[AUTHOR'S NOTE: In the interest of saving time and energy when I have too many other things and concerns going on—not the least of which is the dire state of my mother's health, which I don't want to bog this otherwise fun post down with and which can be read about extensively in backdated "My tweets" posts—and especially when I have already written fairly extensively in my email photo digest / travelogue about the past three days, I decided the smartest and most efficient move would be simply to copy and paste the content of that email here.]

Sunday, June 21

First stop: Dad and Sherri's house! We happened to need to drive through Olympia on our way to Long Beach—aside from that half-day-trip to Skagit Valley on April 30, the first time we had been outside of Seattle proper since March—so a brief visit here seemed logical. Still socially distanced, out in the back of their house. I only went inside briefly to use the bathroom once, when no one else was inside, and even then with a mask on. I hadn't seen them in person, outside of Zoom video chats, since Christmas. Too long! We stayed to visit for roughly maybe two hours. Sherri fed us Lemoncello White Chocolate Covered Almonds from Costco.

Second stop: Shipwreck Café, the restaurant Dad and Sherri sold last fall after running it for 25 years—I just wanted to see what the new owners had done with it. Thurston County has also been in Phase 2 for a while now, but early on they still had to close down except for takeout for a while, just like all the other restaurants, and Dad and Sherri still went out of their way to get takeout from there a lot in an effort to support them. It also gave the new owners some extra time to do some fairly dramatic renovation, such as redoing the ceilings to make them look more like the inside of a boat. Side note: I have been saying for weeks that I won't "dine in" at any restaurant without outdoor seating for a long, long time, but clearly I made an exception here. We did wear masks until we got to our table, and it made me feel better to be seated next to an open window; the restaurant's front door was propped open to facilitate a very noticeable cross breeze; and the few other diners with us in this section of the restaurant were well more than six feet away from us.

Sunday destination! "Boardwalk Cottages," which we found on Hotels.com and settled on based on a balance of overall user ratings (www.hotels.com/ho628933280/?pa=1&tab=description&..., average rating 9.4, "excellent") and affordable per-night price. Even a few weeks earlier I would have been far more wary of staying in any hotel anywhere, but a) to my pleasant surprise, this one had contactless check-in, the lobby closed and locked but with a phone number to callto get a code for using the "OpenKey" app on your phone to unlock your door; b) there was no maid service during stays, just between them, thereby avoiding contact with any staff; and c) in addition to all of that, I still brought our own paper towels and disinfectant spray and I sprayed all surfaces in the unit the moment we arrived.

We did not bring our own pillows as is often recommended, though, and we still slept on the unit's bed pillows. I suppose we'll find out in a couple of weeks if that was a mistake.

Anyway. The Boardwalk Cottages had maybe ten units, but this one was ours, #1 at the end by the entrance at the road across the street from some forest between us and the dunes before the beach. You can see people in the above shot but they are in the unit next to ours, and I just couldn't get a shot without them in it.

The walk to the beach from Boardwalk Cottages was barely 10 minutes, and we did that pretty quickly after settling into our unit. Sunday, being still the weekend, saw the most kite flying, including that giant cat there at far left.

I asked Shobhit to take this photo of me. When he had suggested a short trip to the ocean, I jumped at it—what better place to go after three months of a stay-home order? You can't get any more wide open space than this, short of literally being in outer space. And: it's an ideal place to go with no crowds around and no need to do much of anything else. (These beaches were the opposite of crowded; nothing like the viral videos of crowded beaches in Florida or the Lake of the Ozarks.)

This was the only time we spent on the beach laying on our blanket tote. The weather was beautiful but not super-warm, highs in the mid- to upper-sixties, which meant once evening approached it got chilly quickly. Also, it was very windy, and sand kept getting all over our blanket tote and all over the books we were trying to read.

It was still fantastic.

Monday, June 22

Taking full advantage of the lovely porch in front of our unit, coffee and tea, which we did both mornings we were there. I propped this on the railing and used my phone's self-timer.

We decided to hop into the car and drive the length of Long Beach to its north end, the peninsula stretching 28 miles, laying claim to the longest beach in the United States—some claim the world, but that is subject to qualifiers, like "World's Longest Drivable Beach" (also disputed) or "World's Longest Continuous Peninsula Beach." In any case, the average width of this narrow, 28-mile-long peninsula is all of about a mile and a half. The above shot, taken near the northern tip of the peninsula (the town of Long Beach is located at the south end of it) but on the inland side with the waters of Willapa Bay visible in the distance, was taken through our binoculars after briefly getting out of the car to take in the view.

