Lincoln City, Oregon
March 2-3, 2014
Shannon and I weren't able to go on a Valentine's Day trip this year, so we decided to take a romantic trip in the beginning of March instead.
As it turned out, we really needed a vacation in the beginning of March. Especially Shannon. As everyone who's reading this probably knows, Shannon isn’t very good at sleeping (it’s not that I’m not good at it. It’s that I’m too busy). She tends to push herself so hard all the time that she usually doesn’t get more than five or six hours of sleep. We'd both been stressing out--working super hard getting ready for Europe, cleaning things, making my car work, dealing with bad weather, and just generally being adults. So we booked three nights at the Surftides, our favorite seaside hotel in Lincoln City.
The plan was to pick Shannon up from work at 5pm, come home, quickly make/eat dinner, finish packing and leave as soon as we could in order to avoid as many bad road conditions as possible. We managed to leave by 7pm, which was better than we expected (more like a record…). The drive over went fairly well. There was a ton of rain, which made it kind of hard to see the road, but there was almost no ice and we managed to make it over with no incident (thank goodness!).
We arrived at the Surftides around 11:30pm and got checked in. (We tried to be cheap and get a partial view room but…) The only problem was that we couldn't see the ocean (at all! D:) and our room was a lot smaller than we were expecting. We like the Surftides because the rooms are nice, big, and clean, and the hotel is right on the beach. And it has a wonderful view of the ocean. So we were really disappointed. However, I actually managed to solve that problem. I went to the front desk and asked if it would be possible to upgrade our room. The lady working was really, really nice and upgraded us to a room with a panoramic view for free (granted, the hotel was practically empty…). It was awesome. Our room is beautiful. And much bigger.
Of course, before we went to sleep, we had to dip our toes in the ocean (more like I had to. Griff probably could’ve done without freezing his feet off). Then it was straight to bed (he didn’t even have to make me go :P).
Shannon and I weren't able to go on a Valentine's Day trip this year, so we decided to take a romantic trip in the beginning of March instead.
As it turned out, we really needed a vacation in the beginning of March. Especially Shannon. As everyone who's reading this probably knows, Shannon isn’t very good at sleeping (it’s not that I’m not good at it. It’s that I’m too busy). She tends to push herself so hard all the time that she usually doesn’t get more than five or six hours of sleep. We'd both been stressing out--working super hard getting ready for Europe, cleaning things, making my car work, dealing with bad weather, and just generally being adults. So we booked three nights at the Surftides, our favorite seaside hotel in Lincoln City.
The plan was to pick Shannon up from work at 5pm, come home, quickly make/eat dinner, finish packing and leave as soon as we could in order to avoid as many bad road conditions as possible. We managed to leave by 7pm, which was better than we expected (more like a record…). The drive over went fairly well. There was a ton of rain, which made it kind of hard to see the road, but there was almost no ice and we managed to make it over with no incident (thank goodness!).
We arrived at the Surftides around 11:30pm and got checked in. (We tried to be cheap and get a partial view room but…) The only problem was that we couldn't see the ocean (at all! D:) and our room was a lot smaller than we were expecting. We like the Surftides because the rooms are nice, big, and clean, and the hotel is right on the beach. And it has a wonderful view of the ocean. So we were really disappointed. However, I actually managed to solve that problem. I went to the front desk and asked if it would be possible to upgrade our room. The lady working was really, really nice and upgraded us to a room with a panoramic view for free (granted, the hotel was practically empty…). It was awesome. Our room is beautiful. And much bigger.
Of course, before we went to sleep, we had to dip our toes in the ocean (more like I had to. Griff probably could’ve done without freezing his feet off). Then it was straight to bed (he didn’t even have to make me go :P).
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| I (Mouse) was playing with the different modes on my camera while we chatted and relaxed. |
The next morning we slept late and I went to get us coffee (meaning a decaf mocha for Shannon, a hot chocolate for me, and a couple of breakfast sandwiches). I found this cute little coffee shop called Beachtown Coffee about six blocks away (all uphill). I jogged over (which really impressed the coffee shop lady) and had a nice chat with the lady tending the counter. I think I’ll make a habit of going back whenever we’re in town (this is news to me… o_O). She made the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had (it was good. He let me taste it). It tasted like liquid Milano cookies, in a good way. When I got back we spent a while just sitting on our little balcony (another perk of our free upgrade) talking and watching the ocean.
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| The bridge |
At about 2 we decided it was time to start moving and drove around to explore the town for a while. We found a bowling alley (it was closed and kind of creepy looking. The promised “arcade” was exactly five games which all looked dumb) and stopped to look at the movies playing in the tiny theater. We drove past some antique stores, the local branch of the Oregon Coast Community College (ONE building?!), and dozens of saltwater taffy stores. Then we took a short walk on the beach and took some pictures. Actually I made Griff stop at this bridge so I could take some pictures of these tiny islands with windblown trees on them. We ended up staying and wandering around at the edge of the incoming water so I could take pictures of the Know It All button and the graffiti under the bridge. Also, I found a cool stick!
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| The island with the windswept trees that I wanted to photograph. |
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| The beach we wandered around on. |
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| The graffiti I found under the bridge. It's... kind of weird. The faded pink along the bottom says, "Peace Love 4 Ever No Hate Give Hugs." |
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| I snuck a picture of this pretty glass covered desk at the glass studio. |
By that point it was about 5 pm, which we normally regard as not-even-close-to-dinner time (mostly because I am usually still at work and Griff is still sleeping), but seeing that Lincoln City is a beach town, we knew everything was about to start closing. And we were hungry. We actually didn't go straight to food though. We stopped at Jennifer L. Sears' Glass Studio to poke around a bit first. Apparently they'll let you blow your own glass. (We're totally doing that next time!) We decided to try a new place for dinner, and ended up at J’s Fish and Chips. It was a little bit unfriendly (largely because the other patrons stared at us and didn’t talk. The staff was fine), but the food was wonderful (I thought it was okay. The chowder was good but had too much pepper in it. I liked the fish and chips, but of course it just isn’t McDonagh’s).
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| S'mores! : |
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