Westport, Oh How I Have Missed You!

Westport, Washington is our surf destination of choice (http://magicseaweed.com/Westport-Surf-Report/310/). Most people wonder why we choose to drive 5 hours down to the States, when we are so close to Tofino (http://magicseaweed.com/Tofino-Chesterman-Beach-Surf-Report/1123/). Well we have done the math and Tofino is not that much closer or it might not even be closer at all. Distance to our destination is not the deciding factor. We choose Westport for a variety of good reasons. One reason is because we do not need to take a ferry to get where we want to go. This is not to say that we do not enjoy riding on the ferry, on the contrary in fact, we love riding on the ferry! Riding on the ferry is a mini vacation in itself. You have someone else driving you, someone else cooking for you and someone else taking care of the navigation for you. It is like a mini cruise! When the weather is agreeable you can even sunbathe out on the deck of the boat. You might raise a couple of eyebrows if you strip down to your bathing suit to do it, but I don’t believe there to be any rules against it. But like a nice luxury cruise you pay for the experience. It’s not enough to break the bank but it’s an added expense that does not go unnoticed.

A second reason for choosing Westport over Tofino has to do with the popularity of the location. Surf trips are usually reserved for long weekends, and when you are travelling within your own province you would have to have a very remote destination in mind to escape the crowds of other vacationers that share your idea of a good time. We have come to realize that going down to the States on Canadian long weekends let us avoid the crowds. This is not to say that we are all by our lonesome, with the entire Westport beach to ourselves, this is not the case, but it is not nearly as busy as it would be in Tofino. Tofino is crowded on a regular weekend, rain or shine, and its popularity only increases on special occasions. Seeing as neither of us are professional surfers by any stretch of the imagination, the more room we have to maneuver out in the water the better.

The third and probably most important reason why we choose to surf in Westport is because of the price. In the States gas is cheaper, beer is cheaper, food is cheaper and accommodations are cheaper. Whether you are camping or staying in hotel when compared to the prices you would be faced with in Tofino, you will always come out ahead by staying in Westport. All things considered Westport has been our choice for several years and in all likelihood will continue to be for years to come.

So our journey begins much like all of our other roads trips, with us trying to leave as quickly as we can after work on Friday evening. I once again was fortunate to have the ability to skip out of work early, though I think it probably would have gone unnoticed if I decided to not even show up at all. The office was a ghost town much like it had been for most Fridays during the summer. This gave me the chance to get all the packing done so that I could pick up Shannon from work and start our journey from there. If you have read any of my other posts, all our trips start out very similar so I will spare you the details.

Once on the road our journey was once again smooth sailing. From Vancouver to White Rock we were traffic free. Going across the border only took about 20 minutes, which is unheard of on most Fridays in general, let alone a Labor Day long weekend! We blazed through Seattle and Tacoma, only stopping for gas and for groceries and dinner once we hit Lacey. Apparently we have gotten really good at creating our only reality through positive thinking and expectation. Avoiding traffic on a long weekend road trip is an amazing feeling and does a great job setting the tone for the rest of the trip J.

After driving for a solid 4 hours it was time to do our grocery shopping and treat ourselves to a lovely Olive Garden dinner, especially enjoyable when you are able to take advantage of the buy-one-take-one-home promotion(http://www.olivegarden.com/specials). The Olive Garden can be so generous!

When we go grocery shopping in the States we try to do it at WinCo (https://wincofoods.com/). What makes WinCo so appealing? In the past we have gone to Walmart or Costco, both viable options but neither have the selection and the prices of Winco “The Supermarket Low Price Leader.” We stumbled upon WinCo by accident on time after having an early morning breakfast high caloric value breakfast at IHOP at the beginning of another road trip (we do not usually concern ourselves with calorie counting but the IHOP in the States, do to some law change I would imagine, have to tell you how many calories you are consuming when you order your meal….WOW!! I knew it was high but not that high!!). They were huge and packed with variety and best of all on their labels they show you how their prices compare to the other major supermarkets, just to drive home the point that you are shopping in the right place! They also have an epic beer selection which is something that will always catch Shannon and I’s attention J. Wooohooo!! Beee-eeer, Beee-eeer, Beee-eeer!!

