Pemberley's 2001 annual meeting was held at The Ocean Park Retreat Center in Ocean Park, Washington, a quiet setting on a peninsula on the coast of Southern Washington. As we did last year, we asked our attendees to send their Top Ten Lists. You can read them all at the linked page, but you will find some of them throughout this report.
The Ocean Park Retreat center put us up in their Lodge, the largest building and the location of the dining hall. When Cheryl and Myretta stopped at the Retreat office to sign in, they were told, "Darcy's not here right now." We were, needless to say, crushed. It turned out that the office manager was a woman named Darcy. An omen? This year, we decided to add an extra day to our annual meeting, so people began checking in Thursday night, July, 12. Returning Pemberleans saw a familiar site, Cheryl manning the welcome table.
As soon as she had checked in, Carolyn joined Cheryl at the registration table and was on hand to greet most of the arrivals. Poor Laurie C was among the last to arrive, having dealt with a flat tire on her drive from Olympia. She was a bit worse for the wear and very glad to see friendly faces. We were very glad to see her. We welcomed some newcomers this year. Barbara Lynn, Linda Taylor and Candace's identical cousin, Jan Lewis, all attended for the first time. Linda L returned for her first meeting since the inaugural meeting in Las Vegas and Inko's daughter Gillian accompanied her mother.
We gathered the first evening to get re-acquainted and meet our newcomers. As always, we had a game. This year, we asked, What would she do?. Teams were given a list of situations in which various Austen characters have found themselves and had to write a description of what either Mary Crawford or Fanny Price would do that situation. Visit the link to see what we thought.
Jan Lewis: Meeting roommate Golda and having her demonstrate her hospital-corner technique in the first 5 minutes - it was no accident that we had the tidiest room!
The following morning introduced us to the first of several great breakfasts. Although we all love The Craigville Conference Center, we agreed that we would be exceedingly pleased if Craigville would hire the Ocean Park kitchen staff. LaurieC: that first meal! We were given a gorgeous dining area with ocean view. We knew it was guaranteed to be special when salad was served containing flowers and the main course was PORK!
No Pemberley meeting would be complete without a Power P&P viewing. This two and a half hour distillation of the best of P&P2 has been a part of our meetings since the first, when we watched all six tapes with breaks for women food and other necessities in between. It seems as though we're still as enthralled by it five years later as we were in Las Vegas in 1997. Linda: Just like last year, it was a relaxing and stress free weekend.
As Linda mentions in her memories, it was a stress-free weekend. Although she also mentioned that the bear made her a little nervous. We had a nightly ursine visitor to the dumpster in back of the Lodge. I don't think any of us ever saw him, but we saw the evidence each morning. We had lots of time to relax and enjoy each other's company. A group made the annual shopping trip into the nearest town. Many of us stayed behind and entertained ourselves in a variety of ways.
We had the first of a series of serious Boggle games. During the weekend, the less competitive among us settled for the New York Times Crossword puzzle.
And the even less competitive, took advantage of the nice cool weather to do some serious outdoor napping. Others took the path that led from our back deck down to the beach. They found gulls, tire tracks, and hearts in the sand. Linda found more sand than she would like. 
