A trip down the Oregon coast is fun and beautiful. We started in Westport, WA at the surf spot we have come to love for learning the waves and the parking lot culture that completes surfing and beach life. We pulled on our wetsuits on a Saturday afternoon and headed out to the break. It was that mid-August type of crowd, where the beach break lineup has surfers from end to end even before the rental crowd arrives. The wind was supposed to pick up to over 20 mph later in the afternoon, so we got out early before it really kicked in and mixed up all the waves.
Surfing is a dynamic activity that is completely in tune with the weather and tides. One little shift from clouds to sun, N to NW wind, or a rising or falling tide can change the conditions. It’s a dance that you get used to over time, you show up to check the waves, decide if you like what you see, then wrestle your way into a 5mm wetsuit and booties. The wind picked up so much that it would blow your board down the beach like a wayward leaf if you weren’t careful. After the gusts hit 25 mph, we decided to catch the next wave in and leave for the Oregon coast.
It was a calming evening drive through the Willapa Bay, which is said to be the most productive oyster farming bay in the US. Something is great about the southern Washington coastal areas. Fishing towns and facilities that produce products from timber are situated in small uplands between coastal estuaries, wetlands, and cattle farms. It took an hour or so before we started seeing signs for Lewis and Clark monuments and the forests opened up to sprawling views near the mouth of the Columbia River. Somewhere out there is a 6 mile long stretch where the river meets the ocean called the Columbia River Bar. It’s known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Over 2,000 ships have sunk in its currents and waves in the past two centuries. It’s so dangerous that a group of sailors known as the Bar Pilots go out and board ships to bring them safely into the ports near Astoria, Longview, and Portland.
Looking out at Willapa Bay as the full moon rises
We crossed the incredible bridge over the Columbia River, looking out of the gateway to the Pacific on our right, and spiraled down the bridge ramp toward town. In Astoria, we took a turn toward downtown looking for coffee and a croissant. We were greeted by 360 Bistro waiting on the sidewalk with a case of beignets and various puff pastries along with other baked goods. Looking for something savory, the bacon, egg and cheese croissant was a welcome find. We had put a trip to a farmer’s market on our itinerary to get some fresh food early on in the trip and we were thrilled to see the Sunday morning Astoria market setting up just before 10AM. We paid $2 for a cup of coffee and went down to eat our croissants by the water while the market was getting set up. We shopped for greens, cherry tomatoes, blueberries and some peaches that somehow escaped and were never seen again. I hope they had a good life, those yellow Oregon peaches that never were. They were sorely missed a few days later as I rifled through the back seat in search of the brown paper bag they came in. After that short trip through a bustling market, we were on our way down the coast to Seaside and Short Sands.
It doesn’t take long to understand why people are so enamored with the Oregon coast. Small towns are hidden in the evergreens around the curves of Highway 101 take the form of little gems of solitude. In the summer months, a fine mist sits over the ocean blurring the line between the frigid, jade waters of the Pacific and the air above to form an endless horizon. Little wayside pull-offs and scenic viewpoints can be found every few miles as you emerge from tunnels of old-growth trees and daytime fog. Every so often another quiet town pops up with a few shops, a little bakery, and maybe public beach access. One of those towns, Manzanita, made for a great afternoon of watching kite-boarders launch off waves and float above the ocean before dropping back down. As the winds picked up there was first a half dozen, then a dozen and the most I counted were 25 different kites out in the water. With wind like that and a pretty small swell, the middle of our trip wasn’t the best time for surfing. We wandered around Seaside for a few days while I looked for a new surfboard and decided to continue our journey south.
You can stop in Cleanline Surf Shop, a big surf retailer in the area that has everything you need to lifestyle forever as a surfer. They have their main shop in Seaside, filled with new and used boards and wetsuits, leashes, and booties. They are also one of the best places I’ve seen to shop for booties, one of the most important pieces of equipment for year-round surfing in the NW. The water around Seaside was the coldest I’ve ever surfed in and my 4.5mm/3.5mm wetsuit had me wishing I had a full 5mm/4mm instead. I guess I’ll have to get one for winter. I was able to demo my first shorter board from Cleanline, a 6’3” modern fish design, what a blast it is to try different boards.
