Pivot Day 4 - In which our recliners call to us from afar

 

One thing we’ve noticed when we go on cruises is that for the first few days we rush from event to event – a cooking demo here, a navigation talk there, a wine tasting back where the cooking demo was, and of course lots of exercise classes for me. This vacation has felt like that, so this morning we decided we’d have some down time. It was a cold, foggy day pretty much all day, which made a relaxed morning even more appealing. I spent a frustrating but eventually fruitful time picking up the stitches for one sleeve on the cotton sweater I’m making, and we finally took the “nature trail” from the campground entrance down to the bay. There is a hotel down there – the Alsea resort – but mostly what is down there on a spit of land jutting out into the bay is the Bayshore Beach Club, a subdivision/community with a very nice clubhouse. We know about this because we walked past the club house on our way to the ocean side, where we saw a fairly large group of ladies doing water aerobics in their heated outdoor pool. It reminded us of the gated communities they have in Florida, only without the gates. Also all of the houses are houses, and weren’t built with any kind of conformity in mind at all. We did not see any houses that made us want to move here, even if there is a nice pool with water aerobics.

For lunch we headed up to Newport to eat at the Nye Beach Taphouse, where Dave had a very nice experience last time he was in Newport. Unfortunately this time wasn’t quite as nice, and we probably don’t need to go back there. Nothing was particularly wrong with it, but not much was particularly right with it. I’d give it a meh+, with the extra points for the covered patio with heaters. On the way home we stopped at Freddie’s for some groceries and at Pirate’s Plunder to get a pirate flag for Dave, but they were completely out of the classic ones. How can that be? It will have to be Amazon to the rescue.

Yesterday when we went on the hobbit trail we’d both noticed that in the other direction you could walk to Heceta Head lighthouse, and thought it might be fun. It’s a very pretty hike on the west side of 101, distinguished by the extraordinary number of ferns growing on the trees, and the larger number of the evergreen trees (species unknown) which have a number of curving branches starting low to the ground. Another distinguishing feature is that it starts out walking gently uphill, and then more uphill, and more uphill, even resorting to several short flights of the stairs that the local trail builders seem to delight in. It probably gains 400’ or so in altitude, and then dives down the other side in a series of fairly steep switchbacks and a longish set of stairs. Then suddenly you come out and there is the red turban top of the lighthouse – an unexpected viewpoint that makes the whole hike worthwhile. We missed the lighthouse being open by just a few minutes, which was very disappointing since, as Dave pointed out, what’s better after a steep hike than some stairs to the top of a lighthouse? We were pleased by the presence of port-a-potties since it meant that we didn’t have to walk down to the parking area, but it did mean that we didn’t walk past the lightkeeper’s house, which is now a B&B – how cool would that be to stay at?

Especially since if you stayed there you wouldn’t have to walk back up the steep side of the trail, which almost defeated me. I need to stop more often for rests! It was very foggy and that made it very humid, and for some reason neither Dave nor I thought to take off an outer layer of clothing until we were most of the way up. Once we did we felt better, and as we came over the crest of the ridge we both could hear our recliners calling out to us. We had a nice walk back to the car and got home to them as soon as we could.

After last night’s delicious dinner, both of us felt like we had done enough dinners out, and since we were supposed to be camping in Lava Beds (which, sadly, is now involved in the Antelope fire) we had brought some dinners to make. Dave had shredded some carrots and made dressing at home, which he augmented with cabbage and red onion (cut using his mad knife skills) for a fresh coleslaw to accompany leftover BBQ chicken and baked beans, one of our favorite meals and a nice change from too much food and dessert.

After dinner before our relaxing time we embarked on a new voyage – working our way through the Le Nez du Vin wine aroma training kit. We sniffed our way through citrus, tropical, apple and pear. The big excitement for both of us was smelling lychee, which shows up in so many wine descriptions but which neither of us remember ever smelling in person.

The forecast for tomorrow keeps changing – keeping our fingers crossed for more sun less fog.