Friday, August 10, 2012

3rd Anniversary - Iron Springs

Next stop on our backwards review of what we've been up to during The First Age of No Posts is the weekend of July 27th through the 29th. We got married on August 1, 2009, so the purpose of this trip was to celebrate our third anniversary. Awful traffic through JBLM and a stop for lunch at Fish Tale Brew Pub acted as time-killers as we counted down the time until check-in.

On our way we passed through such exciting cities such as Montesano (Greta's home town) and Aberdeen. There are some cool sights along the way like the abandoned cooling towers of the Satsop Nuclear Power Plant and... well... THE STAR WARS SHOP IN ABERDEEN. I haven't convinced Katie yet to let us stop here, though most of the time it is me that wants to keep on going since we've already been in the car for few hours.

We pulled in to Iron Springs Resort right around 5pm, just enough time to unpack, get settled, start dinner, and turn on the London 2012 Opening Ceremonies. I loved the quirky bits with Daniel Craig and Rowan Atkinson that reminded us all to not take everything too seriously. We called it a night once the cauldron was lit.

So why Iron Springs? Well, previously in the year we were here for a razor clam dig...

Probably not proper technique.
Definitely not proper technique.
...and despite the gray, wind, and rain, we thought it would be awesome to come back in the summer.

Not the best conditions for razor clamming.
That trip in the winter was kind of a bust in terms of finding clams. Even if I could see their tells in the sand (which was very difficult because of the wind and rain), I figure I had about a 50% to get them. If I remember right, I got 5 clams over two days. It does make me sleep better at night knowing that I was using a shovel instead of a clam gun. It builds character, doing it the hard way!

Besides clamming, there were a healthy doses of puzzling, Magic playing, needle felting, and failing to start fires all around. We had a great time.

It's a long process with lots of stabbing...
...and the final product
About 5 minutes later the whole thing died out.
Swinging in for the attack!
Disgusted with myself for my fire failure.
And back to the present. Luckily, our hunch that it would be pristine in the summer was very correct.

This is actually on an airport.
Seriously!
We spent a majority of Saturday afternoon sitting on the beach. It was the perfect temperature with just the right amount of breeze. Greta even went for a swim. Well, as much of a swim as she can considering she's deathly afraid of water. There's a very fine line with Greta - the water level can go from ankle-deep to you're-drowned in an instant.

Every end is the deep-end when you're Greta.
There was a charcoal grill at the cabin, which was something I hadn't used in a long time. These things get way hotter than any gas grill I've ever used. Like, "I can't even flip the burger without burning all the hair off my arm," hot. The first night we had some awesome steak that I cooked for juuust a minute or two too long from perfection. The second night we had pork tenderloin that took much longer than I thought it would. I am chalking it up to screwing up the distribution of coals. Whatever, the food still turned out great.

At this point I really had no idea what I was doing.
FIRE! A really, really hot fire!
It was a very relaxing weekend, though like most was far too short. Having only one full day there really isn't enough. I look forward to our next stay there, whether it be another (hopefully more successful) razor clam hunt or a peaceful mid-summer jaunt.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, pork loin takes a loooooong time on a charcoal grill. But pork is one of the ones that's okay to eat raw, right?

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