A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

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!