There are several state parks in the area, and with one brief exception, we did not go in any—because even though I did get a Washington State Parks Discover Pass all the way back in January when I still thought I would be doing a State Parks tour for my Birth Week (which I now plan to do next year instead), I stupidly forgot to bring it with us on this trip! And neither of us had the necessary cash on us to get in otherwise. We did almost try to go into Leadbetter Point State Park at the northern tip of the peninsula by just parking outside the parking lot, but we were almost immediately eaten alive by mosquitos—and the bug spray Shobhit thought we had was also at home, and Shobhit was too cheap to buy another one. As soon as we got home this afternoon, I found the Discover Pass and the bug spray and took it down to the car, stashed alongside an emergency tube of sunscreen, just to make sure we are prepared with all of these things the next time we need them.

Oh look, another state park! Cape Disappointment—and this one, actually, we kind of blew into after driving up to the park ranger window, only to find a sign asking us to walk around to the other side of the building for assistance, and whoever was there was occupied talking to someone else. We still didn't have a Discover Pass so we only drove around for a few minutes before leaving again, although we did park for a split second long enough for me to get out and take a few shots of the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.

We decided to cross the Astoria-Megler Bridge to Astoria, Oregon, which was not far. We could find only one Starbucks in the whole town, located inside a Safeway, where we stopped and got a latte and a chai before turning around and coming back.

The bridge is roughly four miles long and traverses the mouth of the Columbia River, which forms the state line for most of that between Washington and Oregon.

I got this, a rather lucky shot, of Mt. St. Helens, through the binoculars while Shobhit was driving northward back across the bridge. It took several tries, what with the zoom being used even through the binoculars, while the car was bouncing me around all over the place.

Back in Long Beach! And the Boardwalk our Cottages were named after—taken during a solo walk back to the beach while Shobhit attempted to take a nap.

Look lengthwise along the bottom of this shot. This reminded me of that Humpback Whale skeleton we had seen on Kangaroo Island in Australia, which had washed ashore in 1984. This skeleton of a Gray Whale was a bit younger, having washed ashore in 2000.

Shobhit and I did none of the typical touristy things in Long Beach, though some of them were very much back in business, such as horse rides along the beach—something Shobhit and I actually did do once, 15 years ago, on this very Long Beach Peninsula in 2005.

Anniversary trip photo! (Not to be confused with this year's anniversary dinner photo, as our actual anniversary is on June 14. But, because Shobhit's boss already had time off scheduled that day, he had to work, so we postponed our little trip until a week later.)

Requisite Photo of Sea Sunset, Beyond Dunes

Tuesday, June 23

Here's something you don't see every day—the skeletal parts of a carousel. This appeared to be a rather small carnival area right on Long Beach's main street, but clearly not open for business—their website says they are "undergoing a complete renovation," but I find myself wondering if that started long before the arrival of COVID-19.

And here I am at the "World's Largest Frying Pan"—which, but OF COURSE, is but one of six to make that claim as long ago as 2010. (You think maybe making trivial "world's largest" claims was a lot easier to get away with before the internet?)

One last jaunt to the beach before heading back home. This is my favorite of the shots I took at the beach this morning.

**BONUS FOR THIS POST**

Shobhit and I also stopped by Gabriel and Lea's new house in Federal Way on our way back home. Lea was in a meeting inside so could not come out to greet us; they are letting no one besides themselves and Tess (and very occasionally and cautiously, Stephanie) inside the house until the pandemic is over, so we could only hang out, distanced from each other, in a patio area in the middle of their truly gorgeous, lush, back "yard" area, which has no lawn but has tons of plant growth.

We visited for roughly an hour, which was kind of all Shobhit wanted and all Gabriel could take, for more reasons than I can get into—but one of them was his preoccupation with limiting proximity to anyone outside his family. To be clear, hanging out in this manner was his idea, but to be fair, there were more recent personal developments on his part that also complicated it. In any case, he told us to bring our own drinks, and although he kept a distance from us of easily ten feet or more rather than six, and we were outside, about halfway through the visit he admitted that us not keeping our masks on was stressing him out. I really should have asked if he wanted us to wear them as soon as we arrived; we did still bring them just in case, but I had assumed, even though I have been a vocal advocate for mask wearing all along, that being outside and that far apart we would be fine. Even when I leaned in to peer through a window on his deck—which he did invite us up onto to check it out—and I cupped my hands around my face, he said, "Don't touch!" I'm sure he disinfected that window after we left, as well as the latch on the gate that Shobhit opened himself before Gabriel had a chance to get his attention to ask that he let him do do it.

But, you know, whatever. We all deal with shit in our own ways, as Gabriel himself acknowledged as he made it pretty clear that were he in my position he would have gone to see Mom intubated in the hospital instead of proceeding with a planned anniversary trip to the coast. I don't regret the decision though, and I don't think I ever will. To Gabriel's credit, he was as consoling as he knew how to be (as is any decent person from a position like that) and was pretty concerned about how I was doing. That's all for another time and post though, as I wanted this one to focus on how lovely the past three days with my husband have been. It truly was a breath of fresh air after all this time stuck at home.

[posted 9:50 pm]