Saturday, with some downtime.

We both woke up early and decided to head up to Ecola for some geocaching. I wisely ate breakfast (more cookies in milk) and we got in the car for the first time since we got here on Thursday. We’d been incredibly lucky with the weather, but it was chilly and gray on our way out, with rain predicted in the afternoon. We wore raincoats. We’ve gone on this trail before to geocache, but there’s a new bunch of caches. Also, now we know that it is a very steep up and down climb, so we were prepared and not crabby. There are 14 markers on the trail, and at each one there’s a photo on a website that you match up and assign a number to. At the end of the hike you add up the numbers and that’s the address of the cache. We took the side trail to the lighthouse viewpoint as well, which was fantastic. It was a good hike, we didn’t get rained on, and we got to do a treasure hunt as well. We also discovered that there’s a trail from Seaside to Ecola that’s on our to-do list.

When we got back it was time for lunch, and because Dave skipped breakfast he was very hungry. It was time for Bill’s, where we got some scoop on the relationship between Bill’s and the Smokehouse, and why there was molasses stout (the assistant brewmaster ordered it just before he was let go). We had reservations for Castaways for dinner, which the food and drinks are great but the desserts are not, so we shared a phenomenal pumpkin cheesecake with a molasses-gingersnap crust. I will remember it forever.

After lunch we did a little wandering through town, then back to the hotel for some Scrooge (Alistair Sim version), napping, reading and knitting. We also played 2 games of Fluxx, which is more fun with more people, and made our 7Cs reservations for next year. Then it was time to eat again. Dinner at Castaways was a little slow – they were shortstaffed – but very good. I also had their strawberry-hibiscus lemonade without the vodka, and it was really, really good.

When we got back it was clearing up and feeling warm, so we went for a walk on the beach. The moon’s about ¼, and was making enough light that walking on the beach was easy. It was also very very windy, so we shouldered our way down the beach towards Haystack. The sand was blowing across the beach in ghostly waves and it was exhilarating (and tiring). We turned around at the creek at Midtown, and it was very fun being blown back up the beach.

We finished off the evening with pie (for Dave, making up for his lack of breakfast) and more seasonal videos. It was another good day.