Nita's Birthday, March 5th

A couple of our friends make a birthday list for their birthdays. Usually they include restaurants, a trip to a museum, a special treat item from a bakery or donut store. So this year we are doing the same.

Nita's list included: dinner at Louisa's (a favorite, but too far from home), dinner at Ma Ono for their famous fried chicken, golfing, breakfast at Luna Park, a chocolate factory tour, and watch a special series on Netflex based on a favorite detective series Nita has read and got me hooked on.

Ma Ono lived up to their reputation, the food was outstanding. We had the fried chicken, curry fried rice dish, a fancy brussel sprout dish, and some very different martinis that were strong and tasty.

The other restaurants were also good and golfing was great. We have yet to fit in the chocolate tour and TV series, but we will. Having a list has been fun and I am looking forward to making my list.

These photos were taken at Ma Ono, Nita noticed some interesting patterns her drink made on the table.

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Beach Glass

Here are some interesting photos of beach glass we found this weekend. My favorites are the parts of what looks like an old bottle. Most of what we find I expect are beer and wine bottles. The top of this bottle and its amber/green color suggests it might be older. We also found one red and a few blue. There's also one interesting pottery piece.

 

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Weekend at Quilcene Bay II

Sunday we packed up the car and started back towards Seattle with a couple of beach parks on Bainbridge Island on our iPhone maps. First we went to Faye Bainbridge Park. It's on the east side of the island facing back towards the Cascade mountains. The video below pans the horizon from Mt. Ranier to Mt. Baker (and Sandra beach glass hunting).

It was a lovely park, but we didn't find much glass there.

Nita at Faye Bainbridge Park

Next we went to Hawley Cove Park. It a conservancy park without much in the way of improvements, but there's a boardwalk across wetlands to a beach with a view of the ferry terminal. On the walk through the woods, we came across this tree that was growing out of a tree stump. We've seen these before in the forest, but not usually with the stump so rotted away with mostly the roots of the tree holding it up.

The beach was rocky with shells, barnacles, and and sand dollars.

We found lots of beach glass, including the usual beer bottles browns and greens, but also some really old fashioned amber bottle parts (photos to come). We completely filled our glass bags and had trouble leaving. This was one of the best glass spots we've found.

 

 

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Weekend at Quilcene Bay Part I

This weekend, we stayed at a cabin on Quilcene Bay. We won the weekend at a silent auction at the square dance fly-in in Portland in October. The cabin is right on the bluff overlooking the bay. In the photo below you can get a peek (peak) of the white capped Olympic Mountains over the far side of the bay (right between the two hills).

Quilcene Bay from Deck

Friday we got there in time for lunch and settling in and then a walk at the local beach. We found a few pieces of beach glass but not much. We had some soup we brought with us for dinner and blueberry peach pie we bought from a cafe. Then we played dice all evening.

Beach at Quilcene Bay

Saturday we drove to Port Townsend. We found two beach glass spots. The first was north of town facing the straits. There wasn't much there and the wind was blowing about 15mph, way too uncomfortable for pleasant hunting. Then we went to another city park further to the south: Chetzemoka Park. We found a lot more glass there. It was windy as well, but we could stand it with our back to the wind.

Nita at Chetzemoka Park

You can see Mount Baker behind Sandra.

Sandra at Chetzemoka Park

We had lunch at a beach-side cafe. At home we played games and then went for a walk along the road above the cabin. For dinner we made spaghetti, and then played Carcassonne. We've discovered the hotspot on our cell phones works well for playing games on the two ipads since we don't have wifi. In the screenshot of Carcassonne below, my score is slightly higher, but you can see Sandra has way more cities than me and she whopped me in the end.

Screen shot of Carcassonne

When it got late and dark, we went out on the deck and looked at the stars. They are much brighter here than in Seattle, really gorgeous. Unfortunately, a fishing facility across the bay leaves really bright lights on all night, so we couldn't see the milky way.

 

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Winter Golfing in Seattle

Isn't it a bit of luck

that I was born a baby duck

with yellow socks and yellow shoes

that I can go where'ere I choose!

Quack, quack, quack-quack!

Today was the first day in a while that it wasn't raining, so we went golfing. Luckily, Sandra was prepared for the waterlogged golf course.

It was hard to walk it was so mushy.

And the holes were full of water.

 

 

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Last Day: Beach Glass and Tall Ships

Today, Sunday, is our last day in San Diego. We packed a lot in today! First we left early to go to Torrey Pines State Park to squeeze in a little more beach glass hunting during a low tide. The low tide is getting later in the morning each day and today is around 8:30am. So we left by 7:30 so we'd catch it around 8am going out. We were going back to the spot we went on Friday, but when we got there the road to the state park parking lot was closed and the parking beachside was already full! Turns out there was a half marathon being run that day. So we parked up the road a bit and hiked in on the City of Del Mar side of the beach.

