Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Crescent City wanderings.

Linda and I drove down to Crescent City for the weekend. Got to the Comfort Inn, and they had put us on the first floor even though we had requested the second floor, so the clerk upgraded us to a "suite."

"I think this is the Honeymoon suite..." Got a kitchen and a jet bathtub and a big kingsize bed and lots of room and the best view. Heh.

I think they gave it to us because we booked for three nights.

The kingsize bed is actually a bit of a problem. I toss and turn alot and Linda's knees jerk like a metronome. But we decided to go with it, and we did all right last night.

Linda grew up in Crescent City, so she gets the urge to come down. I like the place, too. It's got some great beaches. But Linda almost always says once we're here: "I'm disappointed in how shabby it all is. I don't remember it being this shabby..."

I took the first three books of Peter and the Starcatchers for vacation, and blew threw most of the first book last night.

This is supposed to be a "writing" vacation, in that we are going to spend a fair amount of time in our room. Linda wants to get back into her story, and I want to continue my momentum.

Don't know how much writing we'll actually do. It's gotten to be a tradition to see a movie at Crescent City each visit, so we'll be seeing Planet of the Apes. I always spend hours walking the beach, for exercise and to think. Here's where I could see having an Ipad along.

But I'll throw my laptop into my backpack and that'll work. Of course, I suppose I could take an actual paper notebook. Hah, paper.

(Weird little aside: As I write this, the laptop is nestled on -- well, you know, my lap. I feel the heat on my family jewels. And I imagine invisible rays shooting through them.... Paranoia.)

Typical coastal overcast and wind and -- cold? Yeah, about 65 at best. Not exactly the Caribbean.



The Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a perfect Saturday matinee. Lots of fun, and I was rooting for the apes all the way.

They are going to have to invent a new category of acting and call it the "Serkis Award."


Linda went into this sleeping together in a kingsize with total optimism. She woke up this morning saying that she tried to hard to keep her leg from kicking that she sprained her neck! A failed experiment, but better than buying a kingsize to find out.


Went for a walk around sunset last night on the beach. Neat thing about the beach is that you don't worry about it getting dark, you can still find your way. Breaking waves, bigger than I've seen before, and just watched them mesmerized for a long while. Want to do more of that kind of beach walking wave watching today...


Finished Peter and the Starcatchers last night, and I have to say that I only found it moderately amusing. Not enough to read the other two books. Now if anyone asks, I'll have to tell them the truth rather than just saying, "I've heard that it's really good."

Thing is, Dave Barry can make me belly laugh in his short columns, but there wasn't one major laugh in the entire book. How can that be?

(Ended up starting the second book afterall. It's a quick read.)


Linda is in love with her Ipad. She's constantly playing with it. She told me she bought a .99 cent books.

"TRAITOR!" Hey, if the bookstore owner is buying e-books, we're doomed.


Well, it turned out to be a writing vacation for Linda, I didn't write a thing. I was along for the ride.

I went off for walks on the beach, instead. I think walking a wide sandy beach at sunset is one of my new favorite things. Walking back to the car, I was facing the sunset all the way, and got there just as it was dark. (I dressed warmly, by golly: I saw a range of from swimsuits (ah, foolish youth) to full parka's....)

We drove to Brookings yesterday, and visited the little bookstore we always visit: Drove up and "Uh, Oh. It looks closed..."

We wandered in and it was being transformed into a computer store. Turns out to be the woman's son. She died, unexpectedly, at 79.

The name of the store, (I think), was Words and Pictures, with new books in front and an art gallery in back. She was an interesting lady, one of the few "thoughtful" owners I've encountered on my trips. (I'm trying to imagine still selling books 21 years from now...but that's the way to go...)

Thing is, according to the son, it was a labor of love. Some of the artwork in the gallery was hers, and she spent "hours and hours" selecting and ordering the books. She had the bookstore she wanted, which is the only kind of bookstore to have, these days.

He told me how well they had done with a liquidation; with the help of the local newspaper, and ads, they had sold the inventory for more than anyone had actually offered for the store. I wandered around the mostly empty stacks, and still found about 30 books I wanted to buy at 80% off.

It's become a tradition to eat at the Dairy Queen in Brookings, which for some reason just has the best junk food we find anywhere. Brookings is definitely more upscale than Crescent City.

I'm going to take one more beachwalk and one more jetbath before leaving, and then we'll mosey back to Bend. I'm much more of a lolly gagger than Linda; she tends to bustle about, while I laze about and say, "Hey, we don't have to leave till 11:00, what's the hurry?"








6 comments:

Carl said...

