Oregon is a hard place to visit. Living there you’d have time to go to all the places to raft or hike or walk the beach, but failing that, any visit of only a week or two has to pass up so many opportunities for fun, there’s always a tinge of regret left with the memories.
Primarily, we’re prisoners of ‘The 101’.
U.S. 101 is the coastal highway we’ve either been on, or close to since Big Sur. The coast road leads to all the sleepy little towns that have no crowds to speak of but vast lonely beaches, most with rock formations out in the surf 100 feet high, that seem like little ecosystems of their own.
It also leads through hundreds of miles of Redwood Forests so majestic that I’m not sure the Gulf Stream Waters can compete.
In Oregon the 101 has the cheese factory as well as all those dairy farms with a view of the Pacific, it has the sea lion caves like nothing you’ve ever seen, and then quite suddenly there are the dunes around Coos Bay where lots of people are willing to let you ride their buggies.
So anyway, only visiting, and choosing The 101, we miss out on the interior – Mount Hood National Forest and at least eight others just as gorgeous – the Deschutes River, the Willamette, the Rogue, the Columbia and my phone says 28 more, all with their own brand of beer. Not to mention Crater Lake ( we must be crazy to pass that up), Bend, and Redding and Klamath Falls and Eugene. Oregon, the land of disappointment.
A state park just outside Manzanita gives us a weeks relaxation from the rigors of being a tourist. The beach here is wide and flat and made for walking. We would like to stay here, we really would,
but the north country calls….and we have reservations.
Travelling SOBs 