McMenamin's

Since flights were cancelled, almost all of the field crew (9 of the 11 of us here) went out for dinner. Went to a place called McMenamin's . It was dark when we arrived, not many lights lighting the parking lot we found. Walking towards the buildings we passed through a little garden area, though it was dark, it smelled pleasant and gardeny. Started finding buildings. Didn't know where the people we were meeting were (a few had arrived earlier) so we started walking around. Seems the place is a large cluster of old fashioned (1911 I think it said) buildings, one being a pub, another being a restaurant, a hotel, etc nicely mixed together. A small building stunk of cigars. A large courtyard area had a fire going in the centre. In the basement of one building, found a brewery / winery. Upstairs there appeared to be private dining rooms, and a smattering of hotel rooms. It was really neat. Dan was wandering with me, and even though we got a call letting us know where people had found each other and were eating, I made him explore a little more. I honestly would have liked to go wandering around again after dinner, but I guess the rest are too "grown up" to get excited about something like that, and were just there for the dinner. Oh forgot to mention, a quartet in olde fashioned costumes was going around singing carols. For a while Dan and I were at a table by ourselves, since the main table didn't have room for us, I felt a bit left out, but eventually some other table left and we were able to rearrange the place. Overall a really pleasant evening, but like I said, would have been cool to have a friend to go exploring with.