• Sea Lion Caves - Sea Lion Caves is the largest sea cave in the United States, and its home to, you guessed it dozens, sometimes hundreds of sea lions. If you’re interested in seeing, hearing or smelling sea lions, this is the spot. If we head down the elevators into the caves you might want to plug your ears and nose.

Note: This 200-mile-long tour covers the essentials of Oregon Coast in 7-8 hours.

• Florence - Florence is one of the larger communities on the Oregon Coast and, because of its proximity to the Oregon Dunes, it’s a center for outdoor sports. If we are on a much longer driving itinerary, you might be interested to know that Florence is also roughly the halfway point between California and Washington.
• Exploding Whale Memorial Park - Florence is home of one of the most infamous incidents in the history of dynamite – an incident that eventually became one of the first viral videos on the Internet. Let’s flashback to November 12, 1970. A dead 45-foot long sperm whale washed up on the beach just west of here.
• Washburne State Park Camping - Up ahead is Carl G. Washburne Memorial State Park, named for a former commissioner of the Oregon Highway Department. This park features a wide beach, picnic areas, restrooms and a large campground.
• Cape Perpetua - The Cape Perpetua area is coming up featuring miles-long views, an ocean blowhole, a beautiful forest and a visitor center to learn more. But a grouping of worthy stops will come up quickly.
• Thor’s Well - Safety officer here to deliver a word of caution. A water rescue is nearly impossible amid the churning waves, so take care. If the tide is very high, stay up on the paved trail and view everything from a distance.
• Heceta Head Lighthouse - the Heceta Head area, home to some great views and a beautiful 19th-century classic red-roofed lighthouse with a beam visible 21 miles out to sea.
• Thor’s Well - Safety officer here to deliver a word of caution. A water rescue is nearly impossible amid the churning waves, so take care.
• Yachats - We’ll soon arrive in Yachats, and this is my definition of a perfect example of an Oregon Coast town. We’ll find a couple of great restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, a brewpub featuring unique ingredients like spruce beer, an excellent fish market and a couple of shops for visitors.
• Waldport - There aren’t any must-do stops but the town is pleasant of course, with a couple of restaurants to pick from. This is the location where the Alsea River empties into the Pacific Ocean and that means an interesting bridge is coming up.
• Alsea Bay Bridge - Throughout this tour I speak quite a bit about how Conde McCullough built many of the bridges along the Oregon Coast. Well alas, we are about to cross one that he did NOT design. This bridge, over Alsea Bay was opened in 1991 to replace the original bridge, and that original in fact was designed and built in 1936 by McCullough.
• Brian Booth State Park - Wouldn’t it be cool to have a park named after you? We are closing in on Brian Booth State Park, named in 2013 after the first Oregon State Parks and Recreation Commission chairperson.
• Newport - There are several worthwhile stops to make in Newport if we have the time and feel ready to get out for a little exploring. The most highly recommended is to visit the Bayfront.
• Yaquina Head - The ocean side of the road is the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area. Yes “Outstanding” is a part of the official name and is absolutely fitting. The Oregon Coast’s tallest lighthouse rises 93 feet above the cliffs.
• Beverly Beach State Park - Ahead on the inland side of the road, we’ll see the brown sign for Beverly Beach State Park. I realize we probably aren’t driving along randomly looking for a campground, but I did want to give a shoutout to my favorite spots to camp on the coast.
• Cape Foulweather - As we drive the Otter Crest Loop, we pass Cape Foulweather, which is - well, depending on the day, also descriptively accurate. The first European to record seeing Cape Foulweather was British explorer Captain James Cook in March 1778.
• Boiler Bay - If you want a short jaunt, and it’s low tide, you can search for a derelict boiler tank that remains from a steam powered schooner that met an unfortunate end back in 1910. The story is that an over pressurized blow torch exploded, engulfing the ship.
• Fogarty Creek - Fogarty Creek State Recreation Area is just ahead and in my opinion it is one of the best beaches in Oregon because it offers fantastic views, smashing waves, unique rock formations, spectacular tidal pools and best of all its great for fossicking. In this case our fossicking will be a hunt for agates.
• Cascade Head - This is part of the UNESCO Cascade Head Biosphere. It includes 102 thousand acres of rare and diverse ecosystems including the Salmon River, a two mile basalt headland covered in coastal prairies, forested uplands and a marine reserve stretching west into the waters of the Pacific. All proudly protected by the communities.
• Neskowin - As we come off Cascade Head, we’re going to see the village of Neskowin. This is one of those places that has a ghost forest identified by scientists as devastated by a prior tsunami. At low tide, on the beach south of Hawk Creek, dozens of old tree stumps are still visible buried in the sand as a testament to the power of the earth.
• Cape Kiwanda - Up ahead is the main attraction in Pacific City, Cape Kiwanda and one of the three Oregon coast haystack rocks, This one being the 327 foot tall basalt outcrop called Chief Kiawanda Rock. Cape Kiwanda itself, is a sandstone promontory that juts out into the ocean.
• Netarts - The overlook ahead on the left called Anderson’s viewpoint is a great spot to take a look at the coast and Netarts Bay.
• Cape Meares - There’s a Y intersection ahead. To visit the secret Tunnel Beach, we will keep left and enter the seaside village of Oceanside.
• Tillamook - We are almost at the most popular visitor attraction on the Oregon Coast - the famous Tillamook Creamery. Beloved for generations, it’s a great place to see cheesemakers hard at work preparing the bricks of cheddar headed to grocery stores all over the country. Visitors can sample several varieties of Tillamook Cheese, buy some hard-to-find flavors and aged varieties, and some gifts for anyone who didn’t get to come along today.
• Astoria Column - If the weather is at all cooperative today, I suggest we should head up the hill to Astoria Column, one of the most popular places in Astoria because of its elevated location with superb views in every direction - including across the Columbia River to Washington.
• Garibaldi - The village of Garibaldi is one of the Oregon Coast’s main fishing ports, and it’s a great place to pick up tuna, salmon or crab, especially if we are cooking some of our own meals on this trip. Even if we aren’t, canneries here preserve some of the fresh catches so that they can make it back home no matter how far we have to go.
• Rockaway Beach - Rockaway Beach is going to be in our windows soon. This seaside resort colony was founded about a century ago and named for the famous beach community in New York City.
• Nehalem - U.S. 101 makes a sharp turn at the intersection of 7th and H streets. It’s well signed, and has a flashing light, so it should be pretty obvious where we need to make the turn. But guess what - I’ll be sure to make sure we go the right way.
• Manzanita - You may remember me saying that Manzanita has a little more upscale eateries and stores and is a popular spot to own or rent a beach cottage.
• Cannon Beach - My official tour route goes through Cannon Beach, so if we’ve accidentally missed the exit, don’t worry, there’s another exit up ahead that we can use to get to Cannon Beach and Ecola State Park.

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