Thanksgiving 2011

So today is our first day, and we had a pretty easy time getting ready. Dave put out the folding table on Tuesday so we could be putting things we wanted to take on it – we did that for the cruise and it seemed to make the packing go more easily. I woke up early, since I went to bed early, and had a leisurely morning since everybody else slept in. This worked out well because Diane from the rental agency called shortly afterwards to tell me that 101 was closed north of the intersection with 26 because of flooding. This was interesting but useless, since we go south on 101, but it was nice of her to call. Then she called again, but she was just confused about who she’d called & who she hadn’t. Dave got up about 8:30 and we started our day (ok, I had one more game of kenken and then I started my day). I started out by doing most of my packing, then I headed over to Forest Grove Health & Fitness for a Nia class. Nia is this strange kind of dance exercise, and I enjoyed it very much, except for the parts about thanking the universe and embracing the world, which I just can’t quite get my head around. What was particularly weird about it was that although I never felt like I was working very hard, I was completely drenched with sweat at the half hour mark (it’s an hour class). Also fortuitously most of the dance moves were based off the cha-cha, the only dance class Dave and I went to on the ship. So I did not look like a total spaz. Also today’s theme was “there is no wrong way”, so that made me feel pretty good.

After Nia I took my sweaty self to the Safeway to pick up the things we need for the coast – Cacklin’ (I got the last 3 boxes!), Oreos, dry roasted peanuts (Dave says the regular ones are too oily – mess up your iPad screen), V-8, that sort of thing. When I got home Dave already had the hotdogs ready for lunch. After lunch I threw all the stuff in suitcases (so far all I’ve forgotten is tea) and got the trash ready for Stephanie Friend to take out tomorrow. Tim and Dave loaded the car. We were planning on leaving at 2:45, since it takes about 1:15 to get here and check-in isn’t until 4, but at about 1:45 Diane called again wondering how close we were. “Uhhhh… we haven’t left yet,” I answered brilliantly. I still don’t entirely understand what was going on, but she seemed to want us to come as soon as possible, so since we were packed we headed out. She wanted me to call her when we were almost there, so I figured I’d call about 20 minutes out. No cell service. I ended up calling about 10 minutes out, and it turned out Debbie-the-owner-of-Arch-Cape-Property-Services was in the office and we could just go pick up the key. Like I said I’m not sure what all the fuss was about. Diane asked if we knew how to get to the office (“I think we can find it,” I said, “since we’ve been coming here for 20 years”) and warned us that the stairs to the beach were slippery, which I wasn’t sure we’d need to know since the forecast is for rain, rain, rain the whole time we’re here.

We got to the office about 3:15, and after chatting with Debbie about the storm and the power outages and her managing to scrape up two keys to the house we were off. There’s supposed to be a new front door and a dresser in our bedroom sometime, but apparently not until this summer. When we got to the house it was both sunny and low tide, so after we got the car unloaded I took off for the beach, mindful of the slippery stairs. Well, it was a very cool walk. The sand here seems to be extraordinarily low – the close in mushroom rock is completely exposed in its mushroomy-ness. The really amazing thing, though, is the waterfall, which is bigger and fuller than I think I’ve ever seen it. There’s a geocache up there that you get to by climbing up the rocks next to the waterfall, and those rocks are completely underwater now. Also the water, which usually comes off the waterfall and goes straight to the ocean, heads north towards the carriage road. I had headed down to the beach right away in my sneakers, not wanting to miss the chance, and I would have done well to change into my boots. The mesh on my sneakers is, not surprisingly, not waterproof. Since I had sneakers I couldn’t go up towards the carriage road, since that’s where the water from the waterfall was going, so I headed back towards the house. Just then a giant sneaker wave came! The tide was way out – like a -.7 – and the water came almost all the way up to the waterfall. When I saw it come in I headed up the beach in a leisurely fashion – but I ended up having to move quite alacritically to stay dry.

By the time I got back to our beach my feet were pretty wet – there are a lot of streams coming down across the beach, many more than in the summer. When I got up Dave and Tim had connected to the internet and were enjoying the view – which was pretty cloudy by the time I got back. By 5 the sun had set – very different from summer! We hung out reading and relaxing and watching the sky and the waves. Shortly after I got back it completely clouded over and poured down rain, then it partially cleared up again. The Oregon coast is an amazing place. Two exciting things happened while we were having our relaxing time. First, we figured out how to use the Jambox as a speakerphone and called Josh during his layover in Newark (He’s headed to Connecticut to spend Thanksgiving with my brother Ira and his family for Thanksgiving and I miss him so much it’s like a window in my heart.) That was really nice. Not so nice was when we kept hearing a beeping noise in the back of the house. We finally tracked it down and found it was the alarm system – every minute or two it would give 5 little beeps. I called ACPS and got Diane, who was very apologetic and completely unable to help. She called back a bit later and said it might be messed up because of all the power outages, and here’s how to reset it. We did, and it stopped beeping.

At 6 it was time to get ready to go to Newman’s for dinner. Newman’s is the best high end food in Cannon Beach, and possibly on the coast. It’s so good that Tim put on his dress up clothes without complaining. It did not disappoint. We had a bottle of the same 2008 gigondas that we had this summer, and the top dish was the butternut squash soup with pickled eggplant – yes, better than the butternut squash soup in the Pinnacle. It was nice to have Tim there – in addition to the pleasure of his company, he finished most of the things I was too full to finish. We were supposed to get milk after Newman’s, but we forgot. It would probably be easier just to bring milk with us.

After dinner Tim drove home – the gigondas is a 14.5, and we finished the bottle. I was feeling pretty happy (although missing Josh), and Dave was feeling invincible. At least I figure that’s why he called for Trouble. We played two games, and he dominated the first game – I think I had one man out, and Tim had two, when Dave won. This was clearly Not Acceptable, so we jumped right into the second game, which was a real cliffhanger with no clear leader and lots of honking. But I won, thanks to a very good series of pops on the pop-o-matic. Dave and Tim dueled it out for second, and despite Dave popping 4 sixes IN A ROW, Tim won by a short head. I don’t have the skill to describe the intensity, the suspense, the pressure, and the thrill of a game of trouble. All I can say is that three games would be too much to handle.

Then it was time for some blogging, and listening to Chris’s albums (yes, Chris from the crow’s nest). Dave said it was like being in the crow’s nest, because nobody was bringing us our club soda. I feel like I should end this with a note about tonight’s towel animal, but this isn’t a place where there are towel animals. It’s a very good place, though, and I am thankful to be here.