Marriage is Awesome and you go to the Beach.

We were on the coast to celebrate our wedding’s birthday. Which meant my husband had to take me out to dinner. Marriage is awesome.

Since we were in a tiny town, dinner options were limited.

Sure, we weren’t that far from other places but driving = one of us staying sober. And everyone knows sobriety is NOT how you stay in love.

But we were across the street from one of the only restaurants in town, Pacific Way Cafe. Which actually had really stellar reviews. Which is good because the other options were McMenamin’s or something called “Great Wall Restaurant and Lounge”

It’s also the town bakery in the morning. Which meant redic bread baskets

Three types of bread. Because you need variety in your carb consumption.

I honestly don’t get the people who give advice like “ask for no bread basket to save calories!”

Do they hate life? Joy? Happiness?

I ate my bread.

And my Cesar salad

For an entree I had halibut

The green beans with it were legit. Fresh and delicious and totally balanced out the fact that I’d just had a bread basket and mashed potatoes and a salad coated in cheese.

Eating in a restaurant with a bakery attached means you have to order dessert.

Strawberry tart for the husband

And creme brulee for me. Because my husband is a weird face and doesn’t like creme brulee.

Whatevs, more for me.

Post dinner we realized we clearly had more drinking to do. So we went to the one grocery store in town, and found some bubbly. And took it to the beach.

True story btw: room temp bubbly out of the bottle is hard to drink. Too many bubbles.

We persevered.

Watched the sun go down

And my husband took what is possibly my new favorite picture of us

Which he entitled “#marriageisawesomeandyougotothebeach”

Seriously, if you’re my facebook friend you can see, that’s the caption.

Cause marriage is awesome. Especially after a bottle of lukewarm bubbly.

 

Touristy

So, still recapping a trip from a month ago. I win at blogging.

But friends, I wanna tell you about two of my favorite places on the Oregon Coast.

We don’t have real beaches here. They aren’t sunny and warm and happy like you think of when someone says “beach”. They’re rainy and cold and for the most part only very determined six year olds actually go in the water. But we still have fun little towns on them.

We moved from Astoria over to Gearhart. Gearhart is a super tiny town, which as the perk of being absurdly quiet and peaceful

There is one bakery in town. Our hotel was across the street from it. Winning. The vegetables on my tart balance out the puff pastry, right?

If you’re an oregonian Gearhart being so chill is weird because just a few miles down the road is Seaside.

Seaside is touristville. You can rent those stupid bikes that hold 6 people, eat your weight in taffy, feed seals at the crappiest aquarium I’ve ever been to, buy shirts saying “Lifeguard” at the $12.99 store, and ride a carousel.

Seaside doesn’t half-ass the tacky, and I love it for that.

Because honestly, we aren’t too good for Seaside, we rode bikes there (Our hotel had bikes you could use for free. Rad. And my darling husband tried to crash his into me on Highway 101. There was blood. Not kidding)

There was a new ridiculous in the best possible way store in Seaside that sold chocolate covered everything

Bacon? Oh yeah, in multiple flavors.

And chocolate covered poptarts. And chocolate covered nutter butters. And chocolate covered marshmallows.

Seaside is popular with families, so the chocolate covered everything store (actually called The Buzz) had a big line. What’s a family vacation without chocolate covered twinkies?

We gave in. And bought fudge

Six flavors of fudge.

It tasted like the world’s most delicious diabetic coma.

So tourist traps? Love ’em or judge ’em?

Given the number of sweatpants in our home from the $12.99 store (because you ALWAYS need hot pink sweats that say “Oregon” on the booty) I clearly love ’em.

Shufflin’

Sad times: I had a dentist appointment this week and one next week. Turns out next week is the tooth out. Which means I was totally unprepared for a lecture on needing to floss better AND lacking awesome painkillers to make that lecture more fun. Boo.

This means you’ll have to wait till next week to hear how smart I am on drugs*.

Anyhow, way overdue trip recap continues!

Here in Oregon we don’t get a whole lot of that “summer” thing I hear other places get. Case in point:

Mid-July. Looks like February.

It’s part of why we drink so much here. Numbs the grey.

Astoria is at the mouth of the Columbia River. There used to be canneries and things here. But the canneries mostly moved where they could better catch dolphins or something, so the piers have been remade into other stuff. Including a tuna museum. Not joking.

We went for breakfast at Coffee Girl out on one of the piers. You could actually drive *on* the wooden pier, but that seemed terrifying. So we parked and walked across. Which meant cars drove past us AND you could see the spots where the wood MOVED when you walked. Equally terrifying. Good choice me!

But I had a big ol’ scone and coffee the size of my head

I’m on a scone kick. Because they taste like straight butter. Butter has like no carbs so I think it makes me skinny. Right?

The husband had a bagel sandwich thang

We looked through the window at the grey river

And then wandered Astoria for a while, so that we could justify lunch.

We went to the Astoria Column

Totally thought it was going to be lame, but it actually had redunk views.

