Day 4, Hike & Tiki

Woke up this morning and after my cacklin’ saw three unusual things: first I saw flocks of pelicans flying in long lines just over the surface of the ocean. They are all flying from north to south. I got out the binoculars to see them better, and while I was looking at them I noticed something dark in the ocean just below them – a seal or sea lion (I couldn’t see if it had ears or not). Then I went to clean up my dishes, and also the teapot from last night. I’ve been making iced tea in the tea pot, and while I was cleaning it out I noticed it has burn marks on the inside – yes, someone was boiling water and they burnt it. Although I wasn’t counting that in my original count of three unusual things, I’d have to say it’s pretty unusual. The third unusual thing was a quarter rainbow out over the ocean. It was cloudy when I woke up, but it’s slowly clearing up and so we got a nice rainbow too.

It turned out it wasn’t slowly clearing up, it was getting cloudier, and about the time we’d planned on leaving for our hike it was raining. Not hard, but hard enough that you wouldn’t want to go hiking in it. So we decided to just hang out in the house instead, and go hiking after lunch. I connected my laptop to the jambox and put on some Nia music while I did some yoga, which was very nice. When you’re doing it on your own, you can spend more time on the poses you like, and less on the ones you don’t like. Or you can leave them out altogether. I’m still pretty sore from the two boot camp workouts, so the stretching felt good.

We read for a while, then Tim got up and we headed to town for Pig’n. There was plenty of parking and we got seated right away, which is good except it makes me nervous – is the Pig’n going to go the way of Doogers? That would make me very sad. I had to laugh when they seated us, because in the next booth was the family that was one table over from us last night at the Irish Table (the dad had the lamb chops and boy did they look good). Tim and I had the pigs in blanket, which I eat rolled up. He unrolls the pancakes and makes them into a stack, and eats the sausage separately. I pointed out that you could order a stack of pancakes with sausage, but he said that he orders them as pigs in a blanket because he knows how to order that already. Dave had a half order of eggs benedict, which he said was fine, and half of my third pig in blanket, because three is too many. In the pig’n gift shop area they had the pig popper, which I thought was pretty cool. You put a ping pong ball in its mouth and squeeze it around the middle and it shoots the ball. No-one else was impressed.

After lunch it had mostly cleared up. We stopped briefly at the house to change shoes and then headed off to Arch Cape for the long awaited hike. The temperature was perfect, and aside from forgetting my camera so was the hike. It’s interesting because you climb up one side of the hill, and the sound of the ocean is behind you. Then you’re behind the hill and you can’t hear the ocean at all, and then all of a sudden you come around the shoulder of the hill and the sound of the ocean is in front of you. The part just after you come around to the ocean side has a fairly steep drop to one side, which made me more nervous than I thought it would. We were expecting a fairly steep climb down with switchbacks, but instead it’s a long, gentle slope through some fairly dense vegetation. Our pant legs were pretty damp and also a little muddy by the end. The most exciting part of the hike was when we got to the end and my car was indeed right there – we were pretty sure we had the endpoint correct, but not 100% certain. The hike was only about two miles and Tim was considering doing it again backwards, but decided not to. We got in the van and drove a little further south to see where the trail goes back into the woods on its way to Short Sands beach – we’re thinking that might be a fun hike later in the week. Then we picked up the other car and headed back to the house.

After all that walking it was time for some relaxing. Dave spent some time researching more of the trails around here, and we’re tentatively planning a hike again tomorrow. Unfortunately the fog rolled in, making it chilly and bleak looking – not a great day for going down to the beach to dig holes. I read for a while, then took a nap. Dave read for a while, then went for a run on the beach. Tim played on his phone, then took a nap. It would have been a nice afternoon to build a brio layout. After I woke up from my nap I did day 3 of bootcamp, which was just as unpleasant as I thought it would be. I did it indoors because it wasn’t nice enough outside, but Tim said it didn’t wake him up, nor did he dream of earthquakes. After showers we read some more and then headed out for experimental food.

Last summer we saw that several restaurants had changed down at the Lumberyard end of town. One was called Castaways Restaurant and Tiki Bar. Not our kind of place, we thought, imagining pu-pu platters (not that there’s anything wrong with pu-pu platters) and drunk 20-somethings. We could not have been more wrong. The name and sign are completely misleading, but on the other hand Restaurant with Good Drinks and Very Interesting Tasty Food is not such a great name either. The décor is northwest kitschy Caribbean, with tiki masks, fishnets with shells tied to them, and lizard sculptures on the walls. It’s very small – maybe 8-10 four person tables? – and the word eclectic doesn’t begin to describe the menu. Beef stew? Sure, it’s one of the specials. Jambalaya? Seared Tuna? Pork marsala? Curried Shrimp? Jerk Chicken? The chef came out several times to chat with folks, and his idea is you should be able to eat there every night of your vacation and not get bored. You’ll have to go elsewhere for your clam chowder, although they do have a seafood soup on the menu that I wish I could have tried.

We started with the seared tuna appetizer – perfectly seared, beautifully seasoned, with a peach ginger sauce and wasabi dots. Dave had the pork chop special – it had a white wine, peach and habanero sauce and mango-peach chutney. I had the east meets west – two chicken satay skewers, two jerk chicken skewers, 4 fantastic sauces, and I also had a tiki salad which was a nice green salad with candied walnuts. Tim had the jambalaya, spice level 2 (out of 4), which was sprinkled with blueberries. All three dishes were just delicious, and the service was cheerful and attentive. We could say Dayenu here, but then we would have missed out on the dessert –warm triple chocolate coconut brownie with toffee sprinkles and coconut ice cream. The brownie was just barely cooked – crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside, completely perfect. Dave had a rum punch and I had a strawberry-kiwi mojito, both really good but missing umbrellas. The wine list is very interesting – good wine with almost no markup at all. Can you tell we all loved this place? The only downside to the evening is that we may have missed the only good sunset of the week, as the fog had completely burnt off by about 5:30.

We rolled ourselves out to the car and drove home through the clear evening with a big almost-full moon shining down. When we got back to the house Tim made a fire and we talked about playing some games, but decided it would be more fun to just sit in the dark and look at the stars or read on our various electronic devices. We didn’t even put on any music, just the crackling of the fire and the shushing of the waves. A peaceful end to a very nice day.

More things we forgot: the brios, although bulky, are nice to have. And Dave would like the camera adapter that lets him connect his cameras to his iPad.