Dreams, Moments, Travels
Landed in Atlanta at 4:00 pm hungry and ready for our drive north to find somewhere to spend the night before heading further on to other places. Our first stop after leaving the airport was Dave Poe’s BBQ joint in Marietta and the claims of it being one of the best in the larger Atlanta area are not without good reason. We’d come back.
This was our first and last time that we would be so lucky to eat sushi made by Shinji Kurita who owned ShinBay restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona for the past five years. About five months after our incredible dining experience with this master of culinary excellence he closed up shop. Eating here was one of those moments as a gourmet that will stay with me for a long time. I can only hope the chef decides to do something in the future rather than retire.
This is the last time we will ever eat at Pinnacle Peak Patio in Scottsdale, Arizona. The steakhouse opened in 1957, and on June 28, 2015, it will serve its last Cowboy steak. While we never ate here frequently, it was nice knowing that places like this still survived.
Overhead are some of the thousands of ties that had been cut off the patrons who dared enter this place wearing formal attire. Other than prices going up over the years, nothing really changed, and the menu remained consistent.
This is the 24-ounce Cowboy steak, a Porterhouse. Served with whole wheat bread, cowboy beans, and some corn on the cob, this was as fancy as it got here. A little more of the flavor of the Old West is disappearing.
It’s not every day you run upon a man walking down the street wearing 16 pounds of pull-tabs, but when you do, kick your child out of the car and tell her to go up to him and pose because you never know if this beacon of fashion prowess is about to be famous. According to him, this is the year he goes viral. I can see why and feel inspired, to the point that I’m trying to convince my daughter to start wearing plastic water bottle caps, I think they’ll prove way cooler, though underwear could be a bit uncomfy.
After our potential brush with future fame, we rushed to the Heard Museum to deal with our cravings, a treat to quiet the rumblies that only Indian fry bread with Nutella can satisfy. Hey, at least we didn’t go for hands – all you Llamas with Hats fans will get this, otherwise, watch their videos here.
We are inching ever closer to something akin to hibernation; what else should we call over 10 hours of sleep? I’d like to call it luxury living in yurts! Out of the cocoon, we slink off to the toilet hut; a hint of blue sky sits behind the cloud cover. Got breakfast made just in time for a light rain to start falling. Oops, spoke to soon. Big drops are starting to hit the yurt, and in moments, we are being pummeled. Caroline knits while I write. We sip our coffee and stay snug and cozy here at Sunset Bay on the Oregon coast.
With a break in the rain, we use the opportunity to fill the car with our gear and hit the road. Just when we think we’ve seen the entirety of the coast, a turn in the road proves that we, in fact, have missed something. This time, it is Shore Acres; once home to a wealthy industrialist, it is now a state park. Great location this man chose for his oceanfront home, too. Tilted sandstone with fossilized blobs juts out of the ocean below the cliffside. We head for the observation deck that marks the spot where Mr. Louis J. Simpson’s mansion once stood; it burned down twice. Following the Great Depression and Mr. Simpson’s fortune dwindling, he donated the property to the state – lucky us.
Inside the enclosed observation deck are displays that show what sunny weather visitors might see out on Simpson Reef and the ocean that was once his front yard. Those fossilized blobs are concretions; rocks that formed within the sediment that likely had been collecting around the organic matter. Seals, sea lions, ospreys, cormorants, pelicans, and black oystercatchers are just a few of the species of wildlife living down on the reef, which is a part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge. The big visitors are the gray whales that pass by, though they don’t usually arrive until December on their southerly travels and then again between March and April as they head north with calves in tow.
Up the road a bit, we round the corner overlooking Cape Arago. We don’t linger very long as the wind is whipping against us hard. Another road leads us to South Jetty and Bastendorf Beach, while the next turn takes us to Eel Lake and Tugman State Park, another park with a great selection of yurts. A few more miles and we are in Winchester Bay with a sun that is trying to poke through the gloom. We spot the roof for Unger’s Bay Fish-N-Chips and set our taste buds on drool, wouldn’t you know it, they were closed. I have a vague memory that this is a deja vu from another trip. Remember that Unger’s is closed Monday through Wednesday. Across the way is a cluster of restaurants; we see a sign for Griffs. Turns out that this was the original. No longer owned by the same people, their red snapper is undeniably super yum. Caroline toasts her beer made in Deschutes called Mirror Pond Pale Ale to the Sun, which is making more frequent appearances.
