Day 9 - caches and wine

Last night we’d decided to go out geocaching before Tabs & Jen headed back to Portland for another day of Comic Con, so we were up and out relatively early (9:15) heading in to Cannon Beach for one of our favorite caches, the downtown Cannon Beach Photo Mystery cache.  Basically this takes you from the whale north of town to just north of midtown, trying to find a series of things. Once you find them you decode the location of the cache, which used to be in a marshy bit of forest but is now along a nice paved trail. We’ve done this cache several times but it’s a fun one for first timers, and the girls had a good time finding the things.

Then we sent them off to own and went to Indian Beach, to see if the walk from Indian Beach to town would be accessible for Dave tomorrow while I’m at yoga. What’s funny is that before we even got to Ecola State Park there was a sign saying it would be closed tomorrow and Tuesday, which didn’t cause either of us to realize that whether the walk was doable or not, the park would be closed so he wouldn’t be able to get there. It’s just as well that we didn’t realize it, because we had a really fun time scrambling around the boulders at the south end of the beach. We also saw some starfish, which are very rare this summer.

Once we got back to town it was perfect timing to go to Bill’s, so we did. Town was very crowded but we had no trouble finding parking or a table. After lunch we walked down to the bookstore, then came back to the house and got thing straightened up for wine tasting. It was a beautiful day and the front room did a very good job of looking like the most perfect place on earth. We’d had quite a few last minute cancellations, so ended up with Amber, Thomas, Jen & Kirk for a very fun afternoon of sipping wine and chatting.

Dinner was at the Stephanie Inn, where the food is excellent and the ambience is… not. We always split our time there between marveling at how good the food is and trying to figure out why the overall experience feels uncomfortable. Some thoughts this time – the lights are too bright, the waitstaff aren’t very professional looking, and not very welcoming. It’s a little like dining at the home of a fussy grandma – one who is an excellent cook.

After dinner we did our new favorite thing of sitting on the deck watching it get darker. A disadvantage of being here so late in the summer is that the sun sets while we’re at dinner, and although the Stephanie Inn is on the beach the dining room looks east. So we may have missed the only green flash of the trip. It is a chilly evening and Dave has made a nice fire.

Tomorrow we head home, although I’m hoping to get in one more yoga class tomorrow morning. Then maybe a yoga class at Willamette View in the afternoon, and Nia with Debbie & the black belt trainees in the evening.  This is the end of the blog, thanks for riding along.

We should remember to bring a tea mug for me.

Day 8 - influxx

First off, a little more about the wine tasting we did yesterday. The winery is called Westport Winery, and the actual winery is on the Washington coast, although they get their grapes from eastern Washington. It’s one of those places where all the wines have cute name, and they have many many wines on the menu – fortified and sparkling Rieslings, fruit wines, and so on. It reminded me strongly of Nehalem Bay winery, and we don’t need to go back.

I went to be early last night and slept in this morning. Dave got up and went for a walk on the beach. At about 9 I decided it was time to get up and thought it would be fun to go beach biking. So I texted Dave to make a plan, and he came back up and we got ready to go. The weather forecast was promising showers, but I was convinced they wouldn’t happen. Dave is not a fan of the beach bikes, but he said he was willing to go. He was pretty grim during the getting ready and driving to midtown though.

When we got to midtown it turned out the funcycle place was closed, even though they were supposed to have opened at 9:30. Dave’s mood immediately improved, and it improved even more when we discovered that there was a puzzle geocache that started right about where we were. It was a very fun one that took us on the beach past haystack rock and then back into town and onto a little walking trail neither of us had been on.  The way this one worked was that there was a photo of a place that you’d walk to, and then 4 little photos one of which was nearby, which had a number that you used to find the coordinates of the final point. After we’d found the 3 photo places and were on our way to the decoded final point, we were walking by icefire and I decided to go in – I’d completely forgotten that we hadn’t finished the puzzle. I was glad we did though because we ran into Ann Kramer, one of the Willamette View residents, which was fun.

