bring knives for cutting the fruit up as well as a bread knife, and it made a huge difference to be able to cut the fruit instead of bludgeoning it to death. Here’s what was in the fruit salad: peaches (yellow and white), dark cherries (lapins and sweethearts), and yellow watermelon from the Portland Farmer’s market, mangoes, blueberries from our bushes at home, pluots, bananas, apricots, the juice from an orange, and some brown sugar. With it we had two kinds of English cheddar, brie made from goat cheese and Columbus dry salami. The only thing that was not completely successful was the bread, which had been in the fridge and should have been brought to room temperature before baking, so it was a little underdone in the center. If it had been cooked correctly it would have been very good – certainly better than anything we could have gotten locally. Our wine match was not perfect – we remembered it as being sweeter than it was – but very tasty nonetheless, a rose from Gaga Winery in California. We don’t remember much about the wine, but we do remember that there was baseball on a large screen TV in the tasting room while we were tasting it.
It ended up that tonight was a perfect night to have stayed home from a sun-and-moonset perspective. We bought the fruit for the fruit salad on Saturday, and on Monday I needed to make a best-guess estimate of when it would be ripe so we could make reservations for the non-home nights. The bananas would have preferred last night, the mangoes could have waited another day, but we needed to go to the Stephanie Inn last night to make sure we got the Chief Chef, so tonight was the night. And we were amply rewarded with the best sunset we have seen in years. There seemed to be a thin band of clouds on the horizon, but it turned out to actually be about a half-sun above the horizon, so it just made a dark band across the setting sun. We watched it all the way down to the horizon, but oddly there was no green flash. Dave got the dishes done around the sunset, and then we had a brief game interlude (farkle) before Tim wanted to go watch a TV show. Tim hasn’t watched any TV while we’ve been home, so we took a break. Also it was time for the moonset – a thin crescent, only a few days old, setting so far to the south that it went down vertically. The clouds had come up on the horizon by then, so it sank into them and ended up looking like a very strange bright orange tongue of fire in the distance – if we’d come out and not seen it setting, we would have been hard pressed to know what it was.
After Tim finished his TV show it was time to finish our farkle. When we paused, Tim and I were tied at 7,050 and Dave had 7,900. Given quite a bit of bad luck, when th e game ended some 3,000 points later (for them) I still had 7,050. See why farkle is not my game? It apparently wasn’t Tim’s game either tonight, because even though he was first to 10,000, Dave got 3,000 points in two rolls to win the game – we think he was using virtual cowhorns and intentionality. Tim immediately requested pepper – remember, last night he won 3 games in a row – to salve his wounded ego. Alas, it was not to be. He tried out a new strategy that involved picking up pretty much every card someone threw down in front of him, and it was not a success. Dave won twice in a row. Then Tim won. Then Dave won two more times. Do you notice a name missing from the list of winners? Yes, indeed. I did have one very good moment when I thwarted Dave’s going out on the red 6 with my piddly red 1, and I’m hanging on to that as my shining pepper moment. Then I made them play bananagrams, which Dave would have won if he hadn’t picked up a Q as his last tile. Victory, as Tim would say. At last.
That’s the end of the day, time to read by the fire and listen to the waves. Dave is also glowing with his success at the game table.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)