It did not take us long to fill up our cart. This usually happens when we are in the States shopping for beer. If I could think of one possible down side to buying beer it would have to be the sheer volume of the cases. It really is a double edged sword if you think about it. Sure it’s heavy, and takes up a lot of room in the cart and the car, but that is only because you have so many bottles that you will enjoy later. I would say it is worth it…..but that’s just me ;) We did a good job filling up on the items that we want and need, so check that off the list. Then it was time for stage two. In my experience you can never really accurately predict how much space you will need to save in the trunk for groceries. On the other hand I have never, not been able to find the room needed for the groceries either. Sure your hot dog buns resemble something closer to tortillas after they have been flattened by a case of beer, but is that not just one of the joys of camping? Believe me, you will still be craving a late night hot dog around the campfire whether or not that it’s settled nicely in a soft, fluffy bun or wrapped with a flattened pancake-like bun substance. You will also be thanking the beer for how great your night is going rather than blaming it for doing unspeakable things to the hot dog buns. I would also say that the packing experience is a bit more cramped in the Mazda than the Sebring convertible that I used to use on our previous road trips. The lack of a roof makes things that much easier to pile in the back. This doesn’t always mean that they will still be there once you reach your destination. I do admit this has never actually happened to me, but you can see how it could happen and that was enough to make me ultra sensitive to every noise I heard as I was driving and it had me checking the rear mirror more often than a narcissist checks his reflection. I had other metaphors that I considered using for the example but decided this was the safest and most politically correct lol. There is a lot more peace of mind when you are not worried about all your groceries getting blown away, even if you means having no visibility out your back window.

At this point we had a full car, and a lot of great food, but none that we could indulge it at the current time. For this reason we set off for our next stop, The Olive Garden! What can I say about the Olive Garden, you come hungry and leave full. They just keep bringing you more salad and more bread sticks. After every bowl of salad and every stick of bread you think, I still have a huge portion of pasta coming, maybe I should slow down and make sure that I still have room when my meal arrives. I guarantee that this happens to 95% of their customers, and I will also go out on a limb and say only 5% actually listen to the sound logic that is going on in their heads and the rest throw all caution to the wind and gorge themselves! But I do not blame anyone for doing exactly what they know they shouldn’t because I do the same. I do pride myself on my will power, but I choose not to exercise it at The Olive Garden because unlimited salad and bread sticks are not something that is offered to you very often and if it is ever offered it would be a tough task to match the quality the that Olive Garden offers for those two items. Say what you want about their entrees but The Olive Garden is the King of the salad and bread sticks!

The meal was not much different than any other meal that we have had there in the past. We ate too much bread, too much salad, and accompanied it with a free appetizer offer my wife was able to stalk down on the internet (The Olive Garden and Montana’s seem to have these types of offers all the time…not that you need more food on the side of their already generous portions lol). The entrée was better than some but not quite chart topping. I have never left The Garden unsatisfied and this time was no different….not to mention that they gave us a second to-go portion to take home with us. It was a unique idea in the sense that it was not a second portion that comes fully prepared. It is The Olive Garden’s equivalent to a Michelina’s microwave dinner (it even had microwave heating directions printed on a sticker that was slapped on the lid!). I have never seen this before and may never see it again but it was a perfect take-away for our camping dinner menu. In fact once we arrived we found out that my sister and her friend also got the same deal from The Olive Garden and we ended up blending all of our second portions into one big pot for a lovely dinner the next evening….actually I believe it was more like a late breakfast lol.

