On 2/12/2024 5:52 PM, Technobarbarian wrote:

One of the many nice things about where I live is that it's about an hour and a half away from all sorts of great places--including the
Pacific ocean. So, we made a quick trip to Seaside in rainy weather. It
was excellent. This time we did all the touristy stuff in a relatively
quiet beach town.

We had lunch at Mo's. I remember Mo's from back when Mo bought a
rundown fisherman's restaurant on the waterfront in Newport. They are
now a locally famous chain on the Oregon coast. Over the years they have improved significantly since their days as just another cheap burger
joint. In Seaside they have a nice view of the ocean.

https://ilovemoschowder.com/mos-seaside-1

If I had seen it before I didn't remember it, so we went over and
looked at the Lewis and Clark Memorial Salt Works.

https://www.nps.gov/places/the-salt-works.htm

We hadn't been in the Seaside Aquarium for a long time, so we made
a stop there.

http://www.seasideaquarium.com/

Something else I hadn't seen in a very long time was the old Episcopalian Church camp. When I was a teenager they had various summer
camps in Gearhart, just north of Seaside. There were week long camps for families and for teens, etc, etc. They owned what had been a nice hotel, built back in the days when the idividual rooms didn't have plumbing. It
had originally been close to the beach. After the the jetties were built
on the Columbia river sand started accumulating in that area. Now there
are dunes between the old hotel and the beach. The beach is a couple of blocks away. The church also owned a church there, with a rectory, some cabins and a dining hall. They sold all of that a long time ago. This is
the old hotel:

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/220-Nita- Ave_Gearhart_OR_97138_M15946-50508

It looks a lot nicer and maybe a little bigger since the
Episcopalians owned it. The old hotel, church and rectory are now
private homes. It was fun looking at the old church because I had been
an altar boy in there.

But, that wasn't the best fun of the weekend. That happend today
while we were wandering around looking at all the shops. My wife had
been curious about a yarn shop that recently died. It's dead. Across the street was a rock shop we couldn't resist. The owner asked if we were
rock hounds. We had to admit that we were and I added that we had caught
the disease in Tucson. The owner said he had lived in Portland "until
things got bad." I laughed in his face and pointed out that Portland had always been corrupt with open gambling and prostitution. Portland used
to be a famously wide open west coast port city. The people who lived in Portland considered corruption good for business. I mentioned the
famously corrupt mayor who had been elected in our lifetime. He might
have been, more or less, the last in a long line. Or maybe not. We
talked about the gypsies who have lived in Portland longer than I have
been alive, and still live here. He had done business with them and knew exactly what I was talking about. Over all I think Portland has improved significantly over the years. In my lifetime the Willamette river going through Portland was an open sewer. In the past downtown Portland was
rarely what I would call "family friendly", unless your family likes
dive bars.

My wife did find a pretty Mexican lace agate that she liked.

https://www.facebook.com/ShamousRocks/

TB

Well, shoot! How the hell could you afford to do all that with the
economy so bad? Damn. Why, times are so tough I saw a guy putting
regular gas in his Mercedes! HawHawHaw!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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