And finally we’d killed enough time to justify eating at what we’d been told was the best spot in Astoria

The Bowpicker

It’s a boat. A real boat. In a parking lot. Serving fish and chips.

So basically, it’s awesome.

Delicious.

And now, since The Goonies was filmed in Astoria, making this almost relevant, my favorite thing on the internets today:

Everyday I’m shufflin’

 

*Unless you went to college with me.

No Excuse.

Hey friends!

Remember when I blogged?

Yeah, me neither.

I’d give excuses about “being busy” but seriously? I read a book last week entirely because it boasted on the cover “by the author of The Princess Diaries!”

Clearly if I have time to read books that deep I’m not super busy.

But I was busy, and then I was decompressing and attempting to not kill my garden and buying unnecessary dresses.

But I have done a lot since I last blogged, so let’s play catch up shall we?

The husband and I went to the coast for our anniversary last month. Which sounds all cute and romantic or whatever but seriously? We went because he had a meeting in Astoria. Fun!

Astoria is super old. It has historical stuff. And a brewery. I’ll give you a dollar if you can guess which of those two things we spent more time at

Yup, the brewery! History will be there later.

Ft George makes delicious beer. And it’s in cans so it’s extra sustainable. When you drink it you’re basically planting a tree.

(that my friends is a canning line)

Every day is Arbor Day in our house.

We stayed in the Commodore Hotel which seriously looks like it’s competing on America’s Next Ace Hotel. I mean that in a good way though-it was cute, and a fun mix of like, fishing nets and sleekness.

Plus you could rent Free Willy for free from the front desk (it was shot in Astoria!)

There was a cute little coffee shop attached to the hotel

I had to kill time while the husband was doing his work stuff so I grabbed lunch from it

I like sandwiches with bacon, and they like me back. It also had chicken, pesto, and avocado.

It was delicious. Although I didn’t eat lunch until almost 3, and I’d swam for like an hour (another time killing device-the town aquatic center!) so my arm would’ve been equally tasty at that point I bet.

I wandered Astoria a bit while killing time as well and found a store with this

Not sketchy!

I refrained from buying any. But just barely.

I’ll maybe be back to blogging regularlyish now-it’s my last week of working for the summer.

Plus I am getting a wisdom tooth out tomorrow so I’ll have cool painkillers, which I think will make my writing even more manic and less coherent!  Yay!

The Epic Hike

Across Suttle Lake from our campground there Lake Creek Trail goes to Camp Sherman It sounded like a nice hike.

(In my head, btw, Camp Sherman was an old West Town that had like… blacksmith demonstrations and stuff. It’s not. Sad times)

Here’s where the math gets fun.

The lake is about 3.5 miles around. Getting to the other side = 1.75 miles.

The trail was allegedly 4 miles, but it turned out to be longer.

Putting us over 6 miles. And if you’re me, the whole “coming back will take the same number of miles” didn’t register. So 6 is the TOTAL hike.

And, turns out the trail doesn’t take you to Camp Sherman. It takes you near. Where you get on another trail.

See where this is going?

We had a pretty, but long long hike.

When we actually got to Camp Sherman this is what my friendly garmin told me

7.39 miles.

We went to the one and only store in town (sadly not a blacksmith shop)  and ate the lunch of champions

Artichoke dip, trail mix, and PBR.

Classy.

And then, on our way back, things got more ridiculous.

First up, if you’ve been moving for 3 hours, beer hits in pretty quick.

(Especially when you work on finishing off the sixer on the trail)

(It happens.)

Second?

We’re walking in the middle of nowhere. What do we see ahead of us on the trail?

A dog.

We look around for her owner.

No one.

Just the craziest dog I’ve ever seen.

She ran in circles around while we tried to look at her tags. There was a name (Libby) and a PDX phone number.

I got a little sad when we saw her phone number because this dog was so dumb I thought perhaps the simple dog from Hyperbole and a Half was lost again.

(simple dog lives in Bend. It could happen. I dream big)

I feed her, and that cemented in her tiny dog brain to follow us. We hiked a few miles with the world’s craziest dog scampering in and out of sight.

Then, when taking a picture of our canine friend, I realized I suddenly had phone service.

In the woods. Go figure.

I called the number on her tags and talked to a woman who was thrilled we’d found the dog. Which is good because we were less than thrilled at the prospect of figuring out what to do with this creature.

She explained that Libby had chased a deer into the woods and they’d been searching for her.

We agreed to meet up at the lake. I hung up.

And then two deer ran across the path in front of us.

Followed by Libby.

Crap.

We chased her down and a little further up the trail, found campers who gave us some rope to use as a leash.

Libby was not happy.

But we got her safely back to her owner.

And we got back to our yurt, 14.5 miles later, and settled in with some much needed hydration

And that, my friends, was our epic hike. Over 5 hours long, drinking in the woods, and finding a dog.

I’m not sure if the moral of this story is that I should hike more, or never hike again. But it’s one of the two.