Vacation Time!
Vacation day arrived. My son, Z, and I were traveling to the Oregon Coast for a few days. Now granted, the coast is only about an hour away, but life gets busy and we don’t go as often as we’d like. I had to wake up Z and get him moving, but soon we were off on our adventure.
The first stop was Lincoln City where we visited a few video game stores (Z’s passion) and went to The Christmas Cottage for a bit of shopping. The Christmas Cottage is a favorite stop of mine, since I was a little girl. It has everything from nutcrackers to Jim Shore collections to Halloween ornaments to nativity sets. It is an abundance of everything holiday and I love it! Next door is a candy store and we made a quick stop to pick up chocolate covered Oreos and sour patch candies.
We did stop at Pig N Pancake and had a wonderful late breakfast and then hit the road to Depoe Bay.
Depoe Bay is a charming, small, seaside town that just begs you to stop and dally in their shops. They have a whale watching observatory, with binoculars at the ready, and young forest rangers more than willing to point out and inform on the days whale sightings. There are deep sea fishing cruises as well as whale watching cruises to fill your day. The homemade caramel corn smell drifts out to the sidewalk and coaxes you to partake of a sample. The shops offer every eccentricity from seashell wind chimes, t-shirts boasting about the Oregon coast, and kites of every shape and color. The Chowder Bowl or The Sea Hag are two amazing restaurants that have wonderful chowder and fish n chips.
After leaving Depoe Bay, we headed south towards Newport. We stopped at road cut-outs along the way, taking breathtaking pictures of the coastline. We stopped at Cape Foulweather, which is a gorgeous spot to picnic and visit the museum. It was so foggy, we couldn’t see the water at all. The sky and coast were enveloped in such a fog, that we couldn’t see two feet in front of us. The fog stopped at the sand and the parking lot and highway were as clear as can be.
Coming into Newport, it just looks like any other medium sized city really. The excitement starts when you get to Historic Old Town Newport, down on the bay. Newport has a bay side and an ocean side. We stayed on the ocean side, on Elizabeth Street, at the Shilo Inn Resort. All rooms are ocean view and quite nice. They offer two indoor pools, a breakfast café, and a nice restaurant for dinner with an ocean view. Prior to hitting the vacation road, Z and I had stopped at Walmart to pick him up a new pair of swim trunks and we were excited to lounge by the pool. Well, one pool was closed for repair and the other was a 3 foot deep pool, so full of kids and blow up floaties, we couldn’t have wedged ourselves in there if we’d tried. Bummer…..
The bay side of Newport is wonderful and amazing! A street full of shops, restaurants, arcades, an Undersea Aquarium, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Wax Museum, docks full of sea lions barking at each other, fresh fish markets, and even people throwing their crab nets, full of raw chicken legs, over the docks hoping for a great crab catch of the day.
Z and I went through every store, gift shop, ice cream store there was and even stopped in the arcade and played a one-on-one game of table top Pac Man. I found eccentric candy for my daughter’s souvenir and a fun “Olivia the Ostrich”. Z found weird candy and great t-shirts. We enjoyed talking to store owners and ice cream vendors and even petting the gorgeous kitty LB (little bitch) who rules the sidewalk outside her glass shop residence. Mo’s has two locations here and is a must visit for chowder or fish n chips with home baked bread. We visited here a couple of times and our waiter even remembered us and our drink preferences.
Oregon State University has a Science Center not far from old town and it’s free and Z thought it was the best part of the trip. It has a resident octopus, interactive tidal waves, a freshwater pool to learn and touch starfish and sea anemones, a theater where we watched awesome shark films, rockfish aquariums, and so much more! We thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this part of our adventure and spent a few hours here.
Yaquina Bay Lighthouse is almost across the street and is beautiful! It’s a house with the light on top of the house. Being on the bay side, it was only in working order from 1871-1874, when it was shut down and the Yaquina Head Lighthouse, up north a few miles, began operation. Yaquina Head sits on the ocean side and makes more sense, really, for a lighthouse. Z and I prefer the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse though. The house is free to visit and has furnishings throughout, from the period of operation. The light is on the 3rd floor and has lots of information posted throughout the home. A very nice place to visit.
We ate one dinner at Georgie’s, down the block from out hotel. It is a very nice restaurant that overlooks the ocean and has a nice menu selection, including home baked bread. The windows, periodically, are sprinkled with water for ambiance. I even saw a whale, relaxing and blowing water, as I ate dinner. This is a must return for both of us.
We really enjoyed our little vacation but missed our kittens and our bed at home. Z was definitely ready to come home. We did make plans to return in the winter to storm watch, as it’s on both of our bucket lists. I am looking forward to that!
Comments
Post a Comment