Andre's Story

Somehow, somewhere in the last two years I've become hopelessly addicted to the Oregon Coast. I literally become cranky if for some reason I can't make it there at least once a month. So, it was no real surprise that when my girlfriend Kathy and I both wound up with vacation time at the end of December, we took to the coast for a mission of exploration: Exploring the beaches, the restaurants, the hidden treasures, and yes, even the bars.

We left our homes in Salem on a Friday afternoon, heading south on I-5 towards Eugene. We had kept a close eye on the weather, and I'd even called a friend in Eugene to check how the mountain pass would be. Apparently, we were in for smooth sailing, aside from rumors of a few rock slides on Highway 101.

The ride south was beautiful. A bit north of Eugene, the clouds opened up somewhere near the horizon, and huge, majestic columns of sunlight came streaming down, looking like those pictures you see you in children's bibles. We took this as a good omen for the trip.

At one of these viewpoints, I pulled out a Roman candle (left over from Independence Day) and shot it off over a cliff. Wow.

We got up as far as the Sea Lion Caves, (about 9 miles north of Florence) and for some reason, drove back and forth along the windy highway. We kept passing the same small waterfall on the basalt roadside cliffs, eventually naming it "Our Waterfall.'' At various times, we followed some sort of boat along the coastline. This boat had first appeared to us as a set of mysterious lights on the water, creating a large glow around it and causing us to kiddingly speculate about extraterrestrial visitors.

Morning provided us with a wonderful breakfast at a little hole-in-the-wall, located right on 101. I wish I could track the name of this one down, but I simply remember that its hash browns were excellent and the place actually served raisin toast - something I hadn't seen since I was a kid.

This section of 101 - between Florence and the Devil's Churn at Cape Perpetua - is probably my favorite. With its little viewpoints, steep cliffs and blackened, almost alien rock formations, there is something more breathtaking here to me than any stretch of sandy beach. There are quite a variety of "blow holes'' along this area. These are created by holes in the rocks that release the pressure of the tide in one, formidable upward rush - much like a whale's spout. Cook's Chasm is an excellent places to watch this.

Time and daylight were precious this time of year, so we quickly cruised through Waldport, Seal Rock, Newport and Lincoln City until we reached Pacific City. Because of the rain, I could not convince Kathy to scale the steep, sandy slope of Cape Kiwanda, (which I firmly believe is one of the most beautiful spots on Earth.) But I did get her to explore a small, hidden beach with a tiny cave that lay just to the north.

Later, we discovered the winds had reached 106 mph in that area.

Seaside immediately grabbed me. Its mixture of gaudy, carnival trappings, its party atmosphere, its intricate history and its scenic qualities appealed to many sides of me. The bars here were as much an attraction for me as the splendid, old promenade. One bar was gleefully like a David Lynch film. There, I encountered a wide variety of strange people doing karaoke - which, frankly, invites all kinds of weirdness.

The next day we hit Astoria, which wowed us to no end. Its many steep hills, and gorgeous, old Victorian homes gave it a reminiscence of San Francisco and kept our mouths open the entire time. We visited the Astor Column, a huge structure atop the city that's painted with historical scenes of the United States' acquisition of the Northwest. We shot photographs, ogled the scenery and simply stood in slack-jawed amazement at this beautiful place.

We went home via Portland and stopped for dinner at Abyssynia, an insanely scrumptious Ethiopian restaurant that was once located in my hometown of Salem. Upon our return, we found out about a myriad of landslides that we had narrowly missed during our journey, sometimes by two hours.

Page 2 of my journey