Words with Jill

Our friend Jill Essex joined us for a few days, having first visited family in Salem, OR. Even though Jill is an experienced traveler, she had never been to Seaside/Cannon Beach. We enjoyed showing her around “our hood.”

We hiked the Ecola Creek Forest Reserve, which was a so-so four-mile hike along some of Ecola Creek (Cannon Beach’s watershed).

We played The Game of Life but, didn’t finish, because Evelyn was too upset about being the last one to get married.

We played “day spa” at the beach. 😂

Nana and I took Jill to Astoria for a girl’s night out. We ate at one of the few restaurants accepting dine-in — Bridgewater Bistro. The food and wine were exquisite. We especially enjoyed the crab cheesecake and lemon custard.

The next day Jim took most of the day off to do the Arch Cape to Devil’s Cauldron hike with us. We decided to start at Devil’s Cauldron and hike north. The trail traversed along the coast and included all of Short Sands Beach.

By the time we reached Falcon Cape, it was about 4p and we had to decide if we wanted to continue all the way to Arch Cape. We checked Uber and there were no cars nearby and the traffic back to Seaside looked terrible, so we didn’t want to ask my mother to pick us up and return us to our car. We decided to hike back to our car along the highway once we reached the road.

On the way through the forest to the highway, we were fortunate to have views of beautiful old growth and came across an owl, which I think was either a spotted owl or barred owl.

Unfortunately the car was three miles away and there was barely any shoulder on the windy road. Jim tried to hitchhike, but our only response was a car breaking long enough to yell at us to wear masks. 🙄

At the end of the hike, our phones registered a distance of 10-12 miles, so we were pretty tired. Except for the last three miles, this was a very good hike. We picked up glorious pizza for dinner and went to bed early.

The next day Nana and I visited Cannon Beach to pick up food for her and Jill’s last night in Oregon. We bought fresh bread at Cannon Beach Bakery and picked up chinook salmon, scallops, and prawns at the Ecola Seafood Market. We also enjoyed looking at all the beautiful flowers.

The funniest moment was definitely the masked woman who, while outdoors, stopped to plug her nose as we walked by (unmasked) 15 feet from her.

With all the fresh seafood, we had an amazing dinner before heading to the beach for a fire.

Nana and Jill flew out together the next morning. We enjoyed their visit and will miss them!