Once we got back on track it was time for lunch, and it was Pelican day. Pelican is a brewpub originally out of Tillamook, and they built a big new place where Doogers used to be. Going to Doogers  always made me crabby because there was always a huge line and the food was overpriced and not very good. Dave feels the same way about Pelican, although it’s the prices and the beer that make him crabby. But they make MacPelican, which is one of my favorites, so we went there and although the beer was mediocre, my kale and farro salad was very tasty (order dressing on the side though). After lunch we went to town and got a space in the secret back lot. We went to Maggie & Henry’s to replace Dave’s sweatshirt, and I found a corduroy shirt and purse that I liked. Then we walked to the cupcake store, but all they had was giant Costco muffin sized ones. Why don’t they make little ones? Instead we went to Osburns and split a haystack sundae, which was yummy. Then we went back to the house for naps. Dave’s deck nap was interrupted by rain.

Once we were both up it was chilly enough to have an afternoon fire and play some Fluxx. It is a game where the end goal – who wins – and how each turn is played changes as you play the game. I like it because it’s mostly just luck, but there’s some strategy but no thinking ahead. About the time wit finished Jen and Tabetha got here and it was pretty much time to head to the Bistro, where the food was excellent but almost all the drinks were way too sweet. Also we ate too much.

Back to the house for more Fluxx and two games of trouble.  The second game was very hotly contested and full of reversals of fortune. Much honking and shrieking. It’s fun to have young persons come to visit!

Day 7 – my phone knows.

Started with yoga while Dave took a walk. I was more prepared for the speed of the class. There’s still one move I’m having trouble with – kneepads would help. As I left class I got a text from Dave saying he was at midtown. It was still very foggy and wet, so we went home and did some relaxing.  Dave also talked to Gordon Church, one of the owners, about the ants. Apparently the exterminator came yesterday while Dave was out of the house. Dave also sprayed the perimeter with the smelly stuff before he left for his walk, and the ants do seem much diminished.

 Lunch was Pig’n,  and we had our usual. It’s one of my favorite lunches, but once per visit is enough. After lunch we did some shopping, picking up a sparkling gewürztraminer for our Sunday wine tasting, an interesting spiced rum, and a new game called Fluxx. We also purchased and mailed a postcard for Wyoming – hope it gets there!

After the shopping we did two very fun puzzle geocaches. The first involved finding clues in a new mural that’s on the side of Whitebird gallery, then using those clues to find the cache. The second was a super fun way to see one of Cannon Beach’s real treasures – the trashcans. There were coordinates for 8 trash cans, and the information on the top was used to solve the cache, which was out by the sewage lagoons.  A sample trash can rhyme was something like Tillamook has cows/ Seaside has rides/but Cannon Beach has cans/in which we take pride. One of the trash cans had an egregious grammatical error, but fortunately it was not one of the cans in the actual puzzle. Also some of the can slogans were adapted from songs, which would make me go around humming for a while.

By the time we finished it was starting to clear up, so we went home for some relaxing. Dinner tonight was the dinner show at EVOO, which was fun as usual. The first two courses – rockfish with pasta and duck breast with succotash and a peach salsa – were standouts, as were the wines they were paired with, a prosecco rose and a LuJon Syrah from Walla Walla. Also the lemon shortbread cookie.  Then home for sitting in front of the fire. A good day.

Part 2 Begins

Now it’s Thursday and I’m back. I had a good day at work and got cheese at lunch for the wine tasting, so I was able to leave right after work and got out just as traffic was starting to build. I had an easy and traffic-free drive. When I got here it was cool and cloudy – nice to be out of the smoke and heat. While I was gone Dave was so lonely that he invited the ants to join him in the house and wow did they ever take him up on it. I have never seen so many! There were 4 in the tub when I went to take my shower!  Dinner was Castaways, where the menu has gotten much smaller and the blueberry-lavender cocktail doesn’t compare AT ALL to the blueberry-lavender rickey I had in Pendleton on the way to the eclipse, but overall the food and service were both good. After dinner it was raining, which made us do the dance of joy. We stopped at the Mariner market and got some eco-friendly ant killing spray made of peppermint and rosemary oils. I’m not sure which I’d rather have, the ants or the smell of the oils – wow, is it smelly! We played one game of trouble which I won so decisively it wasn’t even fun, and then we had two very close games of farkle. Each of us sparkled. Now we are sitting by the fire, listening to the waves and killing ants.

A note on the swivel chairs. They are still ugly, but a great addition. You can swivel and look out the window, or look at the fire, or put a table between them for games.

Things I forgot: my glasses, my kindle (this trip), and a mug, because the mugs here are too small. We saw one I really liked at Imprint Gallery, but I didn’t like it $38 worth.

