Day 5 - It's all good

 

We woke up to beautiful blue skies and a much calmer ocean this morning. After breakfast Dave decided to go for a beach walk – as a side note, it’s just weird with the sands so high and the high tides so low, you can pretty much go for a walk anytime – anyway, Dave went for a beach walk and I stayed here and did Tai Chi and Pilates. Tai Chi overlooking the waves in a quiet house is peaceful and delicious.

Dave got home at the end of Tai Chi and went out on the deck for recorder practice while I did pilates, and his practice continued on through the weekly zoom call with the Bubster and Ben, except that Ben wasn’t there due to a small accident (broken glass) that required both parents for cleanup and corral. We had a nice chat anyway. The kids had crepes for breakfast and then did hanging out in town.

 

We met them for lunch at Warren House, which has a sunny beer garden in the back and a sunny deck in the front. Once we were seated at our usual table on the sunny deck it felt like a regular Warren House lunch, except they didn’t have the smokked salmon salad that I usually have. It was nice to have a break from things feeling weird. After lunch we went for a hike in Oswald West. We did the two car shuffle, and got very lucky to get parking spaces at both ends – Sunday afternoon at 2 is a pretty busy time. The hike was quite interesting, because there were many fallend trees to scramble around. If we hadn’t me someone at the first fallen tree who told us that the trail was passable to elk flats we probably would have given up. As it was there was lots of scrambling and everybody had a good time. The temperature under the trees was just right. There was some excitement at the elk flats parking area – ambulances and police cars and the like. We don’t know what it was all about – we think someone might have fallen at the Devil’s Cauldron overlook.

After the hike we had time to go back to our respective places and get cleaned up and then head up to Astoria for dinner at the Bridgewater Bistro. Because of eating outside all of our dinners have been early – last year they ended up all being early too, for some reason – and it makes the afternoons too short. But it’s not a lot of fun eating dinner outside when it’s dark and cold, so it is what it is. We had a marvelous table at the far corner of the deck, and the it was warm enough for shirtsleeves through most of the meal. The food was wonderful – they make a savory crab cheesecake that’s just wonderful, for example – and the drinks were also good, and my raspberry peach crumble with ice cream pretty much was the cherry on the cake, if you’ll permit me to mix my metaphors.

 

We came back to the house for our last game night – we started with pepper, which Dave won and then Jen won and then I won TWICE IN A ROW, which is the first time I have won at pepper in several years. Then we had a totally wild and crazy trouble game which Jen also won, even though Josh had looked like a shoo-in. Josh is a very good sport about not winning, which he did not learn from me.

 

Then it was late, and time for J&J to head back to their hotel. They’re taking off tomorrow so Josh can get ready for Army school. It was so good to have them here, and I’m glad our last day together was close to perfect.