June

Whoa!! July is almost gone and I’m just getting started on June.  In my defense, July has been busy, just not with many adventures.

Adventures

Back to June. We did have a wonderful adventure in June.  With David’s surgery looming at the end of the month we had to get out of town but not far.  This of course meant the coast. 

Side note here:  I spent nearly 56 years in Washington state and we always referred to going to the Pacific as going to the ocean . In Oregon you go to the coast.

After days of perusing different campgrounds we found a site at Cape Lookout State Park.  The park is located just south of Tillamook and north of Pacific City on Oregon’s north coast.  The tent camp sites are all surrounded by high shrubbery on three sides giving privacy.  The RV sites across from the beach access not so much.  We knew nothing about the park when we reserved it.  Since we are completely self-contained we took a tent site.  Best decision we could have made.  The bushes around us were full of birds.   I spent hours just listening to and watching birds; robins, red wing black birds, what may have been swifts or swallows, and a cedar wax wing (thank you Rebecca for the identification). 

Fortunately, the weather was lovely the first  two days. The beach is flat leaving it quite shallow and relatively warm when the tide starts coming back to shore.  Walking southward there is a small waterfall from the bluff above. We could hear it from the tide line. It was so pretty.  Further south is a cave we were too late to enter safely. 

We walked the beach the first day for over an hour, about the maximum David could tolerate.  He also sunburned the top of his feet.  The following day David had a problem with shoes and was still tired from the previous day’s activities, so we kept the walk to a much shorter trip.  

Much of that second day was spent at the campsite reading and listening to birds. We also managed a camp fire that evening.  One of the few we’ve been able to have over the past two years of travel. Fortunately, it was early enough in the year that the fire hazard was low for the coast.  Fires have been burning in Oregon since our May adventure.

Our last day was our leaving day.  We took our time since we knew this would be the last trip for a very long time.  The weather was cool and overcast, which is perfect for the day you leave such a beautiful place.

Since we were heading home and we had time we stopped for lunch at Pelican Brewing in Pacific City.  If you like beer or just good food in a beautiful setting this is the place.  We stopped here with our daughter and her family – at that time there was only one grandson – back in 2019. It was August, the height of summer, and a very beautiful warm day at that time.  The wait was long but did not disappoint.  Much shorter wait in early June. 

As I mentioned; this was the last trip for a very long time. Once again we found ourselves waiting again.  This would be the biggest, scariest  adventure we’d ever faced together.  I think it may have topped the birth of our first child on the scary scale.

On June 23rd David had open heart surgery.  There were a few things going on that I will not reveal as I know David would not appreciate that but the surgeon gave him his life back.  

Shenanigans

Let me go back a bit in the month.

Our adventures for the summer may have come to an end with Cape Lookout, that does not mean we were done with shenanigans,  

Our anniversary is smack in the middle of June. When this happens we usually go out during the week to avoid crowds.  This year it was on a Monday.  There are very few restaurants open on a Monday evening in Eugene. So we decided to start our celebration the Thursday  before Father’s Day with pedicures.  That’s right, pedicures.  David had never had one and I hadn’t had one in 10 months.  It was great. The ladies at Tippi’s Nail Bar were wonderfully sweet and wanted us to pose for photos.  I think David is sold on pedicures. 

Dinner was planned for Friday night at a  favorite restaurant , one we rarely go to since it is out of our usual price range:  rye. (proper spelling and punctuation, look it up) The restaurant is under what may be the management of the third owners.  When David and I first found rye the owners were a chocolatier and a whiskey expert. Two of my favorite sort of people.  They served preprohibition drinks as well as the usual spirits.  (This is where I first had one of my favorite cocktails – the Mikado or also known as a Japanese.).  They pair their hand made chocolates with whiskeys for dessert.  Chocolate and whiskey.  How could a person go wrong? The current owner/management team no longer offers my favorite; dark chocolate peanut butter cup topped with cayenne pepper.  The milk chocolate peanut butter cup with chipotle salt was an  adequate substitute.  And it is still served with a short shot of Red Breast Irish Whiskey ( yes it’s from Northern Ireland but still a heavenly Irish whiskey. 

Even though David  is still in the recovery period I can already see dramatic changes in his health.  We can’t wait to get back on the road again. So stay tuned in and I will post alerts on Instagram.