Day 3 -Yoga and Walking

Unlike yesterday, this morning was up-and-out – me to 8 am yoga class, and Dave for a walk. Yoga was good, faster and more difficult strengthwise than I’m used to. When I came out, Dave was sitting on the bench – he’d walked all the way from the house into town, about 5.5 miles. I drove us home and we hung out until lunchtime.

For lunch we headed to Warren House, getting there just after it opened. One couple got in before us and sat in our usual table, so we sat in a north-facing table which turned out to be pretty nice. Another couple sat in the table next to us, and we ended up chatting with them for most of the meal, which was fun. We told them about geocaching and the husband downloaded the app right then. Dave had a sausage sandwich from a local smokehouse that is supposed to be opening up next to my favorite show store, and it was very good. As we were leaving, we ran into Cindy Sirianni and her family – she used to work with Dave and they have a place here.

We stopped at the house & then headed to Nehalem Bay State Park for some geocaching. There were some around the campsite and some on the spit of land that goes between the bay and the ocean. We chose to look for the ones on the spit, which was the wrong choice. Dave found the first one, and we should have headed back to the campsites at that point. Instead we continued on, and then it was sandy, and the cache wasn’t on the main trail, and

then we’d gone so far that we were almost to the end of the spit and I’ve always wanted to go there. So we did. We didn’t bring water and I had the wrong shoes, but we made it to the beach. We stopped there for me to empty my shoes and Dave to do a little research, and we decided to skip the cache and walk back on the beach. It was very hot on the path but cool on the beach, and the sand was firmer, so it was a better walk. But it was a bit long for Dave who’d already put in all that beach walking in the morning. The climb over the dunes from beach to parking lot was a bit too far for both of us, and we were glad to get in the car and go home.  We’ll try for the other caches some other time. Dave was excited to announce that he had over 20,000 steps.

It’s an interesting day weatherwise, there’s a thick high cloud/smoke cover. So it’s not as hot as it could be, but quite humid on the beach. We have avoided downtown entirely so far, but the parking lots for Hug Point, Arcadia, and Oswald West have all been very full and overflowing. Probably not going to do Labor Day weekend at the coast again.

Dinner tonight was at Newman’s. We considered trying Restaurant Don’t, but things are still very crowded. So we went to Newman’s and had the chef’s Prix Fixe menu with wine pourings, which exceeded expectations.  Once again it’s too warm to sit indoors and have a fire, so we’re sitting outside smelling the smoke and watching the horizon slowly darken. I go back to work tomorrow, so tomorrow night’s blog, if there is one, will be by guest blogger Dave.

Day 2, lounging

What Oregonians think is a crowded beach

Woke up, ate breakfast, drank tea. Spent some time with Samsung support trying to figure out how to schedule multiple times for do not disturb, and eventually got referred to the next level of support. I suspect they can’t help either, but when I have a couple of hours to spend getting nowhere, I’ll give them a call. I also discovered that the old geocaching app has been superseded by a new one, so  we both installed it. Don’t worry BOS, no geocaching occurred today.

Usually Dave is champing at the bit to go for a hike or some activity, but after two weeks on the road he has a major lounging deficit. So we hung out around the house until 10, then headed to town for some shopping (quite successful) and lunch at Bill’s (ditto). Town was quite reasonable when we got there, and now that we have no minors and can sit in the over 21 section at Bill’s, we really only need to be sure to get there before noon, not right when they open. It’s possible that the two other brewpubs opening – Pelican and Public Coast – have also taken some of the pressure off. Speaking of things opening, a new restaurant has opened at the north end of town called Harding Trading Company. I tried calling them on the way home last night and got their answering machine which says they don’t take reservations and they don’t seat groups larger than 6 people and they don’t answer their phone during business hours. It gets great yelp reviews but it may take a while for me to get over the don’ts.

Also just before lunch we were at Dragonfire and suddenly a woman looks at me and says “are you following us?” Turns out they were two of the people from the big table last night and we had a very nice chat. I was surprised that they recognized me, but I was made memorable by having left my sunglasses on the table (I realized it moments after we got in the car and we went back and got them).

