Life and times of Craig on Planet Earth: 2015

Monday, December 14, 2015

Thanksgiving 2015

We lost Ed Swalling this year a month before Thanksgiving. The funeral was nice, saw everyone and I promised to scan the old pictures from Ed and Sander's Montana trips

At lunch, in Auburn, Crista announced that she was going to do Thanksgiving dinner at her house. I had already discussed going to Everett with mom a few weeks before. I said I was not sure about her plan. Crista said that Mom can't make to Everett, which was odd since we were all in Auburn.

Thanksgiving was nice, everyone from the Kitsap side was there. Jessica and James indicated they have not seen each other in some time but it seems like they had to have seen each other last Christmas.

I do miss not spending time with the Mustells and Danika's new baby Colton who turns 1 soon. But it appears I am the only one who feels that way, so that's the way it goes.

Christmas should be uneventful this year. Crista is not doing a dinner and Jessica will be out of town, in England for the Holiday and the Everett family will not come over.

Friday, October 9, 2015

Seaside Oregon

We realized we needed a break after working on Kina's wedding.   We were in Longview, we could go to Portland, or Longbeach, or... dare I say, Seaside?   Neither of us has been to Seaside in at least 20 years.   We found an ocean front room with a deck for a reasonalbe off season rate. Booked.

We left Longview Sunday am determined.   We drove over the bridge in Longview, now we are in Oregon. We drove to Clatskanie Oregon and stopped for breakfast at a place called The Hump. It was on the river, Clatskanie river I presume. They seated us in a booth in the bar close to the propane fireplace which was roaring.

We both had a bood breakfast and headed back on the road. Next stop our favorite liqour store in Astoria. To our good fortune, the product we wanted, Titos Vodka, was on sale! We bought all 4 gallons!   Each bottle was $15 cheaper than across the river.

The Sunday street market was going on too, so we checked that out. WOW so much seafood, but we were full from breakfast. We checked a few book stores but didn't find anything.

Next we drove to Cannon Beach. We walked the beach towards the big rock. The weather was nice but there was a 5 mph wind off the water, so it wasn't hot

We checked out some galleries and looked at over priced sandals before heading to Seaside

Ok, where is Seaside? Who replaced quaint Seaside with this sprawling town? What is that massive building next to Shilo? Wow.   A HUGE Worldmark resort is now next to Shilo. Shilo Inn used to be the biggest thing in town, this new resort dwarfs it. There must be 1000 rooms in that thing!

Our place was on the end of the boardwalk to the south. We found it, then went back down to the main strip to continue sandal shopping.   I went off and had a drink and check football scores. Hawks on Monday night so no worries.

We checked in an hour early and loved our room! It was one of th ebest I've stayed in in some tome. Its' called the Inn at the Shore. Not to be confused with the Inn at the Prom or The Inn at Seaside!

For happy hour we walked up to the U street grill or something like that. It was crowded. We learned that most businesses has cut staff for winter. It was nearly 80 degrees in October and every hotel and motel was booked solid! Needless to say a lot of businesses were caught off guard. I heard that every bottle of sun block was sold out and we only found one place still selling sandals.

Dinner we ordered Chinese delivery. It was pretty bad, but better than moving to get food. We were both really tired.

The next day we went to breakfast at the Pig and Pancake.    I think next time I'll try a new place but it was ok.

We discussed going to see her mom in Morton on the way home, or going all the way up the coast to Ocean Shores on our way home. Since it was Monday and B had to work Tuesday and football we decided to head straight home. Ha ha.

A few minutes out of Longview on I-5, suddenly traffic slowed to a crawl. We were stop and go all the way to Centralia. ugh.    We were getting hungry now, but thought we wanted to get North of Tacoma before stopping. As we got to Lakewood we heard the news of the massive collision on I-5 in Federal Way. All NB lanes blocked. Expected to be hours before it opens. Unbelievable.

We decided to get off and get to 99 now. It was packed. We spent 30 minutes in downtown Tacoma sitting on 99. We chose to cut our losses, turned off and went up Marine View drive through Redondo Beach. I have never been on that road before. Its cool but slow.

By now we were starving. We decided to go to the Alaska Junction close to home and get some dinner. We chose The Matador It was decent. We got home a few minutes before the game started,

Cannon Beach

Sunset at Seaside

Inn at the Shore

Sunrise

Big ol Jelly

View from the room

Score!

Kina and Garrett Wedding - Oct 3 2015

A few months back, Bronwen got a call from her Niece, Kina. I overheard her talking and figured out she was being asked to provide food for her wedding. I took note of the date, then heard her say 250 people. Longview ain't that big, so I before she was off the phone, I had two nights booked at the Red Lion. (Note, try Hampton Inn next time or go to Vancouver)

We worked on the plan for a few weeks and had a pretty good one, but weddings happen and change happens. so we didn't get to make everything we wanted. We made a LOT of food though. I volunteered myself and worked way too hard. You would think that would do it, but no, I could not sleep in the crappiest hotel room I have seen in years. Sigh. What a dump.

The wedding was beautiful, the food went off without a hitch. It was fun! I enjoyed being a part of it, since I really don't know her family very well. Her neice Olivia helped us a lot on Friday, but as I suspected, Saturday, Wedding day, everyone was busy!

