Chillaxin in Newport

So you're retired, you say to us, so Why do you need a vacation?! Well, OK, it's not that we need one, it's just nice to have a change of scenery, stay in a nice place and be able to watch Fox News (and for Jerry, ESPN). Oh yeah, and also to escape the heat for awhile. I don't have to see fascinating things all day every day, I just like the feeling of not having anything in particular to have to do and to be able to walk on the beach for however long we want, eat Mo's great clam chowder, browse in the downtown touristy (I mean, artsy) shops, and eat at Izzy's world-famous (?) buffet. Funny how two of those things involve eating.

Here is the lovely Schooner Landing at which we are staying. We're in a condo with full kitchen, a bedroom, a loft and 2 bathrooms--very spacious.

It is located at the top of a high cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and from our upstairs we can see the ocean.



On Monday we walked 7 miles non-stop on the beach during low tide...you don't dare stay on the beach for high tide, as you would end up smashed against the rocky cliff or washed out to sea. I'm just guessing here.

I must explain the parka in the photo below. I get cold very easily. If I am stitting for an hour or more, say, surfing the net or updating my blog, and the ambient temperature in the room is 71 degrees or lower, my hands and feet become cold. If I'm moving around a lot, I'm OK. Most women "of a certain age" have the problem of being too warm most of the time. I, however, am seemingly always cold if the temperature is 71 or below. It's pathetic.

My husband laughs at me when he's comfortable in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt and I'm bundled up in a parka and several other layers of clothes. Or if he doesn't outright laugh at me, he gives a look and a sound that I interpret as You are such a wimp! I often explain that I can't help it, that's just the way my body works, rapidly turning my feet and hands into ice cubes when it senses hypothermia coming on at 70 degrees, but he still mocks me (in a loving way). In the wintertime sometimes I dress like this inside the house, only with long jeans and gloves, too.

The sculpture you see in the photo above is in front of the Newport recreation center, very apropos for a recreation center--kids playing on a jungle gym. We went there yesterday and again today to work out...Jerry on the recumbant stationary bike, and I on the elliptical machine. It takes a lot of heat and/or exercise for me to perspire, but I actually dripped some sweat, a real rarity. I did the elliptical machine for 65 minutes, after which I am happy to report to you that it told me on its display that I had just burned 642 calories.

All that exercise made us hungry and even though it was only 10:45, we headed downtown looking for Mo's, which serves the world's best New England-style clam chowder. There are about 4 or 5 Mo's Restaurants along the Oregon Coast.

Each Mo's is a very unassuming, funky, hole-in-the-wall looking place, but I assure you, they have GREAT clam chowder and all kinds of other seafood delights, and for a very reasonable price. We ordered the "family style" chowder, which arrives in a large serving bowl with ladle, and you ladle out your own soup.

Hunger is the best sauce, as Jerry's father used to say, and that clam chowder was the most delicious I had ever tasted at that state of my hunger. Here's Jerry enjoying it immensely. We finished it all off, about 3 bowls each. Mmmm good. I think we each consumed 642 calories.

I didn't really eat clam chowder out of the serving bowl with a ladle.....Jerry just posed me that way.

Here's one of the many signs and pictures gracing the walls of Mo's. Another one said, YISDERSOMENIMORORSISASISDENDERISORSIS? Can you tell what it says? You have to say it out loud. It's a little bit crude; sorry.


We walked around the old downtown and saw a couple of huge wall murals, like this one by the "Undersea Gardens."
We didn't descend beneath the sea to see the Undersea Gardens, but I'm sure they are nice to look at.

This is the Newport bridge, part of Highway 101, that goes over Yaquina Bay. I, as a former math teacher, would like to point out to you that the arches are sections of parabolas, making very strong arches.

Back at the condo, the management was serving root beer floats at 3:30, so of course we had to make it back for that, the ice cream treats being free and all!

Hope you are all keeping cool this mid-July!