Day 3, Cache as cache can

 I stayed up late finishing a book that turned out to be not that good – we all like happy endings, but not when they come in that neat a package. So this morning I slept in until 8, and then had a slow morning surfing the internet while watching the waves. It was partly slow because that’s the kind of morning we like, and partly slow because both Dave and I were sore from our various exercises the day before. We left the house around 10 to go geocaching around Manzanita. We found 4 caches, although technically we only found three of them. For the second one we were looking around for it when a grandpa and two kids came up and said, “Are you geocaching?” They were trying to do it using an iPad without 3G or GPS – triangulating using wireless signal. That’s why when we first saw them they were far from the cache and heading in the completely wrong direction. We’d been looking for quite some time, but we were all thrilled when the granddaughter found the cache – it was actually up in a tree. The next one we found was on a beautiful pond that was mostly dried up and filled with wildflowers. Two things we love about geocaching are that it gets us out and moving – we ended up walking several miles – and it takes us places that we wouldn’t have found otherwise, the pond being one of them.

The other place it took us was Bread and Ocean in Manzanita – after we found the fourth geocache we were pretty hungry. We walked the mile back into town and as we walked I got on yelp and this place looked pretty good. It was good, too. It’s located in the former home of the Blue Sky Café, which probably only BOS will recall. Dave learned from the internet that it’s also owned by the same person. It’s a go to the counter and order then pick up your food when they yell your name kind of place. They have yummy sandwiches and salads. We each had a half sandwich (more than enough food), tuna salad with artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers for me, turkey with a pesto and chutney for Dave and a cup of red curry lentil soup for each of us. The meals came with cookies (ginger for me, chocolate chip for Dave) which were the weak points – they weren’t bad, but our standards for chocolate chip cookies are pretty high.  We’d called Tim and told him our plans and offered to meet him in Manzanita, but he decided he’d rather stay at the house and eat leftover spaghetti brought from home for occasions like this. He also rather piteously asked Dave if hi calves were sore too.

Last year we’d gone looking for a cache called Two Bridges that we’d looked for and hadn’t been able to find the year before that. We were able to find it, and then continued hiking along the trail for a while just for fun. We knew the trail was part of the Oregon Coast Trail, but we didn’t know where it led to, or at least where that segment led to, so we’d turned around and gone back. On our way home from Manzanita we thought we’d look for the other end of it, and we managed to find it – something of a miracle, given that it’s just a pullout with a very small sign on a post in the ground. We had to stop at ACPS to finish paying (which took about 20 minutes – Debbie’s assistant quit unexpectedly and it’s a little frazzled there right now) and the trailhead for the other end is near there so we walked over to make sure it really is part of the Oregon Coast Trail, and it really is. So we’re going to do it tomorrow or whenever it’s not raining.

  

Then we came home and it’s a beautiful sunny day. I wrote, Dave hung out on the deck, and I’m not sure what Tim did. Eventually I worked up the energy to do day 2 of bootcamp. I did it in the side yard which made it much nicer, and then stretched on the deck after with the sun shining on me, a nice breeze, and the ever present sound of the waves. It was almost worth working out just to do the stretching after. Those of you who are thinking that I could have skipped the workout and just enjoyed the stretching may have a point, although the endorphins from all that work are a nice thing too. Meanwhile Tim had gone down to the beach for a walk to get things stretched out, and Dave took a nice shower. All of that felt very good.

Usually I spend as much time on the beach as possible, but this year I am really, really enjoying taking the laptop or the kindle out to the deck and sitting in the sunshine listening to the waves. Right now I’m also listening to Dave not doing well in a game of canoe – sounds like Tim is killing him. Usually canoe is more sedate, but this sounds almost as loud as a game of trouble. In general the afternoon was pretty quiet – lots of reading. I also got out my helicopter and tried to fly it. I immediately broke it, but fortunately Dave had spare parts for it. It’s harder than it looks, but also fun.

Tonight was our night to go to the Irish Table, possibly the best restaurant in Cannon Beach. The only drawback to the Irish Table is that they don’t take reservations for parties of fewer than 6. Instead you call after 5:30 and they put your name on a list and tell you when to show up. In our case, they told us 7:30, which was a little later than we would have liked (ok, about an hour later) but for Irish Table even Tim will wait. He also fortified himself with peanuts. We got there a little early and were immediately brought back to our table. There’s always a nervous moment when you get the menu and order, because the thing I like to have (and everyone else likes me to have) is the curried mussels, and sometimes they run out. They did not run out tonight, but I’m ahead of myself. They make fantastic soups, so Tim and I started with the soups – tomato bisque for him, carrot-ginger for me. Tim said his tasted like liquid lasagna, and he was right – and it was so good. Mine was equally good, if not better, sweet and spicy and just right. Dave had the lox and green salad, which I ate about half of – I figured the soup could come home (which it did, in a to-go coffee cup. Irish Table is Sleepy Monk coffee during the day, and they were out of soup containers). The salmon was perfect, just salty enough and moist and silky smooth, and it came with a salad with pickled fennel and onions and hard-boiled egg and greens. Then it was the entrees, my curried mussels in a broth so fantastic that everybody has to dunk their whole wheat soda bread in it (or just use a spoon). Dave had the fish special, perfectly prepared salmon. The flavors were very good, but not as mind-blowing as last year’s fish special. Tim, as always, had the piemontese steak with the vertical carrots and mashed potatoes over cabbage. He devoured the steak, but as always found the cabbage offensive. He doesn’t eat the carrots either, claiming that they’re just decorative.

I feel like I need to start a new paragraph here because dessert was so good. Tim’s favorite dessert there has been the “chocolate pot”, basically a chocolate pot-de-crème served with pistachio shortbread cookies. This year it was replaced by a mocha pot – same thing, but with espresso. His eyes lit up after the first bite like fireworks, and he even compared it to the Wayfarer chocolate espresso ganache cake that has been his standard of excellence for years. I had blackberry sorbet which was pretty much just ok until Dave decided he didn’t like the lemon curd in his dessert. Once topped with the rest of the lemon curd, it was yummy. It also came with shortbread cookies – one plain, two chocolate – that were basically a lesson on what shortbread should be. Dave’s scones with clotted cream and strawberry preserves completely floated his boat, and mine too. Also Dave and I had hot biddys – hot irish whiskey with lemon and cinnamon. Irish table amazes us every time we go there – the menu doesn’t change, but it doesn’t need to. The flavors are all interesting and yummy, and the food is always perfectly cooked. Service is friendly and reasonably quick. As you might have guessed, I recommend a trip there.

When we got home Tim made us a fire and we played some farkle. I lost our original farkle set, and in general this replacement set is just sad – almost 3 pair, almost a straight, almost whatever. For Dave and Tim that was true tonight, but I sparkled at farkle. I won, I won! Did I mention I won? I was so excited by my decisive victory that I went suggested we play some trouble. Dave put on Pirate music, which set the atmosphere very well. But I should have rested on my laurels. Tim won the first game without anybody even close, but I was totally dominating the second game, until Tim came up at the end and won again. I think it isn’t right. Tim reminded me that in the first game he took pity on my and didn’t honk the man I’d finally gotten out, but I still think it is wrong that I didn’t win the second game.

More things we forgot: small backpack to take hiking, and my yoga mat would be nice to have.