Kryptic’s Thoughts

Tillamook and Cape Mears

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August 2 – 3, 2008 Long Beach, WA

When we went to visit Margot back in July, she invited us to go camping with them this summer. I hadn’t been camping since I was a teenager and I had never camped along the Oregon Coast. Going with experienced campers took my anxiety level down a notch or two and getting to know Margot, Eddie and Noah, Eddie’s youngest son, was an exciting prospect!! So, we agreed to meet in Long Beach, WA (funny how I always end up in a Long Beach in one state or another…) and start the camping/sightseeing trip there. All the campsites in Long Beach proper were booked full. But, just a few miles away in Illwaco, WA, there was a KOA that had openings and we all met there.
The weather was overcast, cold and damp but, the campground itself was lush and green. There was a rec room with video games and a little store, which Noah really enjoyed. The showers and restrooms were very clean and the staff was fantastic. It’s a great little hideaway that I’m sure we will use again. We got the tents up and Eddie did wonders keeping the fire going with the damp wood we purchased at the campground. Rose keep the coffee brewing and we all just chatted and caught up until bed time.

That first night we awoke to the sound of something “large” breaking twigs and branches, sniffing around the backside of the tent. I had see a very large black bear going up the side of a hill as we were driving into Long Beach, so the sound was a bit terrifying to me. After a bit of listening, Rose go brave and stuck her head outside the tent and looked. There looking back at her were a small herd of deer!! They were right beside the tent and wondering about the campsite! What a wonderful feeling to be camping and have nature come to you!

Marsh's Free Museum

The next morning after breakfast we all loaded up and went into downtown Long Beach. It’s a very tiny place but very quaint and inviting. We wondered the shops and spent some time looking around. My favorite place is “Marsh’s Free Museum”. What a trip. They have every “old-time”, this or that, you can think of adorning the walls. Carnival games from the 1900′s thru the 1950′s are displayed among stuffed deer, birds, lions, whales and coyotes. They even have versions of every mythical creature reported by those lovely sensational magazines. No aliens though… drat. I did however catch a glimps of a “Jack-a-Lope”!! It is a nick-knac shoppers paradise. Loads and loads of touristy things to catch your eye and make you wonder why. Great place to just wander, giggle and admire the antiques.

After lunch at the Long Beach Tavern, we headed out of town toward the beach. Most of you know that Rose and I are geocachers. Yes, we use billion dollar satellites to look for Tupperware hidden in the woods, quite frequently. As there are over 600,000 geocaches all over the world, there is a very good chance that where ever you are, there is a cache. As luck would have it, right there on that beach, not far from where we were walking, there is a cache. So Noah, Eddie and Margot were introduced to geocaching. Margot and Eddie thought it was fun, but Noah being 12, well, he’s twelve. If it isn’t a video game or a fart joke he really isn’t interested yet. So we made the find, took some more pictures and headed back to camp for dinner.

That night as we were dropping off to sleep, we heard the sound of soft scratching at our tent door. Chills again. Then came a soft “meow”… We opened the tent and in walked a full-grown male black cat. He walked the perimeter of the tent, sniffing everything including us then laid down in the middle of the air mattress and purred loudly soaking up as much attention as he wanted. He reached out with his paw and touched Rose’s face, just like her cat Red does, and she was completely won over. He nestled in and whenever his senses picked up sounds outside of the tent he would go on alert until he figured out what is was. The sounds turned out to be the deer returning for an encore visit. Once he everything figured out he settled in and slept peacefully. We closed up the tent and did the same for the next four hours. The next morning he followed us out to the bathrooms and disappeared around a corner, presumably, to go get breakfast. He was much to friendly and cared for to be a wild cat. We found out later in the day as we were leaving that his name was Sampson and he belonged to them. We thanked them for sharing and thanked Sampson for making us smile.