THE ROAD TRIP
WEEK 3

DAY 19 – Thursday, April 1

START: Gold Beach, OR

END: Tillamook, OR

MILEAGE: 311 miles

HIGHLIGHTS: Light-bagging

We woke up this morning to the sound of a meteorite crashing through our hotel room window…  April fools?  No?  Nevermind.

We were actually up and out and on the road by eight o’clock today.  No, seriously, that one’s for real.  Oregon is chock full of lighthouses and we intended on seeing all of them today, so that meant an early start.  The sun was shining and the temperature was mild as we continued north along U.S. 101 toward Cape Blanco.  According to our lighthouse book, the Cape Blanco Light is situated atop a sheer two-hundred-foot white cliff overlooking (duh) the ocean.  The grounds were supposedly open to the public, but upon arrival we were greeted by a locked gate and a sign indicating that tours were only available April through October.  But… but… but… this is April, we asserted to nobody.  Thinking we had to be missing some important detail, we reread the sign and double-checked the date several times, but neither one ceased to contradict the other.  Locked out a good half-mile from the lighthouse, we settled for a few long-distance shots and were just about to move on when a pickup truck pulled up and an official-looking state employee got out to unlock the gate.  He told us that tours of the lighthouse would start at ten o’clock. 

Of course they would.  It would figure that the one day we were up and at the world early, the world wasn’t ready for us.  It was still before nine and we had far too much mileage to cover to warrant sitting around here for an hour.  The good news though was that all the other lighthouses that normally allowed visitors were open today as well.  Actually that was really good news.  If we’d gotten here just one day earlier, we’d have been locked out of more than just Cape Blanco.  April 1 is the apparently magic day for Oregon’s lighthouses, when they dust off the interiors and open the doors to all the enthusiasts who want nothing more than to clamber to the top and feel like a old time lighthouse keeper for a few minutes. 

I nudged Lauren and said, “See, aren’t you glad we stayed that extra day at Laura’s?” 

Just over a half-hour later we arrived at Bullard Beach State Park in the town of Bandon, home of the Coquille River Lighthouse – which was open and waiting for us when we pulled up.  The base of this octagonal lighthouse had been setup as both a museum and gift shop with a lone volunteer (a very nice older lady who seemed genuinely happy to see us) working both.  The volunteer pointed out a sealed-over section of wall where the old foghorn used to be and informed us that the real operational lighthouse and foghorn now sit at the end of a long jetty sticking out into the ocean.  While a light at the top of this tower still flashes its old signature flash, the ocean side is actually blacked out since this is no longer an official beacon. 

After poking around downstairs for a few minutes, we decided it was time to climb up to the head.  Admission was free but we made a donation to the local lighthouse fund anyway.  The lady volunteer thanked us for our contribution, then looking at Lauren’s protruding belly, now reaching ridiculous proportions, asked us if we were sure about making the climb.  We assured her that we would be fine and promised not to induce labor on the way.

“Well I guess if you did, it’d be a pretty neat place to give birth,” the lady said laughing. 

“Not at only thirty-three weeks, it wouldn’t,” said Lauren under her breath.

The Coquille River Light’s tower wasn’t very tall and the climb really wasn’t all that bad.  We were greeted at the top by Chuck, another volunteer who looked to be in his seventies, and who was incredibly well educated on the history of this particular lighthouse.  He told us that the Coquille Light was built in order to guide ships into the river, which runs several miles inland into the heart of what was once a major timber zone.  Any shipper who wanted a piece of that pie had to navigate the river first.  But before they did that, they had to get into the river.  The freshwater of the river mixing with the saltwater of the ocean creates a sizeable churning effect, which has resulted in a large sandbar at the mouth of the river.  While the water’s depth on the river side is anywhere from fifty to seventy feet, the depth on the ocean side is a mere ten to twenty feet.  Depending on tidal conditions, the sandbar can sit as little as three feet below the surface, posing a considerable problem to pretty much any craft larger than a canoe.

Skippers had to navigate the ocean’s surges just right in order to make it safely from the ocean into the river.  Time it wrong and the ship would come down smack on the sandbar, sometimes breaking the ship in half.  And there have been many who have timed it wrong.  In fact, we were told, the last three hundred feet of the river’s south jetty is actually the remains of a ship that crashed there.  It became too dangerous to try and free the ship, so the Coast Guard simply filled it with rocks and left it there.  Chuck also told us that the river’s churning effect creates an incredibly strong undertow, which means a ship often doesn’t just sink.  It can get pulled under and dragged out to sea at a frightening speed if the conditions are (right?).  He said that less than a year before, a tour boat had crashed on the sandbar and been sucked down.  The wreckage surfaced a couple days later nearly a mile out to sea.  There were no survivors. 