Our intention was to drive through Florence, but it is one of those coastal towns big enough to feature a Dutch Brothers, which sounds great after a lethargy-inducing lunch. Not quite out of Florence, we are forced to pull over at another of those “stop sign” shops where a dealer of yarn beckons us. This one is called Happy Kamper Yarn Barn and is on the north side of town. One of the big motivators for stopping at these shops is that the yarns become projects that become souvenirs from the locations where they were picked up. Those objects then take us back on our journeys when, at other times (most likely traveling), we reminisce about how this scarf, hat, or pair of gloves came from the yarn we picked up in town so and so back when we were in Maine, Oregon, Hawaii, or Florida. This way, our souvenirs no longer take up shelf space and grow dusty; they are worn as reminders of how lucky we are to be able to visit so many places. With the sun still pouring down on us we ponder visiting Heceta Head Lighthouse but opt instead for a walk on the beach, our first in the three days we’ve been up here.
The sun pushes us to drive on and skip our intended campground at Carl Washburne State Park. We’ll go where the road takes us. Beachside State Park is closed for the season, maybe the next park. First, though, we’ll have to walk along another beach.
Just outside of Newport, South Beach State Park has space available; they even have yurts for rent. Lazy, here we come. To heck with pitching the tent, we’ll take another night of indulgence. The clouds are starting to move in, but not before the sun attempts an encore performance and tries to stay ahead of the clouds that threaten to blot it out. We couldn’t have asked for a better day, and all we had to do to earn it was endure a few days of weather that added its own character to our week-long stay on the coast.
Dinner, if you can call this exorbitance, is served at the Newport Cafe in Newport, Oregon. Yelp said that lots of people like the place, we’ll go with that. Famous for their large portions, the burgers come highly recommended. No wonder. We compromised and ordered the Ultimate Monster Burger for only $13.95 as opposed to the heftier 8-pound version called the Super Ultimate Monster Burger for $26.95; ours was only 4 pounds of burger. When the beast arrives, our eyes grow as large as what’s on the plate – this is crazy big. The table next to us lets out a gasp, muffling our own. As it hits the table, we are all smiles until the thud has us utter an “Oh my god!” This burger is amazing, not just its novelty, it is truly a great burger. This thing is piled high with grilled onions, ham, fried eggs, cheddar cheese, pickles, lettuce, and maybe a few other things. Amazingly, we finished it, not that this was anything special. That honor goes to the youngest person to finish their very own, a 12-year-old girl who finished one of these by herself! We are told that no one individual has ever finished the 8-pounder, so the challenge is on. This thing was so good we talked about coming back in the morning for another, and we would have if we weren’t worried about death making an appearance if we had. One more important note, the Newport Cafe is open 24 hours a day.
Settled into our yurt. Dinner, though, was playing the fiddle of guilt; time to walk some of this off. With half a moon out and the first stars we’ve seen since leaving Arizona, we walked out into the dark for a stroll on the beach. Through the coastal forest and sand dunes to the beach, we lay our eyes upon the ocean glimmering in the moonlight. Thin low clouds are darting north, occasionally blotting out the moon, but only for moments. I wonder out loud about how early humans might have seen this world back when few people inhabited these lands and the earth was infinite. The pressure put on our species by self-awareness has had impacts that few can comprehend. Maybe the abandonment of our awareness of the infinite is what keeps us from enlightenment that would be difficult or impossible to attain by the superstitious. At what point in our evolution will the masses be ready to perceive what we know about the complexity of life? Gods are easy, atoms from here to infinity that self-organize to create matter and intelligence; now that’s hard. Will there be a moment when destiny dictates that we come to terms with that? What if we fail? What other species might arise that would be better suited to pick up the ashes of learning to deal with our place in the infinite?
