Across Country: A road trip down the Oregon coast

Two weeks ago, at the end of January, Tim and I took a two day road trip down the Oregon coast. Naturally, we took the pups. We didn't plan it really. It was a hop in the car and drive until we are tired kind of thing. We had about $80 saved up. Now you can't get too far on $80 with just any car, but Spike, our beloved Honda Fit, can go very far. We drove from Portland to the tip top of the state, right where Oregon and Washington meet up on the coast, the town of Astoria.

Astoria (you know, The Goonies) was just what we pictured, generally gray and wet, slanky houses on hills, just an overall quaint place. Our favorite part of this town was the amazing bridge that connected Washington and Oregon. The bridge was long, and on this particularly gray day, seemed to disappear into the mist. We crossed it twice just for fun.

It was a rainy first day. We drove through Cannon Beach and saw Haystack Rock through the window. It was too rainy to stop at any of the beaches. But that didn't mean we couldn't have fun. We passed through Tillamook, and stopped at the cheese factory! Mmm... cheese... I forgot to bring my camera inside, but I'm sure you can picture it. Giant blocks of cheese on conveyor belts being sliced into smaller and then even smaller blocks of cheese. Tim hates cheese. I am in love with cheese. I was very surprised when he actually went through and sampled all of the cheeses, including the "squeaky" curds. I went through the sampling line five times. Mmm...

After the factory, we kept driving and took in the wet sights until it started to get dark, ending up in the whale watching capital of the Oregon coast. Sadly, it was dark out. But that didn't stop us from taking a short walk(run) on a cold, rainy, windy, and dark beach with the pups. We quickly regretted this, after realizing that wet dog fur traps sand like nobodies business. We found an RV park, gave the pups a bath in the shower house sinks, and readied our "tent" for sleeping. That is to say we crawled into the back of Spike, with his seats all laid flat and covered in couch cushions and blankets, and plugged our laptop into the cigarette lighter and watched some TV. Our car is better than your car. It can fit a grown man and woman and two dogs fully stretched out in it's back seats. It's like our first little RV, we eat in there, sleep in there, all we need is a portable toilet, but maybe that's taking it too far...

We rose before the sun. After cleaning our sandy selves up, we found a breakfast place called the Sea Hag. It had an ocean view, but we still saw no whales. We did catch an awesome rainbow, though. It rejuvenated our spirits and gave us hope for the day to come. It was not raining, though still slightly cloudy at times. Our early start ensured that we had plenty of time to see whatever we wanted and stop as often as we needed. Our first awe producing moment of the day was getting out of the car at Cape Foulweather and standing on a cliff to overlook a misty coastline below. After that, we started to see lighthouses and crossed over many more gorgeous bridges. Then we played on the most magical beach. It had drift wood, waterfalls, caves, and huge dunes. We found a star fish and some driftwood buddies to take home. The beach went on for miles, and we practically had it all to ourselves. After a few hours of frolicking and exploring, we left the beach. We drove on further through towns and cities. Our next stop was at a trail head on a cliff. The trail took us down a steep hill to a fork. One way lead us to tide pools while the other took us to a rushing canyon. We stood at the edge of the ocean and watch it thrash into lava rock of the tide pools. We watched as powerful waves came and crashed through the channel of the canyon. We witnessed a power we had never seen so great before, the power of water. It was life changing.

As it got later in the day, we calculated how long it would take us to get back to Portland. We decided to turn and go back north after passing through Reedsport, which is about half way down the coast. We saw a sign that read "Caution: Elk." We laughed, how silly it would be if we saw wild elk on the side of the road. Well, the sign did not lie. We rounded a bend and there they were. Probably about 50 elk grazing in a pasture. There was a fence, but it was not there to keep the elk contained. While the males on the opposite side of the fence protected the females, one bull was on the outside. We pulled up right beside the 10 point bull and Tim walked right up to him. He wasn't threatened, apparently, he was too busy eating. I was way too scared to get too close to him. Newton barked from inside the car. We stayed for a while, until. the males began to spar. To avoid being gored, we took their signal and left. It was amazing, and a very unexpected experience.

