The Wave Crest

Last weekend we stayed at the wonderful Wave Crest in Cannon Beach, being lovers of the authentic Oregon experience, and it was fun.  When owner (Daryl)Hank Johnson was a Portlander (curator at the Washington Park Rose Garden) he often stayed at the Wave Crest, and then just up and bought it from his retiring friends in 2000.  He moved to Cannon Beach full time in 2003 and became an innkeeper.  I like the Wave Crest because, though authentically coastal Oregon (it was built in the 1920’s), it has the same feel as Wisconsin lake houses of my youth…  We were in room #6 (one of the few with it’s own bathroom)…

the kitchen is a warm and friendly place…

and the new deck is gorgeous…

Hank built the “Tea House”…site of a recent wedding…

I found this in one of the bookcases…

On Saturday night Hank made a terrific anniversary salmon dinner for us (he doesn’t serve dinner, but does provide coffee tea and yummy pastries), Rex and Diane, and Linda and Peter…

The wave Crest has no phones, no TV, but it DOES have a piano…and is only two blocks from the beach…a beach which has THIS view…

(Wave Crest Inn, 4008 South Hemlock, PO Box 292, Cannon Beach, 503-436-2842…a good place for total escape…!  Think about it…)

We said goodbye to Hank Sunday morning, AFTER we all went for an authentic American Legion breakfast (no kidding, it was fab…these little crispy thin Swedish pancakes…yum)

and took note of the beautiful single climbing rose by the front door, a rose called “Leda” that I’m now on the lookout for…

As it turned out, our trip to Cannon Beach last weekend it wasn’t ONLY our anniversary weekend, but also a working trip.  R has started researching Portland painter Louis Bunce (1907-1983) in earnest, and had a chance to interview Laurel Hood of Cannon Beach.  Laurel’s Dad Ernie Hood and her late husband Jim Smith played in a jazz band called The Way Out and they played in the early 1960’s in a club called The Way Out Club under the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland. In 1961 Hood and Smith with painter Bunce made a pilot TV show with the premise that painters and poets and jazz musicians could all create together…and it contains fantastic footage of Bunce painting to the cool tunes of The Way Out.  Laurel brought along her copy and she and R watched it on TV with Laurel identifying all the players, and giving her remembrance of the band, of the scene, of Louis.  It was fascinating.  (Laurel said the club folded because they couldn’t get a liquor license and the club couldn’t financially make it on soft drinks and burgers…)

and when Laurel took off to work in her wine shop, R and Linda Janke sorted through a box of her family’s papers.  Her grandparents Dr. Vernon and Ruth Douglas were very involved in Salem life and the beginnings of the Salem Art Association, and her aunt Stella Douglas was an Oregon artist/painter/print maker.

Rex and Diane drove us up to the beautiful Ecola Park for a view where we noted there were some Portlanders around someplace

We headed to Astoria in time to see the absolutely PACKED farmer’s market in full swing (the cruise ships were in port…) and grab some street food for lunch…

and then headed to Portland to position ourselves for Monday, now known as Sidney-Day…and this week the birthday of Sidney’s Dad.  Happy Birthday Zach.