Minneapolis bound!

Having completed Vacation Phase I: Seaside, I’m now ready for Vacation Phase II: Minneapolis and the Minnesota State Fair.

But first I must go to the airport to transport me to the location of Vacation Phase II.  And once again lament that I never have a six hour layover in our lovely airport.

The food is delicious, and the same price as it would be outside of the airport (they check).  There are musicians playing music.  And now, you can even go to the movies.

I got to the airport early enough to watch a music video, and the short “The Bee Hunter” which was very good.

Three sentence movie reviews: Florence Foster Jenkins

I was pretty sure I knew what I was getting myself into with this movie: delightfully terrible singing by Meryl Streep, nice main plot where presumably something possibly slightly boring happens.  But darn it if there wasn’t a plot element of Florence Foster Jenkins’ life that didn’t make this whole story a much more emotional journey than I had predicted.   Overall, this was an unexpectedly  very good movie, which is always a nice development.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home while painting toes pearly white.

poster from:  http://www.impawards.com/intl/uk/2016/florence_foster_jenkins.html

Saying goodbye to Seaside

Here’s the other half of the front room of our rental.  I’m standing in the kitchen to take this picture.  It was a delightful little spot, perfect for exactly what we needed. The bedroom was classy-looking, the bathroom was charmingly tiny and we enjoyed being able to lower that table and stretch the couch out to watch a movie.

Our house was in a long line of maybe ten similarly-sized beach houses (There was a 518 square foot studio for sale for $105,000) and its front door overlooked a parking area, and then another line of apartments, so this wasn’t a view property.  Still, it was very close to the beach and to downtown Seaside and we mostly walked everywhere, so it was prefect for us.

Yay for Seaside vacations!

Seaside Day III

Hey!  Look at this postcard, that I wrote yesterday.

And then look at what happened to the building that the postcard came from.  It’s a clever postcard, inserting photos of Seaside into a picture of a mural of a postcard. It’s just too bad the building hasn’t fared so well.  From the outside, it looked like construction had started and then been stopped for a long time.

We took a hike at (you guessed it) Tillamook Head.  It was fun to take a timer photo, for once.

This tree lived a long time. Then it fell over. Then we came along and Matt posed next to it.

Back in Seaside, we took a walk to the Lewis & Clark Salt Works, which was a historic site I believe I visited with my friends on the Post-Graduation Trip, back in 1993.  I took no pictures.  But I did get a picture of this friendly little yard decor.

The Treasure Quest.  The Visitor’s Bureau presented this fun little contest for us to occupy our time.  Using the clues, we walked around Seaside and found five of the six pictures yesterday.  But picture E eluded us, so we walked over to the Visitor’s Bureau for a clue.  

Our clue was that it was off the beaten path, also that, unfortunately, it wasn’t always visible.  Matt was fine with not getting this last clue, but I was up for one last push. 

I looked up every seafood place in Seaside and took a nice long walk, examining all the windows closely for that industrial shelving I could see in the background. Nada.  You will notice I had 10 stops.  None of them worked.  I headed back to the cabin and Matt and I decided to go to the one place I hadn’t been: Bell Buoy Seafood.  We drove.

And that was it!  It seems that that cute little sign is how they tell the UPS driver if they have packages that need picked up. That’s why it isn’t always in the window.  Success!  Plus I got hostess gifts for vacation part II.  We assembled our entry form while sitting on the same Orange Chair we sat in the previous day when getting our clue.

And then we collected our fabulous prize! Thanks to the Seaside Visitor’s Bureau for providing us with some vacation fun.

Three sentence movie reviews: The Driftless Area

“What the hell is going on?” Matt asked, five minutes into the movie.  We remained befuddled off and on throughout this film, which I kind of enjoyed.*  My favorite part, though, was watching the DVD extra and listening to the cast try and describe what kind of movie it is, and what is the plot.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at our cute beach rental, in Seaside Oregon, with Matt.

*It was a strangely bizarre movie, kind of slow in a mesmerizing–and also boring–way.  “Why is everyone talking so slowly?” I asked Matt at one point.

“Maybe they are trying to bump us?” Matt responded and I laughed long and hard.  It is most likely that you haven’t seen this movie, so you haven’t heard Aubrey Plaza explain that she bumps customers (gets them to rent a more expensive car) by talking really slowly.  But I had heard her say that, so this was a profoundly funny comment made by Matt.

poster from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3687304/mediaviewer/rm2078598400

Seaside Day II

We started our day with a walk and then took in some indoor mini-golf.  Matt won.  (As he always does when we play mini-golf)

We spent part of the day walking around looking for scavenger hunt clues.  More about that tomorrow.  Along the promenade, we found this self-service flower shop.

Sitting on the big chair outside the Seaside Visitor’s Bureau.

Let’s talk about the super awesome, probably original cabinetry in our beach house.  I love it so much!  And there is even a built-in strange object that I finally determined was a dish-towel holder.  You can see it on the lower cabinet on the right, between the first and second cabinets. It had a marble inside it, and that was the thing that would grab onto your dish towel.

We took a sunset walk along the beach.

Our sunset self-portrait. (Minus the sun.)

As you can see, we were in good company with the photo-taking.  This was the trip where I was astounded at the number of people staring at their phones while at the beach.  We’ve crossed some hurdle where the potential for ruin via sand/seawater is not enough to change people’s normal cell-phone-all-the-time-behavior.

After the sun went down, we walked up to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard.  The store was open until 11, but the employees made it very clear they would rather not be.  The only lights on were in the employee area, they had one seating section closed and the Blizzard they made me was sub-standard.  But that’s what I get for spending my money in a place where the employees didn’t want to take my money.

Saddle Mountain

Since we were headed to Seaside for our vacation, we planned to hike to the top of Saddle Mountain.  We did this hike early in the relationship.  Maybe year three?  For me, this was a good reminder at how different one’s fitness level can become in a decade, plus a few years.

In our previous hike, we got to the trail early.  So early that we took some naked hiking pictures, because there were no people around.  At various times on our hike today, one or the other of us would say, “I think this is maybe where we took the naked hiking pictures?”  This was one of my guesses.  I’m not entirely sure where the naked hiking pictures are right now, so I can’t check to see if I was right.

Someone is committed to keeping this picnic bench in this location.  Matt stands on the precipice.

From the top!  There were a ton of bugs at the top.  They were flying into our mouths as we were trying to take this picture.  That’s the ocean behind us, on the horizon.

Along with our fellow hikers, we retreated to a non-bug area below the top.  There we rested, and took this self-portrait.  It was windy.

Matt wandered out to the precipice area and grabbed this photo.

After hiking back down, we ate the most delicious sandwiches I’ve ever made.  There’s something to be said for one’s appetite after such physical exertion.

Three sentence movie reviews: Landline

Here’s a great example of interesting characters who come together to form an incredibly uninteresting movie.  The acting was good, but the plot meandered, and I was bored.  I’m also uncertain as to why we needed the 1990s setting, though that time period was nicely recreated.

Cost: $3.00
Where watched: Laurelhurst with S. North.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2017/landline.html