Every year…or two….I just might take a trip with my friends Carol or Mary that is actually not about gardening. I include such trips here because this blog is for me to read and relive someday if I am lucky enough to reach old age. I’ve been to the Sylvia Beach Hotel with both of my best book-loving old friends, but in spring of 2010 Carol (whom I’ve known for 27 years and who visits me from Seattle) and I wanted to go somewhere that required less driving time. Thus we rented a room at the Sea Sprite in Cannon Beach. While I’ve visited Cannon Beach often (especially for the cottage tour), I’d never stayed overnight there.
The photo is from their website. The fold out couch was very comfy. I would advise getting the upstairs room even though more expensive because we could hear a lot of walking and noise from upstairs. I also found that all the LED lights in the room (microwave, stove, clock…) required, for me, the strategic hanging of a bath towel to block them. Otherwise, I felt at ease and happy in the room. When we needed a reading lamp, the manager gave me hers from the office. That alone impressed me with good, kind service (very different from the upcoming Hardy Plant study weekend in Portland when Sheila and I, staying in a dorm room on the Portland State U. campus, could not get a second reading lamp at all for four nights….despite repeatedly trying and despite the fact that the room had no overhead light!!). But I digress…Another factor that would bring us back to the Sea Sprite is the view RIGHT outside of our room.
We managed to get into The Irish Table restaurant for dinner on our first evening. (During the day it’s The Sleepy Monk coffee house.) It takes no dinner reservations except for parties of six or more, and people line up outside at 5.15 hoping to get in. We got there even earlier and were about sixth in line!
Back at the Sea Sprite, the upstairs guests were enjoying the sunset. (Another advantage to being upstairs…a better view as the lower rooms are down below the lawn a bit.)
Thanks to daylight savings time, we had time for a post-dinner sunset walk down to the famous haystack rock and back. The tide was way out. It had only been a few days before that the horrible Japanese tsunami had sent us up to the hill above our house because of a related tsunami warning on our Peninsula. The Cannon Beach weekend coincided with an internet tizzy over a “Supermoon” that supposedly would cause earthquakes and tsunamis all over the world. Fortunately I’d read the debunking of that theory and was only somewhat anxious to be on the beach.
Soon after we got back to our room, the mist rolled in and we could not see the much-heralded super moon.
Sunday we walked from the Sea Sprite in the Tolovana neighbourhood north to Cannon Beach downtown and back. I recalled when Carol and I had last visited the Sylvia Beach, aches and pains prevented me from walking very well on the beach. A couple of years later, I felt several years younger and had no troubles with the walk of, surely, a few miles. Maybe that’s the difference in taking a spring or autumn trip….But no, I’d created my whole new garden over the winter so had not exactly rested up.
The downtown Cannon Beach gardens, usually wonderful, did not inspire me to take any photos on this trip. Springtime seemed delayed in 2010. However, dare I say it, I thought my Long Beach gardens looked better than Cannon Beach. I would rarely get to crow about that because Cannon Beach is famed for its landscaping.
In the Sea Sprite garden (which I had the urge to mulch!) lived bunnies….They also visited outside our room. We were smitten with the bunny family, but when I posted the photos to Facebook my dear gardening friend Sheila was not equally moved. Her garden is bunny-plagued so she prefers to think of them as rodents (less cute and fuzzy in the battle for garden rights).
I love to go on trips with Carol or Mary because dining out is always a priority. On Saturday night we ate at Newman’s at 988, a restaurant in a lovely old house, said to be the “chef’s night out” place in Cannon Beach.
I had the four course Chef’s dinner; Carol had lobster raviola. The soup was smoked tomato. The dessert: scones, which seemed to be the featured dessert of the week because of St. Patrick’s Day. My review: It was tasty, and expensive, and I like our local Depot and Pelicano better.
The begging seagulls outside our window bade us farewell the next morning. We decided we would definitely like to stay at the Sea Sprite (upstairs!) again, although I also have a craving to find the perfect, kind of quirky, quiet lodging with a view in downtown Cannon Beach. We are both comfortable someplace not to fancy (which is why we had decided against staying at the trés upscale Stephanie Inn).