Unfortunately, your wife is right about the shabbiness of CC. I find the same thing about Eureka down the road. Both look like down at the heels lumber and fishing towns where after 6 PM you can fire a cannon down the streets and not fear killing anyone. Both towns have weeds growing in the gutters and it looks like no one can afford a few gallons of paint for their houses.

It is especially unfortunate for CC, since looking down on the town from the 101 overlook south of town, it is hard to imagine a more beautiful ocean setting.

Your observations about Brookings also agree with mine, but after considering it briefly, decided Boise was more our speed and not quite so isolated. I could get real bored fast there.

Anonymous said...

Finally got planet-of-the-apes a few days ago, the cops have cut back on this stuff a lot, found a kid on a motorcycle the other day selling this stuff, normal $1 for each dvd, bougt ape, west-alien, and cap-amerikkan,
I could watch new ape 1-2 times, west-alien was gad-awful boring, cap-tain amerikkka to formula for me, its like even the ape was boring, I hate to say it but first ape way better, and soylent-green excellent, I guess cuz of heston, not really fond of the kid in ape, and of course 1st ape had rodney-mcdowell, best of his time,
alien-west has harrison-ford, but come-on he plays a villan, he's teriible, bored, ... this has to be a sign that he's just working on contract and paying the bill's. I guess what the hell do you expect for summer movies coming out of the US, well they ( hollywood ) has sure put the clamp on black-market selling, but they're around the price hasn't gone up,
I'll watch ape again, and cap-amer, doubt I can sit through west vs alien.

Anonymous said...

GOLD hit $1800 an ounce today in HONG-KONG,
Swiss Franc is back up after they now say they will not peg the EURO, what crazy fucking talk.
NOT really sure why GOLD continues to sky-rocket, sort of sad, but that said, everybody in the USA is now buying if they can and selling if they need money. Pawn shops are going crazy on the BUY side, and bored to death on the SELL side.
Of course over here in asia: india, china, se-asia all the gold shops on all the corners and folks always have and always will buy gold and bury it at home, no trust in paper money or banks over here,
Personally MY GUESS is what's going on is CHINA GUBMINT is buying GOLD, but silently as not to create a panic to sell those 2 trillion USD they're sitting on, so they're buying as quick as they can.
Note GOLD costs about $1100 to mine, so its way over-priced on an intellectual basis, but then what's a paper EURO or DOLLAR worth in 'real'?? NADA folks

Anonymous said...

my 2 cents
ORYGUN coast downtowns always revert during these economic storms cuz there are no jobs, ...
Me 2 just got back from a long 5 day weekend trip 'abroad' over in the tourist regions of se-asia, ... what's amazing is little to no foreign europeans, its all RUSSIAN's from what I can tell, and lots of koreans, and a few japanese. Chinese would like to travel, but its very expensive as yet, and strange to say, but they seem to not want to travel in asia, as its all the same, most chinese I know want to see 'amerEEKHA' ( go figure :) )

So all your coastal towns from astoria to brookings and south will be this way, where 80% of those 'living' do so on 'welfare checks', but that way since the 1950's, every once in awhile tourists discover, but that will take a while before the next real-estate boom.

The other thing about ASIA is the inflation, they're only reporting about 5%, but its really go to be more like 10% a month, on food on the street, vietnam is now seeing 20%. Everything is priced in dollar's and it takes more to buy less, the ripple will come to the USA soon, but then when I go back there I'm always surprised how much my favorite stuff has gone up, always quite desperate here for gorgonzola, brought home a lot of olive-oil this weekend, still never find corn-meal :( would love to make mexican food, italian is down pretty good, bought a wheel of parmesan a few weeks ago that will last 1/2 a year :) bought a couple kilo hunk of pepperoni, ... they have chinese proschutto here but it really sucks, too dry. I only get to do real shopping when I go to SINGAPORE, or KL.

Day to day stuff is still cheap, $1 buys you a large bag of produce at the local village markets.
My garden doing great, got dozens of transplants from seedlings now ready for ground, monsoon season has already started, big rains now every day, but warm, ...

H. Bruce Miller said...

"Typical coastal overcast and wind and -- cold? Yeah, about 65 at best. Not exactly the Caribbean."

I've never been able to understand why anyone wants to vacation at the Oregon or far Northern California coast -- much less buy a vacation home there for half a million or more. To walk on the sand in the cold and wind and (often) rain? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Anonymous said...

They vacation in brooking cuz on memorial it rains every where else, they go there now, cuz its not as hot as every where else.

The coast in general is foggy and cold all summer, ...

In the winter its cold and wet :)

Escaping the 'valley' heat of 105F go to the coast for most people is the only hope.