We're Bad At Relaxing

Lincoln City, Newport and Salem, Oregon

March 4-5, 2014

Yesterday I decided I wanted to go to the aquarium in Newport. Our friend Aly (mentioned in the last post) was also supposed to meet us in the afternoon or early evening in Lincoln City so we could see her one more time before she left for Arizona. Which meant we had to get up in the morning. Seeing as we stayed up too late the night before (I was making CDs for Aly for her drive! It was for a good cause!), that was going to be a bit painful.

However, we did manage to get up. Griff was kind enough to take the first shower and then go in search of food while I took my turn. We didn’t want to repeat ourselves with breakfast though, so we decided to try something new--Shannon found a highly rated Hawaiian restaurant on Yelp that happened to serve breakfast, and that we decided to try out.

Finding stuff while traveling is always an adventure. Particularly when GPS systems are involved. We'd had some trouble with the map app on our phones the day before. It wasn't lack of signal, it was that the GPS kept trying to send us to the wrong location, but only by a few blocks and maybe the opposite side of the street. Griff figured out that Lincoln City's address system had been programmed into the map wrong. So I had some trouble finding the place, and spent the better part of 40 minutes doing a 10-minute drive.

Eventually, though, I did find it. It’s called “Oceans Apart”, and I can't recommend it highly enough. I had some kind of teriyaki hamburger patty on rice with the most wonderful gravy, Shannon had a kind of shrimp fried rice dish. Both were delicious, plus they were reasonably priced. I've never had anything like it, and I definitely want to go back (Me too!).

We had fun with the sunglasses
at Fred Meyer though. ^_^

Shannon realized she had forgotten a belt so our first stop in Newport was Fred Meyers. As It turned out they had about seven women’s belts in the entire store, and they were all sized for dolls (I am inconveniently not doll-sized :P). I think I could have worn one for a rather tight necklace. We had better luck at Walmart.

Now that we could be sure to avoid wardrobe malfunctions, we finally headed to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. 

I saw what I believe to be my first live seahorse (as well as my second, third, and eighth), and attempted (with almost no success) to photograph one. In case anyone reading this doesn't know, I suck at photography.

I got a good seahorse pic! :D

It is a constant lament of Shannon’s that I can’t take good pictures (not really constant, only occasionally :P), so she never has good pictures of herself from our trips (this part does make me a bit sad though). Although in my defense there was another fish that kept photobombing my shots. I think he was on fish cocaine.

It's true. This fish did seem to enjoy photobombing. And swimming in frenetic circles. 

We got to see the sea otters being fed, which was adorable, some enormous Japanese Spider crabs, which were terrifying, a very tired octopus (it wouldn't come out! I wanted to take its picture. :c), and a bunch of very loud sea lions. 

Sea otter eating! : )

Our favorite, though, were the seals. One in particular. He was swimming upside down, very slowly and sedately, as if he hadn't a care in the world. I said that he was probably singing to himself. This is the Seal Song.

I know it's not a great picture, but you can kinda see that he's upside down. He was so cute! 

Griff imitating a very grumpy looking fish. 

Eel! 

This fish is creepy looking. o_O

Sea nettles

Ahhhh! Shark! This guy was one of the biggest sharks in the shark tunnel thingy. They were all so hard to photograph,
this is one of the best shots I got. : /

By this time we were starving, and decided we wanted pizza. Shannon’s favorite pizza place is Papa Johns, and the one in Bend has inexplicably closed, so we first tried to find one of those. But the closest Papa John’s was in Salem (1 hour from Lincoln City :c). So we decided to try a local place in Lincoln City instead.

Griff playing pool in Humble Pie

The place we decided on is called Humble Pie. I liked the name because of a funny song I ran across on Pandora--King of Spain by Moxy Fruvous. Humble Pie was pretty cool. They have a pool table-- which Shannon and I used while we waited for our pizza--kites on the ceiling, and a very colorful tie-dye style decor. Hundreds (thousands?) of people have written on the walls. I spent almost as much time reading the walls as I did playing pool. The guy behind the counter was kind of scary-looking, but he was nice enough and he made a great pizza. We drove back to the Surftides to enjoy it and watch some Rizzoli and Isles. I made it through an episode and a half before I fell asleep. We never did meet up with Aly because she decided to delay leaving Oregon for another day.