We packed more than I could have imagined into a two day trip. Maybe not planning every detail is a good thing. Maybe a road trip on the cheap makes you think outside of the norm a bit and leads to more adventures. If we didn't have the pictures to prove it, I myself may not believe that we actually did all of this. And in only two days on only $80.

Packing up in the morning. Those paper towels came in handy.

There are a lot of places like this in Southern Washington.

The first of many bridges.

Photo shoot with my Newts.

Tim drove the whole trip for some reason.

Such a cutie!

Awesome misty mountains.

Astoria had the most beautiful boats.

Red, blue, and slightly white boats.

This boat was not in the water.

Neither was this one.

Some famous pole thing. Not a lighthouse, but a pole.

Best bridge ever. At least when it's misty out.

Bridge to nowhere.

Going back to Oregon.

Like a roller coaster.

Just like The Goonies.

Pirate ship?!

Haystack Rock through the rain.

My favorite thing: The pole with a hole.

Cheese factory!

Our "tent" "bed" "RV". Whatever.

Rainbows in the morning.

Sadly, no whale in sight.

The Sea Hag. The breakfast was not very good at all.

Tim likes to take photos of me eating.

Some rocky shore.

Persie gets to pee in the nicest places.

Cape Foulweather from afar.

Built on a cliff, the winds get up to 100mph pretty frequently.
We just happened to get lucky and miss such a scary thing

Looking for whales.

The sun trying to fight the mist.

Misty capes.

Sometimes we have trouble taking good pictures.

Persie makes me so happy when she "ruins" pictures.

Spike was playing with his reflection.

Beautiful Old Lighthouse

Climbing down to the beach instead of taking the steps = Tim's idea.

Newton's first look at the mighty ocean.

Persie loves the beach!

The distance is so hard to see, but they were really far away.

Sweet bridge.

Ominous stairs coming off of a marsh thing that was really difficult to get to.

Such a wide beach!

Drift wood stump.

My poser.

Awesome rings.

Beautiful tree line off of the beach.

A happy puppy.

Running from the water.

Tim's skipping rocks.

The second lighthouse of the day. I guess the tide was really far out.

The mighty Pacific.

Climbing a rock wall.

Newton just isn't as good of a mountain goat as Persie.

That bridge again. So archy.

Newton MAGIC!

I didn't know he was a levitating pup.

We've been teaching him to walk.

My first starfish. It is still very smelly.

My scarf was sacrificed as a starfish and driftwood carrier.

Newton chasing a seagull! He really tried hard!
But the mean seagull never let him win. He just wanted to gnaw on him a little.

Happy with my starfish sack.

I guess the fresh sea air masked the death smell that it constantly emits.

Giant driftwood tree!

I can haz playtime?

I crawl through this hole?

Yay. I conquer this driftwood.

I claim this for Spain!

Tim and Persie also tried to conquer my driftwood.

Tim succeeded.

The pups succeeded.

My sea fox.

They ran for hours! I don't know how they had the energy.

Poor Persie.

Happies.

Exploring the dunes and cliffs.

We discovered a beach waterfall!

Tim found a sweet sand ridge.

A seemingly fragile sand ridge.

Mini sand cliffs for Persie and Newton.

Long crossing over the rushing river.

Brick rocks.

Waterfall greenery friends.

Wetness

Caves!

My babies, hiding from me.

A Persie sized cave.

From the inside of our hideout :)

Rock surface.

Super happy.

Woof! Some bad lighting.

There's a goblin on our cave!

After we left the beach, about to cross that awesome bridge.

With all of that drift wood, there has to be people to carve it.

Love <3

Well, those are silly.

The path down to the tide pools.

The ocean rushing into the channel.

Big splashes.

Super loud and super mesmerizing.

This video doesn't show the biggest and strongest waves that went through there,

but it does show some awesome lava rock.

Walking on the lava rocks that were level with the oceans surface.

Overlooking a chasm that was about 20ft deep, watching it fill with water.

Getting splashed by very fast waves. I think the tide was coming in swiftly.

I don't think we realized how scary and possibly dangerous this was until we got back on land.
It was a breathtaking experience, though. Completely worth it.