Looking around (morbidity and mortality pushed out of our minds), we could see that the beach was littered with scores and scores of driftwood, ranging in size from small sticks to full-blown tree trunks.  Chuck said this happens every winter.  The wood drifts in from god knows how far, some of it floating out there for years and years before finally coming to rest in the state park where every spring it gets cleared away with a backhoe.  Even the jetties were littered with their own share of wood, though we were told they were far too dangerous to clear off.  Ocean surges and undertow aside, Chuck also said, “You never know when a ‘sneaker wave’ is going to hit.”

Not only is this area in the same Alaskan tsunami danger zone as Crescent City, but up here the San Andreas is actually an off shore fault which tremors periodically, disrupting the millions of gallons of ocean water situated above it.  “Sneaker waves” can vary in size from a minor surge on up to a full-blown tidal wave. Living in the aftermath of the catastrophic tsunamis that devastated India in 2005, many of us now know to look for the telltale sign of water receding from the beach, indicating a wave of biblical proportions on its way.  But many sneaker waves don’t telegraph their arrival quite so blatantly.  A wave just big enough to wash ashore, say, fifty feet inland isn’t going to produce a noticeable change in the shoreline in the moments preceding its arrival.  According to Chuck, our ad hoc maritime authority, the only way to know if a sneaker wave is coming is if you happen to see a white breaker out near the horizon.  At that point you have maybe ten minutes before it reaches the mainland – and any wave tall enough to be breaking that far out from land is definitely not one you want to be around when it arrives. 

“Where would you even go at that point if you saw one?” Lauren asked.

 “I’d stay right here,” Chuck responded confidently.  The lighthouse’s foundation was made of solid stone and had been standing for over a hundred years. 

“She’s solid,” said Chuck. 

That point was reaffirmed the year before when a busload of elementary students came for a tour of the lighthouse.  The group had just gotten situated in the tower’s head when a sneaker wave, ahem… snuck up on them.  It brought enough water with it to actually pick up the school bus and float it on top a log, requiring a tow truck to come free it.  But inside the lighthouse, the kids and everybody else were safe and sound. 

We spent nearly a half hour up in the head talking with Chuck – and probably could have stayed longer.  But we were still crunched for time, so we thanked him and headed back to the car.  On the way out we both agreed that our donation to the local lighthouse fund was well spent.  These folks sure knew how to make people enter their lighthouse feeling welcome and exit feeling educated. 

After this, Lauren and I had a run of “light bagging.”  Basically for a couple hours we simply drove to lighthouses, stopping for just long enough to take a picture (“bagging” it) before moving on.  According to our book, these next several lighthouses weren’t open to the public, so we didn’t make a huge effort to get close to them.  Our first “bag”, the Cape Arago Light, is situated on a small island just off the mainland and is inaccessible except by boat – and even then, only by the Coast Guard.  The light was first built in 1866 to guide lumber haulers into Coos Bay – and from the moment of its inception has never had an easy time doing its job.  The island is subject to harsh erosion and the first lighthouse quickly threatened to topple into the sea.  A second lighthouse was built in 1910, and after only a few decades it too was in danger.  So yet a third lighthouse was built in 1934.  This is the one that still stands today.  The first two never did end up falling into the ocean.  While that certainly would have been a dramatic sight to witness, the Coast Guard opted for an equally spectacular demonstration and blew them up with dynamite after completion of the third light. 

In addition to the difficulty of building a structure that would stand the test of time, the Lighthouse Service likewise had trouble devising a method of transportation to and from the island that could stand the test of weather.  Traverses involving low bridges, high bridges, cable trams and good old-fashioned boat travel often ended in near disaster as the ocean beat, crippled, and mocked any attempt to bring keepers and their families from the mainland to their posts. 

Of course all this history didn’t look nearly so exciting from over a mile away.  And certainly not after driving nearly sixteen miles off Route 101 down a bumpy dirt road to the scenic turnout.  By the time we got there, Lauren was feeling not only queasy but also false laborish.  So she sat in the car while I jumped out, snapped a couple of pictures, then brought us back to the highway. 

