To Portland

On Friday, with a great deal of reluctance we repacked our bags, squeezed in the extra shopping, filled the thermos and headed off north along 101, our eventual destination Portland, Oregon.

The plan was to drive to at least Tillamook with no stops as we had covered that ground previously and we still had miles of unvisited coast north of there.

Morning tea ended up being in a little coastal park near Rockaway Beach where we had Anzac biscuits, a cup of tea and the beach to ourselves.

We also worked on perfecting the selfie 😊

Back on the road we continued on to Manzanita and reached shopping heaven!

OMG, lucky we hadn’t stayed near this lovely coastal town absolutely pandering to shoppers like me – favourite store was 4 Paws on the Beach 🐾  where we met a lovely Australian Labradoodle called Violet who was shopping for treats.

I came away from here with a bag of assorted doggie stuff and we hit the road again bound for Short Sands Beach a little south of Cannon Beach. The family from Chicago that we had met whilst cycling across Golden Gate Bridge had told us that it was not to be missed and when we reached the packed car park it was obvious that this was no secret. We had our picnic in the grounds next to the car park and then set off on the short (perhaps a kilometre?) walk to the actual beach through shady old growth forest to possibly the most beautiful beach we have seen on the whole trip!

Short Sand Beach is quite protected and hence popular with beginner surfers but also provides tide pooling, clean sand, a small creek and the ubiquitous driftwood and sunset bonfire opportunities. Today with brilliant blue skies it was very busy but we noted that everyone in the water was clad in a wetsuit, apparently even in summer the Pacific Ocean isn’t really warm enough to swim in!

We spent a considerable amount of time here but with still a fair chunk of our journey to go eventually headed back to the car and on toward Cannon Beach. Cannon Beach turned out to be a very busy town with bumper to bumper traffic and very scarce parking – our plan to grab an ice cream and photograph Haystack Rock was almost abandoned but at last we fortuitously timed a drive through a parking lot just as a car was leaving.

The direction of the sun was not in our favour though and we couldn’t even find an ice cream shop so took a couple of quick pics and returned to the car.

Our original plan today had been to follow 101 all the way to Astoria on the northern edge of Oregon but time and the numerous viewpoints that demanded a stop for pictures resulted in us making the decision to head and inland to Portland from Cannon Beach. We will have to tackle that last little stretch another day.

Despite being slightly stressed about driving into Portland during peak hour, the trusty GPS devised a circuitous but easy enough route into the ‘Alphabet’ historic district of Portland and we found our rental with no problems.

We are surrounded by historic houses and leafy green streets, but only about 20 mins walk to downtown – I think we are going to love our five nights here!