The Left Coast

I'm just going to lead with this.

The weekend before – that is, yesterday and the day before – I completed my Peak Pilates advanced mat certification class. There were just two of us in the class (the other student was Gala Davis from Seward, Alaska) and it was very fun and also exhausting. I spent Friday and Saturday nights in the wonderful Airbnb in Sellwood (1104 SE Nehalem) and had ice cream both nights.

On Sunday when I got home I was so exhausted that I took a long bath, had dinner (Dave did the cleanup which was such a gift) and was in bed by 9:30 – and slept until almost 8. I thought I would be really sore but I wasn’t.

We packed up and left the house at 10:15, putting us at Bill’s just a little after 11:30. We sat on the adults only side and had yummy Bill’s beer’n’burgers. The server gave Dave a hard time when he wasn’t immediately ready with his second beer order – they know him there. It was a warm and sunny day, with fog out at the horizon.

After lunch we walked on the beach past Mo’s to the first large-ish rock, and then got in the car to go for a drive. We drove down to Wheeler to look at the restaurant where we planned to have dinner (good food is hard to find in Cannon Beach on a Monday night), which is next door to the Wheeler Marina where you can rent kayaks and kayak on the Nehalem river, which we might do.

On the way back Dave saw a sign for the Nehalem Fish Hatchery. We’ve recently become interested in Fish Hatcheries, so we turned off 101 and drove 11 miles on 53 to Fish Hatchery Lane and the hatchery. Oh man, it was so cool. For one thing, the people who work there live there in houses, and they also have a HATCHERY HOST who lives in a trailer. They have a fish food dispenser so you can feed the big fish in pond 7, which we did – they are rainbow trout and look full grown. We saw lots and lots of fish in all sizes, and they would all swim to the other side of their pools when we walked by.

I'm hitching a ride on the fish transport truck

As we got to the end of pond 1 we saw a sign for a trail – 250 yards to the waterfall, 500 yards for the whole loop. So we had to do it, and found the most beautiful beach by the side of the stream, with a waterfall. We walked the whole length of the loop and then visited the winter coho in their pool, and then headed out. We kept going on 53 to where it joins 26 so we made a loop. On the way we saw a sign for a trail to Soapstone Lake, which we might do. 

We got back and checked into our room at Schooner’s Cove, and relaxed briefly. During our relaxing I got an e-mail from Mimi, my teacher at the Wine and Spirits Archive, telling me that I passed my WSET Level 2 test with distinction – 98 out of 100 points. It’s making me nutz wondering which of the 50 questions I missed, but I am very proud of myself anyway.

We headed back to Wheeler and The Salmonberry for dinner. It was not exactly what we expected – like Mac’s in Chatham, you order as you come in and then they bring you your food like a sit down restaurant – but we ended up getting an outside table on the porch overlooking the river and the food was very good and the sun was shining and the clouds were hanging on the mountains and I don’t know if we’ll ever go back there but we are very glad we went. The oysters rivalled the ones on the Cape.

This isn't even all the pelicans

Then it was back to the hotel where we meant to relax, really we did, but there was a HUGE flock of pelicans on the beach so we had to go see them. They were on the other side of Ecola creek, and over some very bumpy sand so we felt like explorers as we walked over to see them. On the way back the sand in the creek tried to swallow us but we escaped with only a little dampness on one of my legs. Then we did sit down and relax in our room with the door open and the sound of the ocean.

We drove by the little house several times and saw its new roof but that’s about it. There is no sand report.