Another twenty miles up the road, we bagged the Umpqua River Light.  A sign on the side of the road said, “Lighthouse View 1/4 Mile.”  We pulled into the turnout, took pictures of what little we could see – basically the lighthouse’s red top poking through the trees – and were off again.  Forty miles later we bagged the Heceta Head Light.  According to their website, Heceta Head is the most photographed lighthouse in the United States.  I don’t know if I would agree with that assessment.  Personally, I’d put my money on the Cape Hatteras Light in North Carolina for that honor.  Having seen the number of tourists that flock to see that trademark “barber pole” paint job, I’d be very surprised if any other lighthouse came close to the number of pictures being taken of Hatteras.  But still, you do have to admit, as far as scenery goes, Heceta Head has plenty to offer photographers.  Flanked by angular cliffs and ocean on one side and lush evergreens on the other, Heceta Head certainly has a good deal of romantic allure going for it and the grounds currently function as a bed and breakfast / wedding pavilion.  Surprisingly the prices were fairly reasonable, given the location, with some rooms going for as low as $133.00 per night.  But it was barely passed noon and we simply could not stop – not even for romance and lighthouses.  So onward and northward we drove.

There are certain things you notice while driving through Oregon that you just don’t see anywhere else in the country.  For one thing, the road signs are incredibly terse, usually with just one key word giving you all the information the D.O.T. thinks you need.  Rather than DANGER: FALLING ROCKS, the sign on the side of an Oregon mountain simply says, ROCKS.  Rather than TRUCKS ENTERING ROADWAY, it says, TRUCKS.  Even the speed limit signs simply say SPEED 55.  We saw one sign later in the day that declared CONGESTION.  There was no time of day indicated.  Just a curt, unilateral warning for any vehicle passing this way to watch out.  Actually that would have been a good blanket sign for all of Oregon.  If we’re trying to convey the most amount of information with the least number of pleasantries, the state could probably save themselves a lot of money by just cranking out the same WATCH OUT signs and putting them up wherever any kind of hazard exists. 

The shortness of speech on the Oregon road signs didn’t make much sense until you looked around and saw something else you don’t generally see elsewhere in the country: drive-through espresso huts.  We were in the Pacific Northwest now, home of Seattle and her famous son, Starbucks.  The people up here love their coffee a lot, and their espresso even more.  And when you’re that jacked up on caffeine, you apparently don’t want to deal with the petty hassle of actually getting out of your car for your next fix.  Many of these espresso huts didn’t even have the option of indoor counter service.  They were simply little one-room structures with just enough space inside to fit a single espresso machine and a cash register.  They didn’t bother taking up valuable real estate with shelves and cupboards full of silly things like pastries or bagels.  The owners knew Oregonians were coming to their hut looking for one thing: espresso – and damnit they wanted it NOW! 

After seeing all these espresso huts, other things started to make sense.  For instance, the rapid speech patterns of the people in the restaurant the night before.  Of course!  They weren’t being rude.  They just couldn’t help themselves.  With that much espresso coursing through their veins, they didn’t physically have the ability to wait for us to finish a sentence.  And I suppose anybody that hopped up on the state’s unofficial drink (Milk is the official one, but really that’s just the vehicle for these people’s lattes isn’t it?), doesn’t have time to read five whole words on a road sign either. 

(((Just tell me exactly what I need to know and spare me all those annoying superfluous words that waste valuable nanoseconds of my time and keep me from getting my next gigantic cup of triple shot espresso and really serve no other purpose being on the sign in the first place except to satisfy some half educated government employee's anal retentive need to stay true to a ridiculous archaic standard of english which still refuses to include rapid run on sentences as good and useful turns of phrase and is the reason I got a C in public speaking to begin with and all just because my big jerk of a professor went to harvard school of dictation or whatever the crap it was and I mean hello have you tasted the sorry excuse for coffee they serve out there now what does that sign up there say ELK good great got it!!!!)))

I’ve never been a fan of espresso personally.  My experiences with the stuff generally centered around a tiny porcelain cup containing a single supercharged shot with a lemon wedge on the side that we served in the slightly snobby restaurant I worked at in Boston.  Those little shooters of dark brown water, served without milk or Sweet & Low were always so stale and bitter that I likened it to liquid cigarette butts.  As far as I was concerned, the only logical explanation for why somebody would want to drink something so horrible was for the caffeine high, which I imagine must have been pretty intense – you know, once the shakes wore off.  I wouldn’t know.  I’d never finished an entire cup.  So we bypassed all the little espresso huts and focused our attention on finding the next lighthouse.  Though we did stop and grab a cheap lunch at a little mom and pop convenience store that was advertising three hotdogs for $1.25. 

