What a great weekend. The trip to the WA coast was really nice. It started on Friday right after work sitting in traffic on our way south. We still got Long Beach at about 21:00 which wasn’t bad. Surprisingly the entire group was still up drinking whiskey and just hanging out in one of the living rooms. We spent some time with everyone and then the group broke up for bed time. The weekend at the inn was different than it would normally have been. The first weekend after Thanksgiving, Bill and Suzie (the innkeepers) invite some of their favorite guests as well as some of their friends and everyone helps decorate the inn for the holidays. It’s nice because it feels more like a family gathering than just a group of guests.
Saturday we woke up to it snowing really hard and it continued all through breakfast. I’ve never seen it snow at the beach before and it was beautiful. After breakfast we headed down to Astoria for a drive and to pick up some stuff we needed from the store. When we got back to the inn it was time to decorate. It was a lot of fun with everyone (okay, almost everyone except for one Jewish guy) taking part. We worked for about 3 hours and the place looked great when we were done. After a quick nap we re-joined everyone and went to dinner at The Port Bistro in Ilwaco for a great meal. Everyone going out after the decorating is another tradition of the weekend and it’s always a lot of fun. Jayson and I wanted to spend time in the hot tub so we took some time after dinner. It was great to be in it with the storm going on outside.
We hit it off with a really nice couple from Portland. Robert is a police sergeant and Cindy is a veterinarian. Cindy is going through chemotherapy so she’s lost her hair. Robert, Jayson, and I all have shaved or buzzed heads so we made an interesting foursome. We seemed to continually gravitate towards each other all weekend long and hopefully we’ll get to meet up with them again sometime. Jayson and I commented to each other that out of the many times we’ve been to the inn and had a great time, this was by far the most social and fun group.
After breakfast on Sunday we drove down to the beach to watch the waves. Not only was the rain being blown horizontally, so was the sand. It wasn’t too pleasant getting out of the car on the beach so we drove to Cape Disappointment to check out the waves. There’s a great spot across Waikiki cove with a view to the lighthouse. I took a few pics you can check out in the album. The waves were really impressive. At that point the winds were steady at about 45 MPH with gusts that were easily 60 MPH and the waves were 15 to 20 feet high. I had trouble standing in one place because of the wind; I felt like one of those reporters we always see on the news when a hurricane is hitting someplace. Tonight and tomorrow morning the winds are supposed to get up to about 100 MPH and the waves to 45 feet. I really wish we could have stayed to see that, but maybe another time. Ever since we discovered the Long Beach area we’ve wanted to be there for a storm so this was better than we’d ever seen. After some pics and being impressed by the waves we headed home. The drive home was pretty interesting; we had torrential rains, incredible winds, and for about 20 miles lots of snow on the ground. At one point I noticed as we were doing about 50 MPH, the spray from our tires was passing us and blowing faster than the car was moving. If nothing else, the trip wasn’t boring.
So that was our weekend. I expected to enjoy ourselves, but it was nicer than I had anticipated. Jayson was in good spirits all weekend and I think having some new people to be around helped with that. I felt like I was able to decompress, de-stress, and really relax for a while. I definitely needed that.
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| Long Beach - December 2007 |
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