Exploring the southern Oregon Coast

Greetings all!  We are thoroughly enjoying Oregon and after leaving Bend this past Monday, we worked our way to the coast.  To get from O'Brien (where we last posted) to Harris Beach State Park (in Oregon just a few miles from the CA coast) - we drove through California for about 1 hour of the 90-minute drive.  It was beautiful landscape including some enormous Redwood trees.  Another item to note is that the temperature went from low 90's in O'Brien to low 60's on the beach in such a short time period!

After a productive grocery run at the Fred Meyer in Brookings, Oregon, we arrived to Harris Beach State Park for 2 nights.  Our campsite was HUGE - probably one of our favorites so far - with a short walk to the beach, which was so beautiful - very different from Naples, Florida!

Due to the cooler temps, it was ideal weather for a campfire which we enjoyed both nights at this campground.

Our full day was spent exploring the Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor - just north of our campground, it is a 12-mile stretch along the coast that is run by the Oregon state parks and named after its first superintendent.  There are multiple pull-offs along the way and we took many short hikes.  Although cloudy/foggy, the scenery was breathtaking - the coast is as rugged as it is magical and we were blown away at the beauty we saw throughout the day.

We headed back to the campsite for lunch and a nap!  Then headed back out to walk the beach at low tide - Whaleshead Beach was one of the few beaches you could easily walk to along this 12-mile stretch and it was beautiful.

We left Harris Beach and headed to another Oregon state park about 3 hours north - Jessie Honeyman state park.  This park was very different from Harris Beach in that it was about 2 miles inland from the beach and had large sand dunes and 2 freshwater lakes.  It was a very large campground and we scored another great site - inclusive of a nice campfire!  It was chilly here too - low 60's. 

The next day, we moved further north to Depoe Bay (about 2 hours) and the drive along the coast was so pretty but also very foggy in spots.  Depoe Bay is known for being able to see Gray Whales right off the coast, as well as having the smallest harbor in the world!  Our campground was about 10-minutes north of downtown Depoe Bay on the beach - our site was a short walk away - and both nights we were there it was so windy, cold, and foggy - brrrr!  It was even too cold for a campfire!

The full day we were there, we explored the area.  We enjoyed watching boats entering the world's smallest harbor and although we didn't see any whales, we did see quite a few seals.

The highlight of our visit was another state park - the Devil's Punchbowl - a cool rock formation phenomenon as well as a beautiful walk on the beach in the bright sunshine (just 15 minute south of our cloudy/foggy campground (!)).  The weather changed multiple times on this day depending on where we were.  You can see the big fog bank off the beach which stayed off the beach at Devil's Punchbowl, but moved in at the lighthouse (below) and stayed in at our campground.  Also lots of surfers here - although a bit chilly, the sunshine was glorious!

We then enjoyed a delicious lunch on Newport Harbor - again, the sun shining bright!

After lunch, we headed to the Yaquina lighthouse.  There are 12 lighthouses along the coast and this was our first one.  Again, the fog was rolling in and the wind was blowing like crazy!

This morning, we left the coast and are now in Willamette Valley (McMinnville, OR).  We left the Depoe Bay campground at 50 degrees and foggy and arrived here 1 hour and 15 minutes later at 90 degrees and bright sunshine.  CRAZY!  If you are a fan of Pinot Noir, this is a great place to be and we will share more about our visit at the next blog post.  We are here for 2 nights, then will head back to the coast for a week.  Then, it's on to Washington state!

Thanks for following along - cheers and love, Jen & Paul