The next day we had to head home, but our only time limit was being home early enough to get ready for our Victorian Dance Class party (it's a really fun class. Daisy and Amy, the teachers, are very nice. You can find more info here). We decided to make the best of the time we still had. We went to the beach early, so we could still use the showers in our room afterwards. It was raining and REALLY cold and windy. I had trouble seeing after only a few minutes because the salt in the wind was building up on my glasses. Shannon wanted to take pictures of her “Know it all” button in the surf. 

La la la ♫

*sense of foreboding*

Oh no!

Auugghh... *blub blub*

Me, soaked and cold, but happy

Once she got some good ones she had me take her camera back into the room for protection, and by the time I’d done that and come back she was freezing (soaked) and ready to go back to the warm shower. I was already soaked to the skin through two layers, so I didn't mind. I’m really glad we spent some time on the beach, though. Even if it’s freezing cold there’s still something inspiring and moving about the ocean. I don’t realize I miss it until I’m back. I can almost see what the stories mean when they talk about the sea calling the sailors back.

We got cleaned up (and warmed up), and checked out of the hotel. It was sad to leave, but I know we’ll be back when we can. We still hadn't had breakfast, so we decided to try out the local doughnut shop, Lighthouse Doughnuts. They were good, but unremarkable.

Since we hadn't managed to meet up with Aly the day before, we arranged to meet her for lunch in Salem. Since she didn't know the city and had no GPS, we decided to meet at an unmistakable landmark: the Capitol building.

But of course, all did not quite go as planned. Aly was still exhausted so she got out of Bend late. Then there was an accident somewhere along the way that she got stuck behind. Griff accidentally took a wrong turn and didn't realize it until he'd gone quite a ways in the wrong direction. (I'm still not sure how he made the wrong turn in the first place. We've done this drive several times before...) It took us about 40 minutes to get back on track. We almost ran out of gas because we hadn't planned to drive so far before filling up. 

We still arrived a bit before Aly, so Shannon decided to do a little exploring. We found a little boutique specializing in vintage clothing called Then Again Classic Fashions. The owner was really friendly. We found some really interesting things there, like a couple pairs of nice dancing gloves for Shannon (in the eras our Victorian Dance class covers, one did not dance without gloves. Since I found some that fit, I jumped on them) and a horrible yellow pimp suit that Shannon thought I should buy (well, he usually has two girls with him. It would have been really funny ^_^). It even had a hat and everything. There were plenty of other silly hats to try on, too. And now I know where to go if I ever need a very specific tie. They have over a thousand.

This was on the wall in Then Again Classic Fashions

Griff the pimp

This was my favorite. He looks like a minister of some ridiculous
little country.

Sometimes I try on silly hats too

Aly let us know she'd made it to Salem while Shannon was buying her gloves, so we set out for the Capitol building. We looked around for a while, but didn’t see her anywhere. A couple of texts later we realized we were on opposite sides of the building. Shannon and I crossed through the Capitol, and I've never gotten such dirty looks for wearing casual clothes before. You’d have thought we were naked. It was ridiculous.

We found this in the Capitol Building.  It's the fanciest "wet floor" sign I've ever seen.
Your tax dollars at work? 

Once we finally found Aly, we decided to go to O'Sushi. While it was really good to see her, it was also a touch melancholy. She’d been back in Bend for a year, and we had barely spent any time with each other because we were all so busy. But we got to share stories, catch up and just spend some time together over food, and that was really nice. I was sorry to see her go, but I’m glad that she’s going to go back where she was happy.

Griff, me and Aly after sushi and right before Aly left for Arizona. <3 us.

We left Salem a bit later than we had meant to, and had to hoof it back to Bend. We ended up being a bit tardy to the dance party, but it turned out fine and we had a lot of fun.

Attempted R&R

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).

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.

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!

The island with the windswept trees that I wanted to photograph. 

The beach we wandered around on.

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."

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).

S'mores! : 

Once we were fed, we went to Safeway to get s’mores supplies, and came back to the hotel. We went swimming for a couple of hours, then used the hotel fire pits to roast marshmallows (they turned one back on just for us). It was a really nice night. We ended up staying up way too late, though. Shannon’s been working on making CDs for her friend, Aly (who is lame and moving back to Arizona to be happy. Psh.) and I’ve been playing Monster Hunter. And writing this blog post. Tomorrow might be kind of rough. We actually have stuff planned. I guess we’ll see how it goes.