The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse is probably the most beautiful and well-run lighthouse I’ve ever been to.  Beautiful because this lighthouse is actually a house, a Victorian one at that, with the light room stuck on top almost as an afterthought.  Well-run because Yaquina Lights Inc., the nonprofit in charge of the place, has gone to great lengths to preserve not only the light, but the residence itself, exactly the way it was when keeper Charles Pierce, with his wife and nine children, lived here from 1871-1874.  Every room was made up and decorated just as it would have been back in the day, and the entire house was chock full of informative signs and informative volunteers who could describe life in the lighthouse with a considerable degree of knowledge and authority.  Even though entrance to the lighthouse was technically free, we felt no hesitation about making a donation.   

The fact that this guy Pierce had nine kids is not lost on you as you walk through this charming, albeit tiny house, which would probably fit a family of four nowadays.  I assume “Where did everyone fit?” is the most popular question asked of the volunteers here.  The actual light room was closed to the public but there was plenty more to look at.  The bedrooms, kitchen, music room, living room, were all on display.  Some rooms you could walk through, while others had to be viewed from behind a velvet rope.  One of the most interesting things we saw was a series of framed artwork hanging on the walls of the family room.  At first these abstract designs resembling flowers and doilies appeared to be made out of some kind of dark thread or lace.  But one of the volunteers told us to look closer and see that the material being used was actually human hair, which the girls in this family apparently never cut.  When it came out in their hairbrush they would save the strands in a jar, then use it later on to make these designs, which they accomplished by wrapping the individual hairs around pieces of wire.  Definitely a craft that required patience and a certain dedication to tedium.  But I guess when you’re in the middle of nowhere, as this place very much was in the late 1800’s, with no TV and nine kids to corral, you’ll latch onto any form of entertainment you can think of that will keep everybody occupied and quiet.

One thing that none of the signs, the free literature, or even the volunteers talk about very much at Yaquina Bay, is what a short-lived project this particular lighthouse was.  Pierce and his family were the first and last to live here, and the lighthouse was only in operation a scant four years before the Yaquina Head lighthouse was constructed about three miles up the road.  The most that Yaquina Lights Inc. will say about the subject in their brochure is:

It soon became apparent that the[Yaquina Bay] Light was not as visible as needed, so the government decommissioned it in 1874.

The real story wasn’t quite as banal as that.  The Yaquina Head Light was supposed to be built at Cape Foulweather, some fifteen miles to the north.  But somehow through a colossal bureaucratic goof the light was built here instead, rendering the smaller, less powerful Yaquina Bay station obsolete.  One has to wonder, in the year or so it took from groundbreaking to completion, why nobody with half a brain saw the new lighthouse being built in town, questioned the necessity of two lights so close together, and posed that question to somebody in charge of the paperwork and logistics.  Whatever the reason, mister Pierce and his family of twelve (a tenth child was born during his abbreviated tenure there) were shipped off to another assignment, and the Yaquina Head light took control of the local waterways.   

Before leaving the Yaquina Bay light (are you keeping the two straight?) we headed down to the basement where there was a decent-sized gift shop.  Lauren picked out a few figurines of the lighthouses we’d seen today and I snagged a shotglass with all the Oregon lighthouses on it.  The volunteers running the register told us that Yaquina Head was open to the public, but it closed at four o’clock, which was the time now.  That was okay.  Between this and the Coquille River Light, we’d gotten in a good deal of lighthouse history and education for one day.  Plus, there were even more to see tomorrow.  We figured we’d just drive up to Yaquina Head, snap a quick picture and move on.  There was one more Oregon lighthouse left after that, and we were hoping to bag the entire state in a single day.  But daylight was working against us, so we had to hurry.

As it turned out, the Yaquina Head Lighthouse was situated on a large nature preserve with a great deal to see and our quick photo op turned into yet another hour-long diversion.  Actually, the reason we stayed so long probably had as much to do with the fact that it cost five dollars to get into the nature preserve even though the lighthouse was closed, and we felt compelled to get our money’s worth. 

Lauren summed it up best, saying, “Are you kidding me?  The open lighthouses didn’t charge us a thing and now we have to give you five bucks for something we can’t even get into?”  Of course she said that to me, not to the guy collecting our money.