After lunch we went to Bruce’s and Mariner and then came home for major napping and reading. I suspect that will be the big activity this trip. After my nap I headed down to the beach as it was halfway to low tide, and the high sands make the tide seem even lower. I didn’t see any starfish, even though I walked all the way around hug point in the water – sandbars are very handy.  The waterfall at Hug Point and the little stream that runs by our path are the lowest I think I’ve ever seen them.  Another consequence of the high sands is that our cove doesn’t get cut off, and with the high temps in Portland the beach is very crowded. Some of them are even on our beach – in fact, one family set up a shelter in the cave to the south.

When I got back Dave was still reading on the deck, although I know he’d moved around a couple of times. We got ready to go to dinner at Blackbird in Manzanita. Dinner was wonderful – the green chickpea/quinoa/barley salad and the radicchio Caesar were standouts; the cauliflower which last year was so good that Tim had to have a second plate of it for dessert was slightly undercooked so not as overwhelmingly good. One thing they do especially well there is use finishing salt – both the flavor and the crunch elevate the dishes. A worry is that the menu really hasn’t changed in the 3 years we’ve been going there, which might eventually lead to Newman’s at 988 syndrome, where the dishes, while still well prepared, have a certain tiredness.

 

The floor to ceiling windows in the house are wonderful, but it does get really hot in the afternoon, even with the shades drawn. When we got back from dinner it was too hot in the house for a fire, so we sat on the deck and had some tea while the stars came out. It was fun to find the big dipper by arcing from Arcturus, and things like that. I made a pot of tea and we stayed on the deck while the sunset faded from the sky and the moon slowly rose over the house. Eventually it was cool enough in the house to come in and have a fire.

Last night after I finished the blog we went into the bedroom and watched our eclipse video (of the 1991 eclipse over Mexico) – well, Dave watched, and I dozed until totality. Who knows what will happen tonight?

On The Road Again

Dave just got back from the eclipse trip the day before yesterday in the new-to-us Lincoln Navigator, a very nice vehicle of extraordinary ugliness. We all know cars say something about their owners –according to Tim this one says “I’d like to talk to the manager”. While we were packing this morning Dave said it felt like he was just repacking all the things he put away yesterday. Meanwhile it was the first day of Nia after summer vacation, so I had a waffle for breakfast and gentle Nia to start my vacation. Packing went very smoothly and once again after folding down the rear seatbacks my car swallowed an enormous amount of stuff. There was even time for a nap.

Normally the short rocks behind Dave are as tall as he is

Not as much stuff as usual, though. This is later than we usually come, and Tim is staying in Santa Cruz to get ready for school. Josh is in Brookings on the fire lines with his National Guard unit, and Jen is back in Kansas for her grandpa’s funeral. So it is just us, which has good and bad sides.

Newness report: New swiveling club chairs, one replacing the old swiveling chair and one replacing the creaky rocking chair by the fire. Very comfortable, but too dark and heavy looking for this house. Sand report: sand is exceptionally high. Cave floor to the south completely covered; rocks in the passageway to the north completely covered.

We got here at about 4:15 – traffic was very heavy, and even completely stopped about 2 miles out from the 26/101 junction. Both Arcadia and Hug Point had cars parked on both sides of the road. Like I said, this is the latest in the summer we’ve come, and we were both a little nervous about dinner. When we did our dinner planning we’d though Josh & Jen would be here, so we’d made reservations at Irish Table. But Irish Table only takes reservations for groups of 4 or more, so we had to cancel the reservation. Saturday night of Labor Day weekend on a day when Portland temps were over 100 is maybe not the best time to hope to get a table. So we headed to town as soon as we were done unpacking, and got to the restaurant at 5:15, about 15 minutes before they opened. We were both nervous that we wouldn’t make the first wave, but we did, and ended up in the front room at a little table next to the big round table. 

The people at the big round table were an interesting group – almost like a cruise ship table. We never figured out if they’d just met (although some of them were sharing a house) or what the relationships were, but they were fascinating people. One had been a beer and wine distributor, one couple had a hazelnut orchard (did you know 99% of the hazelnuts grown in the US are grown in Oregon, and that Oregon State University developed the blight resistant Jefferson variety after the Barcelona variety was nearly wiped out?). And many other fascinating topics.  The food was excellent, as always, and our table was right next to an open door so the temperature was perfect.

After dinner we drove through town (nothing new to report) and got home in time to go down to the  beach and get back up for the sunset, which was beautiful. We were able to see the sun go down right into the ocean, but there were too many clouds for a green flash.

Then it was time for Dave to make a fire and me to start writing. It’s good to be here. 

Here we are!