Bad sands, good times

Obligatory Waterfall Photo. Also note that the stream curves to the north, rather than straight to the beach.

I completely forgot to tell about how we met Crackers, the seagull at Warren House.  One thing I’ve noticed at most of the restaurants here is that they are very quick to remove your empty plates – sometimes it seems like they are swooping in and grabbing them as soon as the last forkful leaves your plate. I find it a little off-putting, but at Warren House they have an excuse – at least on the front deck. (Which, it turns out, both Dave and I prefer to the sunny beer garden, even though we each thought the other was a beer garden lover). The folks next to us left about a quarter of a sandwich on their plate when they got up to go, and a seagull came down and ate it in two or three humungous gulps. Then several other seagulls came to join in the fun, and they got in a huge fight and spilled the pea salad, which they did not eat. It was very exciting, especially since all that flapping and swooping and gull-name-calling was only a couple of feet away.

I slept in in until after 7 this morning, which was amazing. I had some breakfast and a mug of tea left over from last night’s pot, and relaxed a bit while Dave packed the trunk of the Volvo with bulky items that we won’t need, like the archery target and the skim boards. Then he headed off on a walk, and the rest of us took off for beach bikes. 1. Midtown was a zoo, even at 9:30 in the morning.  2. The beach was packed. 3. Tim should say he’s 6’2” to get a longer bike, and I should say I’m 5’3 to get a shorter one and finally and most importantly 4. The sand was TERRIBLE. We’ve biked in the wind, we’ve biked in the cold, we’ve biked in a drizzle, but we’ve never biked in sands like these. There was a giant salt stream running down the beach all the way (as far as we know) to Hug Point, and you could either ride on the beach side of it, where the sand was soft and you were tilted at an angle, or you could ride on the ocean side of it, where the sand was hard and level but you were continuously having to cross little salt streams (against The Rules, but we did it anyway) or get turned back completely after you had gone a really long way. Tim and I went all the way to the rock Wahii, but when we got a little way past it we were too discouraged to continue on to Hug Point (remember, you have to come back as far as you go) and turned around early. I complained all the way back. Jen ad Tabs had stayed close to Haystack Rock and had a good time just dinking around, although like Dave Jen isn’t crazy about beach biking. We told the beach bike guy about the bad sands and he’d never heard of such a thing in the summer, and in 25 years of beach biking neither had we. It was worse even than the first time Bubby and I tried it, when we couldn’t figure out how to do anything other than go in circles and returned the bikes after 15 minutes.

Since Midtown was already bad, Tim had the very good idea of leaving all the cars there (J&T drove separately) and just walking in to town, which we did. We got to Bills about 15 minutes early, and were the first in line. J&T got there about 5 minutes later, and Dave arrived shortly after we were all seated. We had a very nice Bill’s lunch including the chili beso beer and onion rings, and then the girls headed for Seaside while we sent Tim off to the airport in Dave’s car, not without some trepidation given his getting lost record. However he made it just fine, and I’ll drop Dave at the MAX on my way in to work on Tuesday to go pick it up. Then we walked back to Midtown the back way, and headed home. The traffic coming in to the north entrance was backed up all the way onto 101 – we were very glad to be on our way out of town. Once we got home I took a massive nap of at least 2 hours and Dave sat on the porch and read while it turned into a beautiful sunny day. J&T got home at some point while I was sleeping and went down for naps of their own.

When I woke up Dave was still reading, so I sat on the deck with him and did some blogging, then went down for a walk on the beach. The sand is so high that our cove isn’t cut off even at high tide, and the tide had been going out for an hour or so. I walked over to the carriage road where people were fishing and watched the waves for a while, then did some wading on the way back. Our beach was forming the Bad Sand as the tide went out. The thing is, the Bad Sand is really fun when you’re wading, because there are lots of pools to splash in.

When I got back Dave and the girls were enjoying a glass of Patton Valley rose on the deck.  I went in and showered and got ready for dinner. Dinner was the Stephanie Inn, where Jen and Tabetha were two of the youngest people there. It was good food but maybe not quite as interesting as it sometimes is. The sparkling raspberry sorbet did not disappoint, and I got to eat Jen’s cookie as well as my own.

We came back from dinner and Dave made a nice fire for our last night. We had two games of trouble, which Dave won, and I should have come in second both times but there was very unsportsmanlike ganging up.

And that's all from here. Thanks for riding along.

Bad Sands forming on our beach