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!