Day 5 - A good day for a nap

We stayed up pretty late last night, so my plan of waking up at 6 and walking to the Rock With A Hole in it (Rock Wahii, for our new readers) was pretty much shot. I did wake up at 7 and decided to cheat – you can park at Arcadia Beach and walk from there, cutting a mile or two out of the trip. I’m pleased to say that I got the whole clothing/hat/sunglasses decision thing right. A T shirt, long sleeved shirt, sweatshirt and shorts, baseball cap, no sunglasses was the perfect choice even though it was pretty chilly out – 54 degrees. There were lots of people out on the beach when I got there, including a group of three women about my age with their dogs. I was thinking how fun it would be to go to the beach with a bunch of friends (and I still think that) but I realized as far as walking on the beach goes, I really do prefer being by myself. I’d be happy to see them back at the house or whatever, but I like to be able to walk as fast or as slowly as I want, and stop and examine things, or not. Since the tide was coming in I was moving with determination, although not very quickly. The low tide at 6:20 was only a -.8, which wouldn’t be enough to get behind the Rock Wahii at its lowest, and I was well over an hour behind that. I just wanted to make sure I could get inside, and indeed I did. The starfish report for this year is that they are plentiful. I did notice that my boulder scrambling has gotten much slower and more careful this year. I think the fact that I was wearing shorts and got pretty scratched up last year took a toll on me. Or maybe I’m just getting old. Anyway, I got inside the rock and took the usual pictures, none of which will really give the sense of what it’s like to be inside the monolith, listening to the waves sucking around the rocks and wondering how quickly the tide is coming in.

On the way there Jockey Cap was still accessible, but by the time I headed back it was surrounded by water. Not that it’s all that exciting anyway, but I do like to give it a pat. I decided it wasn’t worth timing the waves and headed back toward the car. On the way back I noticed that it looked like someone had put chairs in the falling down house, so I walked over there and sure enough there was a table and some chairs and even a pillow. It’s a story I’ll never know. I also found the beach path from the house next to the falling down house. It is further from the house than you’d expect, and you enter it through an archway carved out of some bushes, then up some very steep stairs. I didn’t go very far because it’s a private entrance, but I sure would like to stay in that house some time.

By now the sun had made it over the hills, so I was glad to have my hat. I had one more thing to check out, which was the big rock that sort of makes a gate at the north end of Arcadia beach. The side near the ocean had seemed to be doing that overhang thing on the way out, and I wanted to take a closer look. Sure enough, that giant piece of rock is undercut just like the mushroom rocks near the little house. In the tide pool by the rock I also saw a live Dungeness crab scuttling around. I’m always excited to see crabs move because of how they go sideways – how cool is that? Also you don’t usually see the Dungeness alive, so that was also fun.

I thought about walking over to see the new house with the giant walls’o’glass, but I was getting pretty hungry, so I headed up to the van instead. Just about the time I got there I got a text from Kay Nell, telling me that she’s been inspired by my blog to do some bike riding. It made me feel good because 1. It’s always exciting to hear someone is reading it and B) exercise is good and iii) I like to feel I’m inspiring. When I got back to the house Dave was on the porch in his PJs. He’d been looking at Venus, which you can see during the day. I ate my cacklin’ and got caught up on things. Dave made the bed and did my breakfast dishes, which he does almost every day (he makes the bed every day), which made me feel very pampered.

After a short time for recovery Dave and I headed in to town to check out some of our favorite stores. I found a wonderful sweater at Dena’s but didn’t notice the over $200 pricetag until after I’d tried it on.  Some of the stores in CB are a little pricey! I did find a great pair of pants at La Luna Loca, although they are the most complicated pants I’ve ever owned – first you put the front part on and tie it, and then you pull the back part between your legs and tie them. It’s hard to describe and harder to visualize, but once you get them on they are very good. Dave got a new Wek shirt, and I got some earrings, and we visited our Christopher Burkett photos at NW by NW gallery. We also picked up some wine to have with our fruit salad, which is dumb because we should have brought some from home. Then we went to Warren House for lunch. Warren House is a sister restaurant with Bill’s, but it’s down in Tolovana and also is weather dependent. When it’s a nice day you can eat out on the deck which we love – when it’s not a nice day you have to sit inside which is dark and not very interesting. Since today is a beautiful day, it was a good day for Warren House.

