Down By The River Side

When we moved hotels, we shifted from a mediocre seaside view room to a fairly nice view of the Necanicum River, the estuary of which runs through Seaside.

( Low and High Tide Photos )

The weather on Sunday was a fair bit more overcast than the chamber-of-commerce clear blue sky day they had here on Saturday. But Lisa and I got a whole lot of walking done on both days. My step counter read more than 27,000 steps last night and currently reads about 17,000 tonight, and we're not quite done yet as we'll have to go get something and bring it back to the hotel for dinner. We didn't get "lunch" until nearly 5 PM, after which we bought ice cream from Zinger's (highly recommended) and took a long walk on the beach on the way back to the hotel.

Pinball Palace

After making our final stop at the Sea-Pac convention to see if we had won any of the 10:30 AM door prizes (we hadn't), we stopped downtown so I could have my annual elephant ear at We're All Ears, then we walked back to the hotel and drove up to Astoria, over the bridge into Washington, and on to Long Beach heading for the Dodge City Shooting Gallery and Pinball Palace. Last year, we were disappointed to find the place temporarily closed due to a fire in the adjacent store, but they were back in business this year. Lisa had been saving her quarters, and we set to playing. I was particularly successful playing Ripley's Believe It Or Not so well that Lisa decided to play other games rather than wait for me to end my (rather long) turns. After a while, she came back over and I gave her the remaining four games on the machine while I played Medieval Madness. She then went to play Lord of the Rings, but the normally excellent maintenance of the games at this place was off this weekend. The right flipper of the machine was terribly soft, and the Dotmation display (which is part of the game play) out of order, so she gave up after one game.

About two hours, but less than $10 worth of quarters after we started, we walked down the street to use the restroom. Both of us commented that we were footsore and having some difficulty staying standing behind the machines. As we walked back to the Gallery just after 3 PM, the question of whether to play any longer was decided for us, as the owner decided to close up early and was locking the door. Oh, well, we hadn't had lunch and were tired anyway.

On the way back south, we stopped at a local grocery store to buy some drinks, and I spotted that they still had some of the reportedly-discontinued Screaming Dill Pickle Pringles on the shelf. A lot of them; so many, in fact, that Lisa had to go get a shopping cart as I decided to buy every one they had, given that I'm apt to never see them again. I bought all sixteen cans, which is more than I've ever seen at one store.

A Bearly Milestone

While Lisa is planning travelswithkuma's birthday party for Westercon this year, this weekend is the actual anniversary. Lisa adopted Kuma Bear 21 years ago this weekend, on her way to Seaside to attend a Sea-Pac convention. Because of the good weather here in Seaside this weekend, Kuma got to ride on the outside of Lisa's pack all weekend. She made Bear a name badge of his own, which made many people smile, and she happily explained that it was Bear's birthday this weekend. People expressed astonishment at Bear having been with Lisa all of those years. He also got Presents.

( Bear Gets Fish For Present )

Lisa and I say Best Fishes to the best little bear there is.