We headed out of town to Short Sands, the best summertime spot in the area, to see if we could catch some waves. Immediately, I appreciated the smaller board on the hike into the beach. It’s maybe ¾ of a mile of winding trail along a creek bed through huge, old-growth coastal spruce and fir trees. It has to be one of the best places in the world to be a tree. At the bottom of the trail, you cross a small bridge over the creek and get a glimpse of the cove. Bookended by two rocky capes, the beach is somewhat protected from the wind on either side. We were still able to surf when there were gusts up to 25 mph, it wasn’t great, but other spots would be completely blown out with that kind of wind. Short Sands has a cool beach vibe because everyone has to make the same trek to get there. The trail also seemed like it could be accessible to the intrepid wheelchair user complete with a beautiful landing to sit and soak in the view and ocean spray. The worst part? There is no surf shower that I could find at Short Sands, so it makes for quite the sticky afternoon until you can find a place to rinse off.
From Seaside we made the day-long trek down the southern Oregon coast to fulfill a years’ long dream of snorkeling in a pristine salmon-bearing stream. The water is so cold, that you have to do it while wearing a wetsuit. The coastal drive takes you through tourist spots like Rockaway Beach that look like a mixture of storybook wild, wild west railroad towns that have somehow transformed over the years from saloons and hitching posts into destinations for t-shirts, cotton candy, and ice cream. Eventually, you make it to Tillamook, where the Tillamook Creamery and Tillamook Country Smoker businesses are located. The huge manufacturing plant for Tillamook dairy products is an interesting site in an otherwise fishing, oyster farming, cattle raising, and logging part of the world.
When you see some of the incredible rivers of southern Oregon, it takes your breath away. The water is so cold and clear you can almost see the bottom, no matter how deep it is, but you can’t stay in for long without your wetsuit on. Shades of blue-green sparkle when little rays of sunlight blast through under the blue summer sky. I put on my dive mask and floated like a log in a 20-foot deep pool, counting baby salmon, crawdads, and salamanders as I went. My favorite part was finding a rock in the deep current that I could hold onto while I watched 7-inch fish dart in and out of the current to grab little pieces of food. Salmon are like small dogs, they don’t care how big you are, they’re going to come up and try to get a piece of you. I must have spent an hour just staring at the bottom of that river and breathing through a snorkel. It was definitely a dream worth fulfilling. That night we cooked oysters over a campfire for the first time and simmered them in the shell with bourbon, lemon juice, hot sauce, and butter.
A word to the wise, oyster shells explodes when you put them in the fire.
In the memory bank of my time living in southern Oregon, I remembered some fish and chips from the town of Port Orford at a little place called the Crazy Norwegian. The restaurant has tons of charm and a little attitude and the fish and chips have a unique style all their own, they say they’re the best on the Oregon coast. I know one thing for sure, the tartar sauce is unbelievable. It’s spicy, with clove and caraway and pickles and dried dill, you don’t want to miss it. Port Orford sits way out on an exposed point daring the force of the pacific winds and we spent the rest of the day fighting to keep our camp chairs from riding away in the gales. The surfing didn’t hold too much promise in that kind of wind and we decided to head back north where we came from that evening.
Along 101 there are some great places to dive off the highway and sit tucked away in the forest right next to the beach. We followed Google down an unmarked forest road for a few miles until it ended at a beach access. A few other people had set up to camp above the high tide line and we decided to walk out along the beach. As I took off my shoes and felt the fine white sand between my toes, I saw one of the more disturbing sights from the trip, there was plastic mixed into the sand. I would say probably 3-5% of the beach was actually small pieces of plastic. My guess, at that time, was that along that particular beach is some exposure to a current that drives some of the Pacific Gyre into the area during the winter. I’m not sure what it was, but I’ve never seen that many small pieces of colorful plastic mixed into the sand. There is, unfortunately, no solution in sight other than time and letting the plastic degrade. It will continue to pack the gills and flesh of fish and become part of the hard exterior of shellfish and other sea creatures for centuries to come.
