Travels with Kelly: Oregon 2006

Other things: Tsunami evacuation routes up the ridges, Kelly's crab, mussel, and oysters from Raymond, hillyness of Astoria.

Oh, and the historical marker to the right -- because, what we all really care about is who authorized the friggin' plaque.

Then we walked up the hill to the Astoria coumn... walked past two deer or elk and climbed to the top.Great great views up there. Kids threw small wood gliders (sold below) off the ledge, some of them went astoundingly far. The trees nearby are coated with planes like Christmas trees.

Kelly and Chena and I hiked in the Ecola State Park for most of the day, and when we returned, the owner of the WaveCrest, Hank, was preparing a gourmet meal for us and some other guests and friends. Dinner was incredible, between Hank's lamb, pesto pasta with potatos and green beans, Dan Sisco's poetry, wine, lemon licquer, and peaches and currants over vanilla whipped cream, Pavarotti, laughter, and a walk on the beach.

Manzanita has several excellent coffeeshop/bakeries, and they rent trikes (something like the "Sidewinder" trike) for riding on the beach. Also we saw a windsailing trike, probably going 20-30mph along the shore.

We continued south through several beach towns and into the Tillamook harbour. Inland of Garibaldi, we found a seafood place, and Kelly needed her shellfish fix, so we stopped briefly there. Next we stopped at the Tillamook cheese factory, fun because they let you see inside the plant works.

The rooms in the Sylvia Beach Hotel are named for authors. We were in the Mark Twain room, which had a fireplace, a deck, a bathtub, and an ocean view from the second floor. After dinner, Kelly was determined to use all of the above, so she set a fire while I had mulled wine and read some Twain in the hotel's library and game room on the 3rd and 4th floor.

When I returned to the room, Kelly had the fire going and had come up with a way to enjoy the bath and the deck to the fullest (of course). She would soak in the very hot water for a few minutes, then run out and sit on the deck, letting the cold wind from the ocean cool her down, then run back in and take another bath. My arrival and use of the bath required that Kelly make a stop at the fireplace while I soaked, and while I was in my first rotation in the breeze and she on her third in the bathtub, a log fell out of the fireplace, setting off the smoke alarm.

We had to turn on the lights to see how to fix the fire and I began fanning the smoke alarm with my towel. (It's about midnight, but until I began fanning in the doorway to the deck, I noticed that there were lights on in the two lodgings south of us, but once I began my fanning routine, curiously, all their lights went out.) Anyway, once we had the logs back in the fire, we turned off the lights, and I stopped fanning the smoke alarm, which promptly went off again! So, while I fanned, Kelly opened windows on the windward and leeward side of the room, and I stopped again, but the red light on the alarm went on again, so again I fanned. After a while, Kelly asked me to tell her each time the red light went on, and it turned out that the light was not only the precursor to the alarm, but also a battery check. So, after about a half and hour of vigorous fanning, the smoke was cleared, and we collapsed onto the floor in front of the fire.

"Now that, young man, is the way to wave a towel!"