Thursday, 5/27/2010

Ben and I got up before the crack of dawn today and went on a little photo shoot! We quietly got ready and managed to sneak out of the room with our camera gear without waking up Katie. Jennifer and Spencer were kind enough to listen for Katie while we were gone. Thankfully, we got back just as she would have been waking up, so they had an easy job.

Anyway, we went out to Face Rock and took photos at dawn. The sky did not provide the beautiful sunrise we hoped for, but we still had a great time. It will be a while before our photos are processed, but we did get some really good photos and video. We only saw one person on the beach before us, a clammer. There were a couple other photographers out when we were wrapping up. It was very calm and peaceful out there- just the two of us:)

Enough about photography, on to the food. We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and then hit the road, destination Arch Cape, OR. We stopped at the Samoa Cookhouse in Eureka, OR for lunch. Ben's family ate there years ago and wanted to revisit it. I was not a fan. They only have one, all you can eat, menu option per meal. Either you eat what they are serving, or you don't. For our lunch they served white bread, green salad, calico beans, green beans, swiss steaks (basically hamburger steaks in tomato sauce), and pinapple upside down cake. The bread was actually quite good. The salad was ok. Ben LOVED the calico beans. I don't eat baked beans, so I have no opinion about them. The green beans were heavily flavored with onions. I didn't eat more than one of them. The swiss steak was ok, but I NEVER would have ordered it in a restaurant. Ben's mom was the only person in our group who had the dessert. I just wasn't in the mood. The worst part was that it started POURING rain while we were having lunch. Katie had a dirty diaper and there was no changing table in the restaurant for her. So, we had to stand out in the downpour, changing her diaper in the van. The water was running down my legs and into my shoes. It was awful. Good thing we were stopping for ice cream later. That made up for it.

We stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory late in the afternoon and had double scoops of ice cream. Yummy as always:) We were pretty full when it came time to have dinner, so we skipped it. Our 5th anniversary is tomorrow, so Spencer and Jennifer are taking Katie tonight and tomorrow night so that we can stay at the Arch Cape Inn & Retreat by ourselves. It is the B&B we stayed at on our honeymoon! We did get a little hungry as the night went on, so I had an apple, some peanut butter, a little chocolate, and wine. Ben snacked on "race mix". When he was growning up, his family would take a mixture of m&ms, cashews, and peanuts with them to car races. It was fun to have that on the trip with us.