We then walk back to camp. There is hope that tomorrow brings more clearing skies, but how do we tackle clearing minds of fear and hostility when cadres of people specialize in mongering the halting of our march forward? Where are humanity’s lighthouses on this dark shore as our intelligence extends beyond the night it has lived in for millennia?
Our breakfast today was magnificent, likely made better by the environment we are finding ourselves in, a sense of Europe. Outside, the sky is once again overcast, but as we learned from previous fall trips, the colors of autumn truly show their warmth when not bombarded by a trillion watts of direct sunlight. Across the street, we admire the St. Lawrence River flowing by and, for a moment, dream of kayaking its length on late spring days.
The road east is quiet; the tourist season is over.
The countryside too takes a break from summer. To our left, fields are clear, waiting for snow. On our right, the St. Lawrence lumbers by, nary a ship to be seen. In a world so crowded, how is it that we find ourselves the only travelers looking at these idyllic scenes on such beautiful days?
Entranced, we drive on, admiring the foliage as we move along. I imagine that during the summer and national holidays, these roads are teeming with busy tourists rushing here and there, stopping for ice cream or maybe to pick up some fresh, locally grown tomatoes. Right now, though, it is time to enjoy the land, preparing for hibernation. Where has everyone gone? Is anyone home?
Still, waters and heavy clouds are perfect companions to an earth and heavens that might otherwise be alone in their vastness.
And then the signs of civilization once again start to rear their heads. First up was a roadside stand selling apples by the bushel, honey, and those icons of fall, the rotund squat pumpkin. Another short bit down the road, a placard drew our attention to experience some honest-to-goodness pain. Oh, that’s right, we are in French-speaking Canada, pain is in fact not all that bad; it’s actually French for bread. Being the lovers of pain that we are, a loaf of roadside brick oven-baked bread was just the ticket. All we would need now was some new cheese to try it with.
In one of the next villages, that was just what we would find – cheese. Our stop was the Metro Plus, and once again, I am pleasantly thrilled that the idiotic stereotypes that I’ve heard far too often south of the Canadian border do not hold true. As we rummaged through the cheese bin, a woman approached and asked in French if we’d like some assistance. In our best imitation of cultured people, we asked in Frenchlish for a fromage with grande odeur. Luckily, she saved us from further embarrassment and in English, asked if we like to sample some of the cheeses. We leave with a package of Cendre De Lune or “Moon Dust” from DuVillage – the 2011 winner of Le Festival des Fromages Fins. This soft-ripened cheese dusted with gray ash will forever stand out as one of the best cheeses we have ever tasted.
Not long after our pit stop, we arrived in the maze of Quebec City. We are in love. Our hotel for the next two nights is at the famous Château Frontenac. This is our view.
We have a two-room suite, too bad as it will mostly be wasted on us. Our ambition is to see the city, not dwell in this sumptuous room. If only we were connoisseurs of pampering, we would probably enjoy, even demand, to be living in the resplendence of opulence due those who believe they have earned it. But alas, we are more simple than that and take our luxuries from the skies, forests, waters, and their myriad sounds and colors that enchant our senses. That is where we thrive in the finery of life.
Room service? We wouldn’t know how it was; we had a date with L’entrecote Saint-Jean for their supposedly amazing steak with mustard/pepper sauce. I would guess only locals order anything else off the menu, and by the looks of the plates we see while being seated, I’d have to say that it’s mostly travelers eating here. Caroline and I went the tourist route; that was, after all, what had drawn us in. It was good, not great, but worth the visit. What was really great was the dessert: profiteroles, also known as cream puffs. Covered in chocolate and almond slivers, the French know very well how to make pastries. Time to walk around the city and enjoy our move into night.
Back at the Château, we lingered outside, enjoying the city lights and the sense of history. With only one full day in Quebec City, we’ll have to rise early and be prepared to wear out our feet, but for now, we’ll just continue to walk and be delighted by these memories of Europe.