So we made the most of it.  First stop, of course, was the lighthouse itself.  Although the interior was closed, we were able to walk around outside the base and take our obligatory “looking up” shots, which were hard to get on account of the wind blowing harder than anything I’d ever experienced.  And remember, I’ve lived through a tornado – and Point Reyes for that matter.  I conducted a little experiment and leaned into the wind, waiting for an even stronger gust.  When it came I let my center of gravity tip back, and sure enough, for a very brief second the wind was actually strong enough to hold me up. 

After getting our lighthouse shots we headed down the cliff via a wooden staircase to Cobble Beach.  The entire beach, as its name suggests, is comprised of millions upon millions of impossibly smooth gray cobblestones, which made a very cool hollow, almost glottal sound as we walked on them.  The stones were formed by lava flowing into the ocean and quickly cooling, then eroding over millions of years of ebbing and flowing tides.  The texture of the beach was mesmerizing and I took numerous pictures, both close-ups and wide shots, thinking these would make some kickass desktop pictures for my computer.  A few hundred feet out in the water, dozens of seals were sunning themselves on a series of large rocks.  Fortunately for them, the tide was in far enough to deter the other tourists from walking out and disturbing them.  Instead they poked around in the tidepools (the tourists, not the seals), fishing out various specimens with little nets and examining them closely before returning them to their home, or chucking them as far as they could out to sea.  For our part, Lauren and I walked around on the tricky cobblestone beach for about a half hour, picking up cobbles and dropping them to hear that funky hollow sound over and over again.  But with daylight a-wastin’, we had to get a move on if we hoped to make our final lighthouse before sundown. 

A sign on the stairwell had sternly warned beachcombers not to remove any of the cobbles from the beach, though you could take as much driftwood as you wanted.  While it was very tempting to ignore the first rule, I was well schooled in the “leave no trace” philosophy and knew that if I took just one stone, and everybody else took just one stone, Cobble Beach would eventually become known as just “the beach.”  Instead, I took advantage of the second rule and snagged a smooth-as-marble piece of wood, which might have passed for a fossil of some sort if you didn’t know better.

The race was officially on when we left Yaquina Head just after five o’clock.  The Cape Meares Lighthouse was near the town of Tillamook almost seventy miles north, and it closed at sunset, which had been occurring somewhere between six-thirty and seven o’clock.  We would be cutting it close.  I drove as fast as I could, but U.S. 101 was still a two-lane road that passed through a series of towns with their own share of lights and local traffic.  Once in Tillamook (which I think is one of the coolest names for a town ever) we started looking carefully for our turn, not wanting to waste precious seconds turning around.  The sun was already below the treeline.  Fortunately, the good Mooks of Tilla were gracious enough to put up a big old sign with a big old arrow pointing to the left, declaring, “Lighthouse 10 Miles.” 

Ten miles!  This really was going to come down to the wire.  We drove down several secondary roads, including one that was mostly gravel, racing past signs that kept taunting us with distances: “Lighthouse 5 Miles… Lighthouse 2 Miles…”  The sun had now officially set and the sky was quickly turning from orange to dark purple.  Finally we saw a sign for Cape Meares State Park.  The sign at the start of the dirt road told us, “Park closed and gate locked at dusk.”  But the gate was still open.  Dear God it looked like we were going to make it.  We tore down the dirt road, kicking up dust behind us and praying that there would be enough daylight to get a good picture.  About thirty seconds later we saw a pair of headlights approaching.  We hoped for a brief second that it was just a carload of tourists packing it up for the day, but then the car flashed its high beams at us and we knew it was a park ranger.  Pulling up alongside, the rather mannish-looking woman in the brown button-down shirt informed us she was getting ready to lock up for the night.

Nooooo!  We had come so close!  Defeated, we turned around in the parking lot where we couldn’t even see the lighthouse for a Hail Mary distance shot.  We waved to the ranger on our way out and noted that the park would reopen at 7AM.

Now the dilemma was what to do.  Keep driving?  There was a hostel another fifty miles north in the town of Seaside that had gotten great reviews in our hostel book, but that would mean forgoing the Cape Meares Light.  It would be a shame to have come this far, only to miss bagging the entire state of Oregon by a single lighthouse.  In the end, we let our finances make the decision.  The cost of the Seaside hostel’s private room was more expensive than any of the motels we’d been staying in the last several nights.  It was as good an excuse as any to justify spending the night in Tillamook.  We’d reattempt Cape Meares in the morning.

