Weekend at the Coast

Saturday morning was a challenge for me. The weather in Portland had been scorching, and I assumed that the weather on the coast would be similar, When I realized Saturday morning that it was going to be much cooler, it completely changed my packing plans and forced me to do some hasty loads of laundry. I ended up missing a friend's baby shower due to my poor planning and time management, which was a bummer. Anyway, Marc and I stopped by at Pete and Court's to tend to their cats while they're out of town, then we headed west.

We checked into our suite a little after 3:00. We stayed at the same place as last time, when we witnessed the absurd wedding pictures. This time we stayed in one of the guesthouses down the block from the main building. Not quite oceanfront, but with a bit of a view of the water, our suite had a king bed, full kitchenette, and fireplace in the main room and a separate room with a queen bed. Very spacious, very nice.

We were pretty hungry shortly after we checked in, so we headed down to Mo's for dinner. Mo's has quite a reputation as a coastal institution. However, our last couple trips (this one and one on the central coast a couple years ago) have pretty much ruined it for us. Marc's salad had the wateriest bleu cheese dressing we've ever seen, and our fish and chips entrees were overpriced and greasy. Our lemonades went without refills. It was just a subpar experience.

Back at our room that night, we watched Juno—finally—and really enjoyed it.

Sunday morning we slept in. Thank goodness for those drapes that block out all the light! The morning and early afternoon were foggy. We got dressed and tried to go to the Pig'N'Pancake for breakfast. Bad timing—it seemed the whole town was there. Then we went to a little bistro around the corner from our building. The food on the menu looked fabulous, but the cramped dining room was full of screaming children that Marc couldn't handle, so we finally landed at Dooger's where breakfast, though nothing fancy, was fast, hot, and tasty.

Sunday afternoon, we put on our running gear and hit the beach. It was my first time running 3 miles straight, and I ran it at a faster pace than I've ever maintained. It was nice running outside in the cool air. I wish I could run on the beach everyday!

Since it was still cool and foggy, we decided to hit the sauna, hot tub, and pool up at the main resort for a bit. I LOVE saunas. There's something very refreshing to me about them. We headed back to our room for a bit, and then the sun came out!

We headed down to the beach with a kite, Frisbee, and towels. After lounging around for a bit, we started throwing the Frisbee. I was throwing into the wind, and it kept flying way far from where I was aiming. Once it flew into the middle of a family and plowed a little kid in the face. We moved closer to the water and away from all the other people, but we still didn't have good luck with it. When we got sick of running all over creation to retrieve the disc, we gave up and I flew my kite for a little while.

We headed into town for dinner and had a great burger. Then we stopped at a candy store for some fudge and ice cream. Thoroughly stuffed, we went back to the room and watched Dan in Real Life. Cute movie, but not nearly as funny as I was expecting.

Then, the great mystery of the trip: What happened to Marc's running shirt? He realized it was missing when we started doing some preliminary packing. We tore that room apart looking for it. We unpacked everything. We practically stripped the beds. He moved every piece of furniture. We walked back down to the beach to see if it was dropped (and not yet picked up by someone else). No luck. Marc's paranoid side thinks that someone from the hotel came into our room while we were out and stole just his shirt. That makes me laugh.

Sunday night we went to bed a little before midnight, but I couldn't sleep. I just laid there for HOURS, tossing and turning, before I finally switched pillows and fell asleep sometime after 3 a.m. We had planned to get up early and run on the beach again, but that just didn't happen. We rolled out of bed at 10 and finished packing our stuff.

We checked out at 10:45 and arrived at the Pig'N'Pancake no more than 10 minutes later. We were seated right away, and we ordered pretty quickly. Then we sat and waited nearly 40 minutes for our food. Tables that came in after us got their food first. So that was annoying, but the food was fine.

Overall, it was an awesome weekend away. We agreed that it was really nice to have 2 nights there so that we had one full day to do stuff. Now if we could just figure out what happened to Marc's shirt, the weekend would be a total success.