Thursday, May 22, 2008

Cape Meares & Cape Lookout with Emily

Wednesday night after work Emily and I took off for the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet at the Spirit Mountain Casino West of Salem. I had heard about the buffet from my friends at Ruby’s who thought it was amazing so we decided to check it out. My friends weren’t kidding. They had pretty much every type of seafood imaginable except Alaskan crab and Maine Lobster. I took my time and made sure I had 4 gigantic plates of shellfish and crab (filling up several buckets of shells) before I made it to the amazing desert bar. After gorging myself on seafood we decided to hit the slot machines, especially the wheel of fortune one that had given me luck in past years but proved to be horrible this time. We lost 10 bucks in the slots and decided to call it a night at the casino and head towards the coast and Tillamook to find a motel for the night. We ended up staying at the Apple Tree Inn at Tillamook.
After sleeping in for a while and having a nice breakfast at the motel we headed towards Cape Meares to check out the seabirds, light house, octopus tree, and 3 arches. We didn’t see too many birds there so we decided to head towards Cape Lookout for a nice 5 mile hike out on the peninsula. It was the same hike that Jason, Mckenzie and Kristen did with me last spring and we had pretty much the same weather – cloudy on the way out and clearing on the return. It was really beautiful and I think Emily really enjoyed it. We even met a couple on the hike that knew professor Goldfinger fairly well at OSU. We saw a bunch of banana slugs on the trail and spotted a bald eagle on the drive to the trailhead as well.
On the way home we stopped at Pacific City for some oyster shooters and a drive on the beach before heading to Newport where we walked the old bay front and bought two dozen oysters for $15. It was the first time Emily had seen real Pacific Northwest Oysters still in their shell and we had a hell of a time shucking them when we got back home (think: oyster shucker and hammer on front steps). We were debating heading to Cape Perpetua but decided it was too late so we returned back to Corvegas which had a pleasant rainbow over it from the off-and-on showers of the afternoon. Emily got to see the northern half of the Oregon Coast and I think she really enjoyed it.

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