Vacation - Oregon Coast - Day Seven

Our last day of the vacation that wasn't to be spent exclusively on the road turned out gorgeous. We loaded the car, ate some leftover Thai for breakfast, checked out of our little Motel room, and headed to the bay area to browse through some shops. We spoke for a while with the owner of one of the galleries and chatted with the owner of the little Irish shop, which was great, though pretty empty for being there for a year.

Then we hopped over to Georgie's Grill, in the Hallmark Resort, which is right on the beach, and has a spectacular view of the ocean. Their food is pretty reasonable too, and we ordered a bread bowl of chowder, which was in a pretty solid sourdough bowl, and was impossible to eat neatly. Note to self, never order bread bowls when trying to impress people.

The Sylvia Beach Hotel, which looks much larger from the beach.

We wandered on the beach for a bit after that, before deciding to shake some dust and head home, with a goal of sleeping in Mary Hill again for the night. Naturally, as we left the beach, Newport had to throw one last weather patch at us, and it hailed.

The drive back was pretty fun, we stopped briefly in Tillamook, where we were underwhelmed again by the cheese factory and enjoyed the french cheese factory, the Blue Heron, where they make some utterly stellar Blue Cheese dressing. We headed from there to Portland, taking the direct route, rather than heading up through Astoria, and it was a nice drive, very scenic, and a lot of cute little spots that look touristy if it was later in the year. We hit Portland at 5pm, rush hour, but we escaped far quicker than in the past, and hit Mary Hill around 8pm.

We ate at a little Mexican cantina that had unimpressive salsa and great Pollo De La Crema and parked in the same obscure back road for the night. Next stop, home.

Vacation - Oregon Coast - Day Five

Our last view from the window of our room at the Getaway.

Farewell to Rockaway beach. Sigh.

We woke up pretty early, and took a nice walk on the beach, one last time. It was quite stormy again, a change from last night, but still a nice walk. Then we ate some leftover pizza for breakfast and checked out of the Getaway.

We headed towards Newport, stopping in at most of the little towns along the way, driving through neat little rows of cottages and ugly clumps of new construction. It was depressing to see how many previously cute older motels had been bought up by the big Motel next to it and incorporated into their big, ugly group. Every time that happens, our chances of finding a place to run gets slimmer, and the chance of finding a little independently run motel to stay at gets slimmer. Unfortunately, they're essentially extinct in Newport, all that remains are large, corporate monsters and swanky independent places that are very nice, but closer to $200 a night.

Pacific City
Great place, if you like Time Share Condos.

At any rate, we got list in Oceanside; a strange little place built on a hill with a lot of great houses and what appears to be a pretty vocal and close minded group of full time residents, Pacific City, which was quickly being overrun with huge time shares and expensive new houses, but had a lot of gorgeous beaches, and a few other little towns that all fell somewhere in between.

On Cape Foulweather, home of the lookout point gift shop, we bought a couple of souvenirs and marvelled at the view below. Great location, run by some people that have a good sense of humor about things, which is great!

The Lookout Gift Shop at Cape Foulweather

We spent a good amount of time in Depoe Bay as well, a nice little town that manages to balance tourism, fishing and beach life while still feeling small and welcome. We ate at the Spouting Horn, and had some of the best fish and chips we'd ever had. Fresh fish, lightly battered and fresh cut potatoes with lots of malt vinegar on the side. We ate looking out the window at the bay and fishing ships, while a seagull made faces at us through the window. A great meal. Then we strolled along the main street, stopping in to sample freshly pulled taffy, shop for awesome nautical brass and got lost in a used bookstore so overflowing with books that they started to form their own rooms.


Once in Newport, we quickly became depressed at the lack of fun motels that were in our price range and eventually stopped in a stretch of cheap ones. After seeing the type of people residing in the motel we stopped in, we jumped to the next and were very glad we did. The desk clerk at the America Inn & Suites, Gary, hooked us up with a decent little room for a great price, just over $90 for two nights. It wasn't a block from the beach or anything, and was a nice, simple motel with a bed and mini fridge, but it worked for us, and was still centrally located and clean. It also had wi-fi and boasted a continental breakfast, which was a nice bonus!

After relaxing for a second, we headed down to the bay district to look at a few shops. Unfortunately, it was nearly 6pm, so most were closed, but we still had a good time wandering the streets and looking at the sea lions on the docks below. We spotted a few shops to hit on Monday morning before leaving town, then returned to our motel to relax before dinner.

Relaxing ended up turning into a 3 hour nap... Waking late and kind of grumpy at wasting the day, we tried to find a food place that wasn't closed at 10pm on a Saturday. Luckily, up the road was Super Oscar's, a 24 hour Mexican food place. After eating our greasy but pretty good food, we read for a bit and hit the sack, curious what Easter Sunday would bring in a tourist town...