by

If you’re just joining me for this post, make sure you go back and read Pt. 1 of the series… but in a nutshell I took a weekend getaway to the Washington coast where cell phone signals are faded and there’s no wifi to be had.

Saturday was our only completely full day at the coast. We had big plans, I mean BIG, HUGE plans…. okay, not really. All we wanted to do was sit on the beach, maybe put our feet in a bit, and get some reading in.

But of course you know that anything I post is going to involve food so that’s where we began our day. Again, it was so super easy to call the restaurant and order so we could just go pick it up. Neil, of course, had one of his go-to favorites dungeness crab cake benedict which he informed me was full of delicious crab.  I went for a more traditional breakfast, scrambled eggs with, my personal fave, hash browns. To my surprise and delight it came with toast so, since we were on vacation, I made a big splurge…… sourdough toast with marionberry jelly. ::heaven:: Yes, it doesn’t take much to please me!

Then it was time to go to the beach! We got super lucky and we had clear skies, sun and temps in the 70s. I could have used a few more degrees, but I’ll definitely take it! We hooked Draco up to his longer leash, grabbed some towels and began the “long” journey down to the beach. Now to be honest, it’s not that far to the beach but to get there you have to take a lot of stairs… which isn’t so bad going DOWN to the beach…

Draco was finally going to get a chance to see the mysterious blue that he had been fascinated with. Please forgive my photography skills because, quite frankly, these are NOT high quality videos, but they are very entertaining and cute, so enjoy!!

He was distracted by something… My guess is another dog on the beach!

Here is Neil waaaaay far away in the water. He got further into the water than I did! Just the feet was good for me!

Okay, here’s one a little closer! Draco and I had taken to the towels on the beach in the sun so I wasn’t getting up to take a close-up picture- haha!

We seriously just hung out on the beach and read for hours. It was soooo nice and relaxing! The best background “music” for reading is definitely waves crashing. It was super sunny, warm and, did I mention, NOT rainy!

It will come as no surprise to you that we had to end out time on the beach because 1. I was hungry and 2. Draco was restless. So we trekked back up the 100 and something steep stairs up to the hotel. Let’s just say, Draco and his little legs weren’t restless after that climb. He did great though! He likes to take a flight at a time and wait at the top for us slow humans to catch up!

Since we had eaten at the restaurant so often and planned to eat there again that night, we thought we’d venture into town to see what else we could find. We drove the entire town in a total of 5 minutes- like I said, it was quaint. We settled on a place called Paddie’s Perch and got the seafood combo to share so we’d still be hungry for dinner. It came with a biscuit shaped like a muffin which I found highly entertaining.

Stay tuned for the 3rd and final installment of my weekend away!

by

I LOVE what I do so much, in fact, that I tend to…. let’s say… overwork.  I mean, I enjoy my business so much that you almost have to pry me away from my computer at night.  Even at a job that you love so much, you can still become a little burned out. Which is why we decided to take a weekend away at the beach. When we first starting talking about taking a vacay we didn’t really have anywhere in mind. Then, VOILA, a Living Social deal popped into my email about this seaside resort on the Washington Coast. I was SURE that when I got the deal that it wouldn’t fit into our schedule, they wouldn’t have any vacancies or that it wouldn’t accept dogs, because we wanted to take Draco with us.  To my complete and utter surprise, it fit ALL my requirements so we booked and patiently, okay… IMpatiently counted down the days until it was time to go.

It was just 3 hours away, but we weren’t sure about cell coverage since we use our phones for GPS navigation so we used Google maps and printed out directions which I hadn’t done in a long time. Technology has almost replaced that extra step. Basically you drive south, then west around the mountains and then north through Aberdeen, the home of Kurt Cobain (Come As You Are), and in another half hour you’re at this quaint little resort just a little over 100 steps to the beach.

When we checked in, they gave Draco a treat so we were already off to a good start. We drove around to our room, opened the door and…  Well, actually, you can see a video about our particular room right here.  It’s not the fanciest hotel room, by any means, but it had a view of the ocean and a fireplace and the simpleness of it was so perfect and exactly what I needed.

I mentioned this was a Living Social deal but what I didn’t mention was that it came with Seattle Chocolates and champagne which I had completely forgotten. It was SUCH a nice surprise when we walked in and saw this with a note saying champagne was in the fridge:

We opened the curtains and saw there was a deck with chairs. When we stepped onto the deck, this is the site that we saw:

Talk about stress melting away at the site of that! And we didn’t just SEE the ocean, we could HEAR the waves crashing. It was so relaxing from the moment we stepped onto that deck. Draco wasn’t sure what he was hearing and he also was very excited to see what all that blue stuff was. He was fascinated with the ocean!

Speaking of Draco, he really made himself at home. There were two beds and he promptly thought he’d go ahead and pick one for himself!

I mean he jumped right up there, and, one by one, took his toys up there too. It was hysterical. He was SO happy!

The restaurant was just a few steps away from our room which was really convenient. We weren’t allowed to have Draco in the room by himself, and I’m not sure how he would have reacted anyway, so it was so nice to be able to order food from the restaurant and go pick it up. The food was SO delicious! That first night we split clam chowder, salad with crumbled goat cheese and grilled sea scallops (and of course champagne!).

Sunset was gorgeous and we had a great view from our deck. Draco was also very happy about the sunset and…. he also wanted to run free in the grass below!

Here’s some more gorgeous sunset pics:

After that we lit the fire and watched movies. It was so relaxing. All in just one evening of our vacation. Stay tuned for Day 2 including video of Draco at the beach! 🙂