After a night listening to the roar of Pacific waves, we woke up and left early on a quest for coffee and more surfing. It seemed like we would make it back to Washington that day because that’s where the swell and the winds lined up. We were also planning to meet with a realtor the next day to see if a little slice of heaven was available on the Washington coast, so we needed to be pretty close to make it in time. I had been looking for a new surfboard the whole time with no luck. I stopped into a few surf shops and saw some uninspiring shapes that weren’t quite what I had in mind. I had the opportunity to demo some boards at Cleanline Surf in Cannon Beach and felt like I really had an idea of what I wanted.
If you’re driving from Cannon Beach to Seaside, there is a purple house along 101 that is clearly a surfboard shop, it happens to be Shuler Surfboards run by Lanny Shuler. He’s turned his house into a place for shaping, testing, glassing, and painting all sorts of surfboards. I was looking for a PNW all-around board, something that goes in small surf but also works when the waves are firing. Lanny was convinced he had the board for me. It had just fallen from the rack and he needed to fix it, he told us it would be a half-hour, so we went to town to get some gas. We came back and he brought it out complete with custom twin fins and suggested I take it out for a demo. We peeled out of his place and headed to the beach to see what this new board was all about. I liked it, it was the first smaller board that I felt confident on, it was narrow but somehow pretty stable and it just felt like it belonged in the water as well as under my arm. I went back and gave him my review and said I would like to order one. He ended up selling me the board I demoed and gave me a deal on it because it had been damaged. I walked away with a new board that day, the jury is still out on how good of a surfer I am, but the board seems pretty great.
We left Seaside knowing that we wouldn’t make it to our camp back in Washington until dark. Tucked away from the highway on the beach we cooked some more oysters over a fire. The bag was full of briny oyster juice so I decided to go down to the beach to wash it out. I rolled up my pant legs and rinsed the bag. I thought I was tripping on oyster euphoria when I saw little green lights in the whitewash around my feet. I did a double-take. I watched another wave wash in and little green lights were washing about again. It’s bioluminescence!!! I had a hard time not yelling to anyone who could hear me to come down and look at this wonder of nature. A mystery of the ocean was washing up around my feet! I waited for Taylor to come back to the beach and told her to come out to the surf with me to see something. When we got there I asked her if she could see the little green things in the whitewash, “WHOA!” she exclaimed. We were like kids playing with lightning bugs for the first time.
A lone jet contrail against a blue sky
At some point, we walked back into the wet sand and she realized that our footprints were lighting up. Something about agitation or vibration must provide the energy for their shiny display. We spent the next two minutes stomping our feet in the sand and dancing around laughing like kids in a rainstorm. I lost track of where I was as I watched little flecks of green light blast out in rings from around my feet. We had just learned earlier that week that one of our childhood friends had died from an overdose, his funeral was that same day. Taylor said this is the celebration he would have wanted, I agreed and we went back to our campfire in the sand. The Perseids Meteor shower was that night and I had been watching it every August with my mom since I can remember. Somehow every year I instinctively recall the season as I’m out camping and adventuring the last few days of summer. I lay back on the sand and listened to the waves while I counted white and yellow streaks across the sky until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I wandered up the beach to our parking spot and with my sand-covered feet, I crawled into the truck bed.
It was a great trip down the Pacific Coast. I’ve now been from the Jedediah Smith Redwoods all the way north around the Olympic Peninsula and across the strait up to Tofino, B.C. I like to recall all the memories of warm, dry nights in California, the foggy days on Cape Flattery, and gusty storms blowing in off the Pacific to Vancouver Island. Maybe one day I’ll drive down the whole coast of California and catch some waves along the way.