Cannon Beach, ghost town

We stayed home for Thanksgiving weekend, which let us do lots of wine tasting and was mostly fun. We went to Urban Farmer for Thanksgiving dinner and spent the night at the 9s. We didn’t eat until 7:30, but we went into the hotel around 4, which was a mistake. It was cold and rainy, so we ended up sitting in our room reading and feeling sad until dinner. Once we got to dinner things got much better, and Friday morning was terrific – Vickie subbed and class was wonderful, and Dave shopped at Macy’s and watched the parade. If we do it again next year I’d eat dinner earlier and bring Christmas DVDs to watch after dinner.

So then we did Cannon Beach the following weekend, and wow, is it weird in Cannon Beach the weekend after Thanksgiving! It is almost completely deserted. Many places are closed – for example, Castaways and the E-coli seafood market. Irish Table is open weekends, but has a weird limited menu on Thursday nights. A lot of shops are closed, and the ones that are open seem to be a little light on merchandise. Within those parameters, though, it is delightful.

We got here around 4 on Thursday, and it was raining lightly. Undaunted we walked around town for a while, then hung out in our room at the Waves. We are in the easternmost room, 412, which has more exposure to the parking lot but is in every other way identical to the room next door (411) which we had last year. We figured we’d go for an early dinner at Irish Table, hoping to get in before the crowds. But due to the conditions above, we ended up at the Stephanie Inn. When I called to see if they’d have room, they went through the whole script as if there was a crowd, but there were only a few tables occupied when we were there. The service was impeccable and the food and wine pairings tasty and imaginative – it exceeded expectations in every way, except for the décor which is desperately in need of updating. I had a Sokol Blosser Muller-Thurgau with lentil salad as an appetizer and they were both excellent apart and even better together.

We brought my x-mini speaker pod with us to the hotel and have been having wonderful Pandora Christmas music. We went back to the hotel and watched the Canadian Brass Christmas special (we need to get more stuff on DVD if we’re going to be watching in hotels).

Friday morning while Dave went for a walk I went to yoga with Claire and it was meh, although the part where I used the mindbody connect app on my phone to register and pay for class was excellent. When I got back to the room Dave was all excited to do some BodyFit, so we did some. The ottomans at the end of the bed are perfect for chair dips. After we got cleaned up we had lunch at Bill’s and did some more walking around town. Then we had naps and started doing the Balloon Race puzzle when suddenly it was time to leave for dinner. We had reservations at the Bistro at 6, and it turns out 5:30 would be better so we wouldn’t be rushed – or we could skip dessert, but I do love their chocolate ganache pie. We also had a split of Prosecco with the appetizers and a half bottle of Pinot Noir with the entrees, all of which were very good, and that’s a nice amount of wine.

We did end up being slightly rushed going from Bistro to the Coaster, and also we had to go quickly because Dave wore his nice wool coat and no hat and it was raining. We had tickets in row C, and we need to remember that we prefer row D. Other than that it was Beauty and the Beast, our second live theater version of a Disney movie in 3 months, and while the production values were a little lower than Lion King in London, we enjoyed it very much. We recognize many of the actors, which is fun. It’s all very earnest! Nothing will ever be as good as Forum, but this was one of my favorites.

Back to the hotel, and then more puzzle until bedtime.

Saturday morning we finished the puzzle. Dave went for a long walk while I did more yoga with Claire, except this time I was the only student and it was totally excellent – we spent a long time with each pose playing with body position and engaging and relaxing different muscles. The big aha for me was the slight knee bend in downward dog to shift the hips back, which lengthens the torso, and then putting my ears between my arms rather than letting my head hang down and making sure to keep the insides of my elbows facing in. There were many other things, which she says my body will remember when it is time.

Back to the hotel for showers, and then we walked to Wayfarer for lunch. It’s still mediocre and expensive – my soup and salad was $25, for pete’s sake. It’s not even as good as Dave makes at home. I feel like we need to check it out every few years, so now we’re done. The desserts looked good, but we didn’t have any. After lunch we looked to see if anything has taken the place of Doogers (no) and went into the Found gallery, where we’ve never been before. It was interesting but I don’t think I need to go there again. In town we bought some stocking stuffers and tried to get birks for Dave but they didn’t have what he was looking for.  Then it was back to our room to read and nap in the sun- because it’s partly cloudy and mid 50s today.

When we woke up we went for another walk, out to Haystack rock. Dave had been several times already, but this was my first time. The weird thing is that it was very green, with grass growing all over it, and even some larger weeds. We saw a couple of starfish and they looked healthy, which was encouraging. There weren’t a lot of birds, so we wonder (1) are the birds that are there in the summer migratory and b) is there still grass under all the guano that makes it look completely white in the summer?

We got back to the hotel and went to Irish Table at 6, but suddenly they were all crowded and couldn’t seat us until 7:15. So we went back to the hotel and played Tsuro, a game we borrowed from Bill and Sally. The problem with playing with two people is that one person always loses and feels bad. When there are three people there are two people losing and feeling bad so it’s not as bad to lose, at least that’s how I see it. I still like the game. Then they called at 7 and said our table was ready. We wonder if we could have just called at 6 and asked them to call us when there was a table.

Irish table was excellent as always. A few oddities – I had the shrimp in beurre blanc instead of the mussel, and for dessert I had the candy cane ice cream, which I thought was wonderful but Dave thought was too sweet, and he had the pumpkin bread pudding. It was like we’d completely switched food personalities from when we first met. It was hot in the restaurant – something to remember.

We went back to the room and watched Rudolph, then had an early bedtime.

Sunday we slept until almost 8, which was pretty amazing considering we had the lights out by 10. Neither of us slept very soundly, although it was all short waking up and falling back to sleep episodes. I loved looking out the windows at the dark hills and light sand. We went for about an hour walk down to the Tolovana parking lot and back, then showered and packed and checked out. We walked around town a little – I got a nice glass nail file at Maggie & Henry’s and a book of poems by Billy Collins – then had lunch at Bill’s. Dave had 2 pints of yule mule so I drove home.

I brought a bathrobe & didn’t use it. Dave brought warm fuzzy pants and his slippers, and bought a jar of peanuts – those are things he would do again.