Oregon Coast Trip 2019
July 6th: The Oregon coast trip was kind of a last minute plan to go with some friends and spend a few days crabbing and playing in the sand dunes. The day after returning home from my Hell’s Canyon trip, I flew out to North Bend Oregon, where my mom and grandma picked me up. I flew from Boise to San Francisco. My layover there allowed me to get some lunch. I found a little Japanese restaurant inside the airport that sold tempura udon. I ordered the dish without having tried it before, and loved it. I landed in North Bend in the early afternoon in time to go grab some crab pots and see if we caught anything from the previous set. That night, my grandparents, mom, some of our friends, and I went to a dirt track race not too far from where we were staying. It was redneck and I loved it! Big explosions, crashes, and fireworks ruled the night. Racing seemed to be a side effect of the show. The stands were packed all the way through the fireworks display at then end of the night. All that fun was a good introduction to the Oregon Coast.
July 7th: We stayed at water’s edge on Coos Bay. It made it easy to see the sights in the area and still be able to have a short commute to the boat docks where we would take off from for crabbing. Day 2 at the Oregon Coast started out with a trip to the beach and then on to the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. While we were at the dunes, we did a sandrail tour ride. This sandrail we rode was an eight seater, tube frame beast powered by a 6-cylinder Vortec Engine. It was big, it was fast, and it was fun! The most entertaining feature of the whole ride was sitting next to my grandma as she panicked over every little bump, through every turn, and down every straightaway. After laughing until I cried watching my grandma on the sandrail, we went to Florence, Oregon for lunch and got ice cream before heading to Our next stop. We continued on to Heceta Lighthouse, which overlooks the Pacific ocean. Heceta has been active for over 125 years and was converted to an electric light in the 1930’s. There’s actually a really awesome bed and breakfast just below the lighthouse itself; so if you want somewhere awesome stay while on the coast, look for Heceta Lighthouse Bed and Breakfast. For dinner, we drove out onto the beach near where we were staying. We took our barbecuer, elk burgers and a tub of watermelon. We played glow in the dark Kan-Jam until the sun was completely down over the horizon.
July 8th: The following morning we were going to go fishing in the bay. We caught sand shrimp as bait but when we got out on the bay, the water was too rough so we had to turn back. We drop the crab pots in a calmer area and returned to our campsite for a short while before returning to our catch. We had dinner that night at a very nice restaurant and I tried some amazing locally caught scallops. We had our dogs with us at the coast, so we took them to a cool closed off beach where they could run and play in the dark until we went back so we could go to bed.
Our last day at the coast was spent preparing to leave. We went to Chuck’s Seafood to get our fill of salmon, red snapper, and halibut to take home with us. Once done with that, we started our ten hour drive home. The Oregon Coast this year was full of new adventures and experiences. I want to go crabbing soon but until then, I’ll just chow down on the amazing sockeye salmon we have in our freezer.