Cupcakes

I don’t know what it was that caused Brenda and I first visited Ilwaco, WA. It was about 10 years ago and I can’t remember exactly why we stopped there. I think we were following the Lewis and Clark Trail.  Ilwaco is where they finally reached the Pacific.

Brenda and Mary Jane on main street Long Beach. This is a neat little tourist town.

Back then Ilwaco looked like a town about ready to take off. There were a few nice shops and a new waterfront section. The old part of town had a few interesting shops. We stayed at a run-down RV Park and actually talked about buying it and getting it into shape. We were taken with the town.

Well, Ilwaco’s take off aborted. Today it looks like nothing has happened since we were there last, except the shops in the old part of town have closed.

This time we visited Ilwaco because we have some long time friends living nearby in Long Beach, WA. We met Mike and Mary Jane Fuller when stopped with our boat in Morro Bay on the way to Mexico. They were also sailing south. We have kept in touch since then. This hasn’t always been easy since Mike and MJ have a propensity for moving from place to place. I think this is the 15^th place they have lived since we met them.

You may remember Mike and MJ from my Tucson blogs. They have a home in Tucson. They gave Jeff and Linda Grossman lots of support while Jeff was hospitalized and recovering from surgery there. Friends like that are hard to beat.

A view of the Cape. 

The Fuller’s ushered us around showing us all the sites in the area. We had a very enjoyable visit with them and will see them again in Tucson this fall.

Sand Sculpture at Long Beach

Ilwaco, by the way, is just north of the mouth of the Columbia River. Lewis and Clark stayed the winter there. I think they had a nice time too but got very tired of eating salmon.

We are now in Stevenson, WA, in the Columbia River gorge area attending the Audubon Convention here. We arrived on Friday.

Friday wasn’t one of my better days. The good news is that I didn’t hit any more curbs. The bad news is that our slide-out isn’t sliding out anymore. It is very cozy inside our no longer spacious trailer.

Marv McGowan suggested I get these axles as a fix for bent axles.

We will have to take the trailer somewhere to get the slid-out operating again. We decided not to let this bother us and took off to register at the convention. We also attended the opening reception later in the evening.

It was a great reception with lots of snacks including lots of little top-heavy miniature cupcakes.  I loaded a few of these on a plate and took off across the room to find a spot where I could sit and scarf them down. About three steps later I noticed my foot sticking to the floor and that my plate was light one cupcake. Sure enough I managed to drop a cupcake and then step on it. You could follow my route across the floor by the cupcake footprints.

I had a napkin and bent over to clean up my shoe and pickup the mess. Not a good idea with top-heavy cupcakes on a little plate. How is it that when you are trying to get a crowd’s attention it is almost impossible but when you do something really stupid suddenly there is silence and all eyes are on you?

Life goes on – cupcakes or not.