Back to something that I mentioned in the paragraph above “I have not ever left an Olive Garden unsatisfied” but I have left insulted. Last year Shannon and I were going to the same place for a surfing vacation. We had the same idea that we would go to the Olive Garden for dinner and WinCo for groceries, but in reverse order to what we did on this trip. The promotion that was going on at the time at The Olive Garden was the unlimited pasta bowl. We had full intention of getting the most out of this deal and decided that we would order our second portion before we finished our first so that we would not have to wait too long since we were in a bit of a hurry to get to our site and set up camp. This idea backfired because it did not seem to have any effect on how long it took for us to get our round two’s. Then what happened was when the waiter brought our new plates we asked her if we could get them to go. I realize that this looks a bit cheap, like we had no intention of eating any of it there and just wanted to take a full second portion home. If it was a different type of restaurant, and if we hadn’t seen other customers do that exact same thing as we did without even trying to pretend they were going to eat it there, than I would understand if she thought we were cheap or unclassy. Even if we were unclassy and cheap (which we are not!!) then it still does not justify her complaining about us to her fellow waiters and insulting us within ears distance of our table. It should be said that both Shannon and I have pretty thick skin when it comes to others being rude to us. More times than not we end up laughing rather than feeling any degree of disrespect BUT how unprofessional is that! Something else to be taken into consideration for this situation is that earlier in the night Shannon had ordered a glass of wine from the same server. She poured the glass, which to our eyes did not look disproportional, but the waiter said “sorry” and said she would be back to fill up the glass the rest of the way. How generous we thought! How unexpected and generous! But is appears that she was too busy having a bad day and bad mouthing her customers because she never came back with the wine she had promised.

After all of this we decided that we did not feel the need to leave any of our hard earned money as a tip for our poor service. The dilemma was, if we leave a small tip than it will just give her more ammunition to classify us as cheap and unclassy. So I decided that I would go ahead and not leave a tip and write a little note next to the empty space where a tip amount usually goes telling her that she forgot our wine and that we heard everything she said about us as she complained to her coworkers to explain why there was no tip J. Then we up and left before she could confront us lol. Problem solved!

Then later in WinCo we realized that we needed some ice, as we were going through check out. Instead of going with the usual bagged ice we were drawn to an advertisement up front for dry ice. The sign was very misleading and made me think that we could buy a couple small portions for a reasonable price. This was not the case, if fact you could only purchase large amounts at a big price. I sheepishly had to say that we didn’t actually want to buy it after they had to call a special person to unlock the freezer and put on special gloves to get the dry ice I had asked for. I felt bad, but how was I to know when the checkout woman herself didn’t even know. As I packed up my groceries a number of other workers crowded around the cooler and started asking about the ice. “Did some asshole customer ask you to get the ice out for him and then change his mind after you did all this work” is what I heard from their conversation. Little did they know that the “asshole customer” was standing right there as they were unknowingly ripping on him. I don’t think that sort of thing has happened to me all too often in my life let alone twice in an hour lol. I guess I can consider myself lucky that I do not offend easily J.

The conclusion to this story is that Shannon wrote a letter of complaint to both establishments. The Olive Garden sent us a $50 gift card as an apology and WinCo responded asking us if we could tell them what the employee looked like and what time the shift was….so we possibly got him fired. Not the first time this has happened to me. I believe I got a phone sales man fired after he mistakenly told me that I had one month free calling when I signed up for my first cell phone plan. I then proceeded to rack up a $500 bill that I refused to pay since I never would have made so many calls if I had not been told it was part of the deal I was getting. Rogers rectified the situation by wiping out the bill and giving me the equivalent of three months worth of coverage as a credit and……..most likely fired the salesman after asking me the same questions as WinCo asked Shannon. But life goes on J.

Once we had done all that we needed to do we continued along the final leg of our journey. By this time it was 11pm when we left Lacey and close to 12:30am when we arrived at our campsite. The drive was very ordinary and the only thing really worth mentioning was how hard I was struggling to remain awake along the pitch black highway to Westport. Driving along dark, deserted highway with no visibility out the back because of the packed to the gills back seat it is extremely easy to get pulled towards a state of slumber. But I held on and made it all the way without incident. Then we drove a couple of laps looking for our site….this is what happens when you forget the order of the numbers of the campsite (http://www.parks.wa.gov/292/Twin-Harbors). Was is 137 or 173? Or was it 731 or 371?? It did take some time to find….but not too much. At that point, being so late in the evening we decided to do the least amount of set up, so basically just the tent and the sleeping bags. No need for an air mattress, we will be just fine on ground. Famous last words….