It was 45 degrees when got to the beach, so we were bundled up. But we did remember to bring our shower sandals, so that we wouldn't get our walking shoes wet like we did last time (they took two days to dry out). But my feet were really cold and we ended up not walking through the water this time.

We found a lot of great glass, mostly in the rocks further from the water's edge rather than in the surf. The glass was very beachified. The sky was overcast most of the time with only a few sun peeks and so it was harder to see the glass. Some of the glass was so beachified that it looked like a rock until you picked it up. In the first photo below, the glass is the darker rock right below the white piece of shell. In the photo below that, Sandra is holding the same piece of glass up to the light. The color looks completely different in the light.

Here's another photo of glass in situ.

In spite of the low light and cold, we spent about 2 1/2 hours looking and got quite a haul. We got a lot more green than usual, probably because it was easier to see. Also notice the beautiful light blue piece at the bottom of the photo. By the time we left, it was 54 degrees.

BTW, we did find out that this is what a Torrey Pine looks like.

After we finished beach glass hunting we drove to downtown San Diego and had lunch at Anthony's on the Embarcadero. We had a great water view and some good food. Cobb salad is one of my favorite meals and they had a yummy seafood cob salad with crab, shrimp, tuna, and salmon rather than the regular chicken. Sandra had Stacked Ahi. It was stacked with pineapple, avocado, and cucumber. It reminded us of the layered causa we ate in Peru last summer because it was stacked in a round tuna-can sized shape.

Seafood Cobb Salad

Stacked Ahi

 

After lunch we walked to the Maritime Museum, which has several vintage and replica ships. The first one we went on was the Star of India. It is the oldest ship of its kind that is still sailing (they take it out once a year). It was built right before the US Civil War. It has been used to import cotton to England from India and then to take folks to New Zealand (it made 21 trips around the world doing this).

Here's Sandra at the helm.

They had some of the cabins set up so you could see how they looked and two dining saloons, one for the captain and first class passengers, and one for everyone else. They also had some fun displays. Below is a photo of the Figure 8 knot Sandra tied. The photo of me is a display that shows how a block and tackle helps to lift weights. There's just a plain pulley with a 25 pound bag of sand: pretty hard to lift. Then they put the rope through a single block and tackle and it's much easier to lift. Then they have a double block and tackle and the same 25 pounds seems very light.

The next boat we went on was a cold war era soviet submarine. It was really claustrophobic! It had a crew of 78 (including a political officer) and only three toilets. The only shower was in the tower and could only be used when the submarine was above water, but you could use all the cold salt water you wanted.

The torpedo room:

The main museum is an old ferry that was used to take folks from the Oakland train terminal to San Francisco in the early 1900s. While it is similar to the ferries we have up north, it is much more elegant. The seats are all beautiful wood. I don't know if the dance floor below (see Sandra dancing) was original on the ferry, but the beautiful stained glass around the top is original.

There is also a working replica of an 1800s British Warship, a modern US submarine, and an early 1900s private yacht. Below is Sandra sitting at the controls of the US submarine that was decommissioned in 2007. This submarine was much less claustrophic than the older one; it had regular height doors rather than the hatches and an actual shower, but it was still pretty cramped.

Now it's time to go pack.....

 

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Being a Tourist

On Saturday we did tourist-y things around town. First we went to the Cabrillo National Monument. This is where the Spanish explorers led by Cabrillo landed first in what is now California. This point of land protects San Diego Bay and has great views of San Diego from very high up.

There's also supposed to be some good tide pools, but the tide was in too far to see anything. The low tides right now are early in the morning and then after dark in the evening, so we're not seeing too much in the way of low tides. Still the coast where the tidepools are is very beautiful.

After that, we went into downtown to do some shopping at Seaport Village. It's a cute little tourist mall--all outside right along the water downtown. We found some nice t-shirts and San Diego ornaments for our seasonal tree.

Late in the afternoon, we went to Ocean Beach which is in San Diego and about 10 minutes from where we are staying. We're amazed that everything is pretty crowded--it sometimes hard to find parking. We can't imagine how crazy it must be during the summer!

We did find street parking at Ocean Beach and walked from one end to the other (about 45 minutes). It was wide and sandy and would be good for swimming (if it wasn't 60 degrees; although there were some young 'uns swimming even in this weather). But it wasn't good for beach glass. I did find one big jagged piece of glass and put that in the garbage. Most of the beaches don't allow glass on the beach, so I was surprised at this. Here's the sun going down over the pier at Ocean Beach.

 

 

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