First off thank you to all who voted last week on where we should spend our weekend. We had a blast on our Oregon coast vacation- so much that I would rate it at as one of our top five favorite vacations! After an early morning flight into Portland- we rented our car and headed our way to the coast. It’s about a two hour drive to the coast from Portland, but it’s a pretty drive through the green mountains with plenty to look at. Our first stop on our coastal tour was Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Cannon Beach is a place I had visited once as a little kid when my family lived just north of Portland in Vancouver, Washington. I have very little memories of the beach except for Haystack Rock and my parents purchasing me a purple clam shell that is still in my possession (it sits proudly in our downstairs bathroom). We quickly found a place to park and spent much of the morning exploring the beach, tide pools, and walking hand in hand barefoot on the sand. It was pretty chilly at this point in the morning, but the sand was still warm enough to walk on with no shoes. We enjoyed the scenery, fresh sea air, and taking pictures. We began to get hungry and after walking over a mile along the beach decided it was time for lunch. We had heard of Mo’s Chowder from not only doing our own research but from recommendations of family members. It’s no secret I enjoy a quality bowl of clam chowder- ESPECIALLY when served in a delicious sour dough bread bowl. So I was more than excited to give this place a try. Supposedly it’s nationally famous. I was very pleased with the clam chowder and even surprised to see Reid give it a try. I can’t say that it is the best bowl I’ve ever had- I did grow up near San Francisco. But it was still satisfying and warmed us up for our mile back walk along the beach.

We decided to head up north after lunch and stopped in a town called Seaside. It’s what you would picture a beach town in New Jersey to be like. Tons of ice cream shops and candy stores selling delicious salt water taffy, souvenier shops, and arcades and entertainment. I’m sure this town is just packed during the summer. Still for an early April weekend, Seaside claimed a lot of visitors. We couldn’t find a place to park- and it was hard navigating through the crowds so we didn’t stay long.

Our last stop was Astoria. If there are any Goonies fans out there then you know this is the place where the movie is set. Which yes as embarrassing as it is to admit we visited the Goonie house. I’m not going to lie when I say I did feel awkward taking pictures of the house-  especially when the owners were unloading their groceries from their jeep. But we did it anyways. It’s a quaint little town- that honestly was worth the drive. We had so much fun exploring and were both angry to find out we didn’t have time to visit the Maritime Museum because it was closing in twenty minutes. It looked really cool and had some old fishing boats you could explore. After driving around town we decided to head over the Astoria Bridge, mainly because it looked cool and surely there was something worth seeing on the other side. We were totally right. Going across the bridge brings you into Washington. We saw signs for Fort Columbia State Park and because we are suckers for a history lesson- decided to go. This is one of the most unique forts we have gone to because it had a full bunker that they actually allowed you to go inside and explore (really creepy but really cool), and still had most of the original buildings. We also headed west and stopped by Fort Canby- mostly because we saw signs for Cape Disappointment and was intrigued. We actually weren’t disappointed because you go on a short quarter of a mile hike and you reach Cape Disappointment Lighthouse that is actually impressive and worth the hike.

Back over the Astoria Bridge it was time to head back to Portland for the night. This time we drove along the Columbia River and up through Washington. It was another beautiful drive and saw some interesting things a long the way. It was one of those trips where we didn’t have a set plan and left ourselves open to new experiences and to take what Oregon gave us (Reid’s really good at that). And the result was a fantastic vacation with a lot of quality time together enjoying some of the country’s most beautiful spots.

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Tags: Astoria, Cannon Beach, Goonies, Oregon Coast, Portland

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 10:20 am and is filed under My Trips, Travel Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.