After the wedding we went back to the Red Lion where I got some sleep but not before having a fun night in the lounge with the Eagles convention!

The next am, we headed for Seaside Oregon.

Bronwen, Mom, Jeanie and Marci

B and her niece Olivia

Friday, July 24, 2015

Glacier National Park! July 6-10

Kelsey and I embarked on another epic Summer camping trip. This year we chose Glacier National Park in Montana

We left early Monday am, and made great time. We arrived in Kalispel in the afternoon. We took one wrong turn which had us drive along Flathead Lake. Wow. Sooo many lake front homes and boats and such. It's a huge lake!

Kalispel was cool. We had dinner at The Montana Club, our favorite from last year in Missoula. Unfortunately, it wasn't their best work, but it fed us.

That night the sun was really cool looking as it set.

The next mornig I woke up and was listening to a sound... what was it.. seems familiar.. RAIN!!!!! I had left the windows crackeed in the car because it was so hot and stuffy when we got here! I threw on some clothes and ran out there to roll up the windows. Nothing got too wet.

We had breakfast at Julies Center St Diner.   Julie, as it turns out, is a Chinese immigrant. Her menu was all American. The food was good and fast. The restaurant very clean and Julie seemed to be well liked. Many regulars came in.

Next we went to Super 1 Foods and bought our groceries for the campground.

We headed towards the campground as the weather was calling for afternoon showers. The weather report did NOT mention the AM showers we were getting at the moment. We figured that if the weather report was accurate, we would wat to get our tent up as soon as we could.

However, we had a hard time not stopping at one of many Huckleberry gift shops! We loaded up on Huckleberry products, including a cup of real, fresh Huckleberries. They are not like NW Huckleberries. Darker and a bit sweeter.

We arrived at the campsite around noon. Check in is 1 I think but our campsite was empty.   As we headed down to our site, I looked at the other sites and grew concerned. Yep, our tent was too big for the campsite!    We were able to get it set up, but for all practical purposes, most of the tent space was unusualbe due to the hill we were on.

The entire campsite was on a hill .   Even trying to unload the car was a challenge.

We got set up pretty quickly and as we were setting up, the SUN came out and never left us.

We took a walk out to Rocky Point on Lake McDonald. It was really beautiful. The water is sooo blue.

We went back to camp and made dinner and had a campfire.

The next day, we headed for St Mary on the far other side of the park. We took Going to the Sun Road all the way out of the Park. We had lunch in a little sandwich shop outside the East enterance. Then we went back to St Mary's campground for our boat cruise!

The cruise was interesting and showed many sites we would not ahve seen. The cruise stopped for a while on the West end of the lake and from there you could hike to St Mary Falls. Unfortunately, we didn't know about this ,so did not bring any water for the hike and it was hot. So we walked around and found Baring Falls and a deer hanging around.

We headed back and stopped at the top of Logan Pass. We decided to do the hike to Hidden Lake.   Parking was hjammed but we found a spot.

The hike was pretty easy, but mostly all uphill. We saw lots of Goats and baby Goats and a few Marmots

By the time we got back to teh West side, it was already getting late. We went to Apgar for dinner. I had Baked Almond Trout. It was ok. Kelsey had fried Chicken and didn't like it.

After, we decided to check out the showers in Loop A.   The only showers in the camp ground. We were in loop C and they informed us that there is NO parking. We were too tired to care. I parked in front of the dumpster and we took our showers!

We got back to camp and made a campfire.

The next day we drove back up the Going to the Sun Road till we came to McDonald Falls. We took some picuters and enjoyed the river views.

Next we went into the town at West Glacier entrance . We bought some stuff for dinner, more ice of course and some floats for the lake.   We headed down to the beach, but Kelsey had other plans, she wanted to go to the beach on the trail to Rocky Point.   It was a few minutes walk, but a very nice beach.

We floated and swam and ate sour patch candies for a few hours.   Lots of bugs. The water was great though. So Turquoise! We learned on our cruise that this was from the glacier water. Any lake that is Turquoise is glacier fed.

After we were done swimming, we had lunch and had more time on our hands still . We decided to take a hike. We had no idea where.   We drove out to the main road and saw a trail marker called "Ox Bow".

The trail was along a river for the most part. It was pretty.   We came to a field of white flowers. But more interseting was the butterflies on the plants. There must have been 100's of butterflies! As we walked , they flew up all around us!

We finally came to Ox Bow. It's a big bend in the river, nearly 180 degree turn.   Water flowed past the bend of the curve and created a little bay behind it.

From the distance, we could see a grassy field.   We set off to find the fields. We had to walk on a hourse trail for part of it. The field was big and grassy, but no wildlife. We hoped to see a bear or a moose.

After diner we stayed up to watch the stars.    We walked down to the lake to see the full view. Not a sole awake in the entire campground! It was very peaceful and amazing.

The next morning we pakced and said goodbye. We took higway 2 all the way back to Spokane. It was really cool, so many lakes along the way.

We got into Spokane early afternoon and checked in to the new Davenport Grand. It opened a few weeks ago. Huge room!

We explored Riverfront Park, which is a real gem! So much going on right in the center of the city. We had an average dinner at Luigis and got some much needed rest in a real bed!