Life is a Beach

I love going to the beach. When I was a kid, we used to spend some time in the summer with our grand parents who lived 26 miles from the Oregon coast. We didn’t spend a lot of time at the coast but we usually took at least one trip there every summer and it was my favorite day of our summer vacation.
   
My mom and grandmother loved eating at a little place near Depot Bay called the Sea Hag.  Great name for a restaurant, huh? She and our mom always loved ordering crab louie. They would talk about that seafood salad for the entire year ... anticipating the next time they got to go for one. We rarely visited the beach without a stop at the Sea Hag. Those were the good old days.

These are the good new days! Besides Cape Lookout, our favorite spot is Cannon Beach. It is world famous for Haystack Rock and no matter how many times I post a photo from there, I always get wonderful comments. It is extra special now because we often are there with our grand kids when we visit. They love building a sand castle and at least one of them still enjoys being buried in sand and then having his picture taken. I’ll be sad when nobody wants to do those things any longer ... because they’re “too old for that”.

I often wonder what it would be like to live on the beach. I don’t believe I would appreciate it nearly like I do now.  And, I cannot imagine what the days and days of rain and fog would do to my mental health. I’m pretty sure I’d end up at the mental institution in Salem. Did you know there are people who actually like rain? I don’t think they are quite right in the head, but that’s just me. I need sunshine ... and a lot of it.

We visited the beach for a day on our recent trip to Portland. We watched the weather report and it was a crap shoot that paid off in big dividends when we got there. The forecast was for 59 degrees and cloudy. We got closer to 65 and awesome blue skies. This is the second trip where we got stellar weather. Those days are rare at the coast and we got one. Lucky us! The only thing that would have made the day more perfect is if my dog, Missy, had been there. She would have loved walking near the water. I felt jealous every time someone with dogs walked by. You can actually see the dogs smiling with their posture as they run up and down the coastline, sometimes darting into the tide to chase a stick or just to cool off.

While we don’t have a favorite beach restaurant, I will forever remember the carrot and garbanzo bean salad Wynter brought to share with us this time. We always pack a picnic lunch and this time we even remembered to bring a blanket. We had sandwiches, licorice, Pirate Booty, Cheetos and hand-picked strawberries from the day before. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the fire ants on a log! That’s a celery stick with peanut butter and craisins (ants) placed accordingly on the “log”. Who needs a crab louie when you can have that?

It was a most fabulous day and I can hardly wait until we go again.  love, susan