We drove back into Tillamook and found the Mar Clair Inn.  I went inside and found the office empty, so I spent a few seconds making subtle attention-getting noises – sniffing, clearing my throat, shuffling from side to side – in an attempt to draw out whoever was supposed to be working the desk.  When that yielded no results, I rang the little bell on the desk gently.  Then I rang it a little louder.  Then I rang it several times in rapid ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding succession. 

This motel was set up like a lot of others we’d seen in the last couple of days.  While the rooms themselves were in a separate building, arranged in one long continuous line, the office was actually adjacent to somebody’s house.  In fact behind the counter was an open doorway with only a pair of curtains separating the living area from the office.  Behind the curtains I could hear the sound of some Law & Order incarnation playing loudly on the TV.  Perhaps the manager (or whoever) was just on the other side of the house and couldn’t hear me over the loud BONG-BONG’s. 

At a loss for what else to do, I walked behind the counter, parted the curtain ever so slightly and called out, “Hello…?  Hell-ooo-ooo!”  Still nothing, I pushed the curtain aside and took a few tentative steps into the house.  I stopped short and shrunk back quickly when I spotted a man eating dinner at the dining room table, apparently oblivious to my presence.  I scooted back into the motel office, seemingly undetected.  Now I was pissed.  Unless the guy was literally (as in clinically) deaf, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have come out here by now.  This charade had been going on for over five minutes by this point.  You’d think that if only for security reasons, somebody would have checked in on the office by now.  I mean seriously, rudeness aside, there were also a lot of things worth stealing up here.  Lamps, bookshelves, the freakin’ cash register.  If the guy in the house was just taking a dinner break and didn’t want to be bothered, fine, but geez you’d think he would have at least locked the door and put a “Will Return” sign on it.

I grabbed a business card off the counter and went over to the courtesy phone.  I sat down in a comfy chair (which, had I been another person, I would have attempted to steal as well) and dialed the number for the motel.  God love’em, the office phone had an actual, real live bell for its ringer.  The kind that is loud and obnoxious and impossible to ignore.  I thought for sure this would bring somebody running.  At the very least, I figured the phone would also be ringing elsewhere in the house and somebody would have to eventually pick up.  But the phone just rang and rang.  No manager.  No irate house dweller.  No answering machine for that matter. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” I said intentionally loud, slamming the handset down.

“Well screw this.”  I picked up the phone and hit redial.  As soon as the office phone began its shrill, ear-piercing BBBRRRRR-IIIIIINNNNGGGG, I set the courtesy phone’s receiver on the table and walked out.  I have no idea how long the phone blared before somebody finally came to check on it.  I was long gone by then.  But I sincerely hope the phone company in Tillamook didn’t have some kind of automatic cut off that breaks the connection after a set number of rings.

Lauren was a little incredulous when I told her that I had been in there for nearly ten minutes and hadn’t spoken to a single person.  It’s really a shame that the Mar Clair was the cheapest motel we’d seen in town.  It would have been nice to say, “Well they lost out on our business.”  But we were on a budget, and cheap rooms always trump lousy service.  Either way, we obviously couldn’t walk back in there now.  At least not right now.  So we drove down the street to a local restaurant called simply, The Pancake House for a dinnertime helping of their signature dish.  The service was a bit slow and the server rather curt (there seemed to be a trend developing in Tillamook), but the food was thick, heavy and buttery, the way good pancakes should be. 

Full and satisfied, and getting drowsy, we headed back to the Mar Clair Inn.  For the first time all trip I had Lauren go inside to secure us a room.  I wasn’t sure if the guy I’d seen eating his dinner earlier had seen me as well, or if he was even the one who would be (hopefully) working the desk, but I didn’t feel like having an awkward conversation if that was the case.  Lauren went in and delivered our typical spiel to the now-present clerk. 

“A room with one bed please.”

“How many people.”

(sigh) “Just me.”

We weren’t sure if it was wise to make somebody think that there was a very pregnant woman staying alone in one of the rooms here.  That seems like just the kind of helpless person that a freak rapist-murderer would prey on.  But if it came to that, said rapist would be in for a very big surprise when he came through the door.  After that, I don’t think we’d have been squabbling over the ten-dollar charge for our extra occupant. 

Incidentally, Lauren claims to have had a lovely conversation with the guy working the desk and she noted that the courtesy phone had been replaced to its cradle.