Our original plan for the afternoon was to go for a hike out to Falcon Cove, but Dave’s knee was hurting and it was such a gorgeous sunny day it seemed a shame to spend it in the forest. So instead we came home and took naps in our favorite places – Dave in the sun on the deck wrapped in a blanket with a hat over his face, me on the bed with the sun pouring in the skylights. A nap in the sun has got to be one of the best uses for a sunny day. The blanket Dave napped in was bought in Cape Cod when we were Rosenthals, many years ago. Tim apparently didn’t nap. Dave and I woke up at about the same time, and then we all headed down to the beach. It was a little chilly and there was a nice breeze blowing, so Tim and Dave flew some kites. They started with the stinger, which is our usual kite for flying here – it does well in a light breeze and it’s nice and agile. But the breeze was strong enough that Dave got out the big gun – the Hawaiian with its 5 foot wingspan that we bought in Michigan many, many years ago. Now that’s a kite – if you jump in the air while you’re flying it, it will pull you forward. Tim enjoyed wrestling with it for quite some time, leaning into it and periodically almost losing his balance. It’s something of a dinosaur in the air, though. Its turns are rounder and less precise than the stinger. So for fun Dave got the flexi out – aka the flying sleeping bag. It really does look like a sleeping bag, but it’s by far the most responsive of the three kites, especially in the nice steady breeze. Tim had a blast dive bombing the sand and pulling out at the last minute.

Faithful readers might have guessed that it was time for me to dig a hole. I found a place in the dry sand (after spending some time shuffling around and listening to the sound the sand makes with your bare feet). I was much further up the beach than I usually am, but it turned out to be a very good spot. I didn’t hit the rock layer until after I hit water, which is unusual. I never got deep enough to have to lie completely on the sand, which was kind of nice. In fact it was such a good hole that I couldn’t stand to just fill it in, so I went up on the rocky part and got lots of sticks and built a fence around it.  Then I moved toward the water a little to make some dripstone.

Meanwhile, Dave and Tim had gotten done with flying kites and moved on to throwing the baseball at each other and then on to Dave throwing the ball to Tim and Tim trying to hit it with the bat. When my dripstone collapsed it was time for me to head up and get started on the fruit salad. So I missed the part where the ball fell in my hole and Dave got poked in the armpit trying to get it out. I’m hoping that’s the only thing that falls in. They came up and hung out while I finished the fruit salad. We moved the table into the living room so we could look out at the ocean while we ate – true oceanfront dining, even though the ocean is pretty far down. We had a nice Walnut City rose, Pearl bakery bread, and three kinds of cheese – manchego, muenster, and triple crème goat brie. It was a very satisfying meal. Dave had tapped the barometer when he came up and it is falling, and there’s a big streak of ominous looking cloud overhead, but as of now the sun is sinking into the ocean through what seemed to be perfectly clear skies. Unfortunately just before the sun hit the water there was a tiny band of clouds. Dave says there was a green flash , I say there wasn’t. Photographic evidence indicates some green tinge to the sun as it was setting when you blow the picture way up. I say it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. 

After sunset it was time for a shower for met and then more laundry. The rinse/spin cycle on this washing machine is very long – 15 minutes or more – and the lid locks during the spin cycle and for a minute or so after it finishes – very annoying. So while we were playing yahtzee I had to keep getting up to check on it, and I’m blaming that for my not getting the bonus on the top half and losing even though I got a yahtzee. Of course Dave also got a yahtzee and also did not get his bonus and he wasn’t even trying to do laundry. Tim won. So then we moved on to pepper, and I won the first game. I had to stand up and do the dance of joy, but that was the only dance of joy for me out of the next 5 games. Dave had won two and Tim had won two, so Dave pointed out that if I won the last game we’d all have won two. Alas, it was not to be.

We finished out the game playing section of the evening playing blackjack, which we made up rules for. After Dave ran out of the pepper cards we were using as chips, he went online and looked up the real rules, which don’t sound like as much fun. But we’re going to practice playing that way so we can play at the next David Hill blackjack party, or on the way to Alaska next August, whichever comes first. Or maybe both.

Today we didn’t come up with anything we forgot, because we remembered to bring a sharp knife for cutting up the fruit and another for cutting the bread. Oh wait, we forgot the wine for the fruit salad.