Since we were flying in late, we spent the night at a pleasantly bizarre resort built on an old work camp outside of Portland before heading to the coast, McMenamin's Edgefield. Our room was dormitory style, but there were nice soft robes for walking down the hallway to the bathrooms and it gave us lots of opportunities to inspect the odd artwork painted on the walls.
Although we were only staying one night, we made sure to try out the resort's saltwater soaking pools, the winery and the brewery before we left the next morning. A future visit may be in order...
The next destination had it's own unique quirks. The Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport was a reader's paradise. There were no televisions in the rooms, which were named after authors and decorated to reflect their books. I really wanted to stay in J. K. Rowling but we stayed in Tennessee Williams (aka Stella) instead because the other room had only a double bed. The rooms that weren't occupied were left open for a tour and we peeked into the Dr. Seuss room and saw one of those fishbowl toilets. On the third floor, there was a purposefully disorganized library and a reading room facing the ocean...a very nice place to hang out during a storm. Cody discovered an old spy novel in the library and we actually loitered in a coffee shop after checkout so he could finish reading it.
Reading wasn't the only thing we did...
That wasn't the only thing we did, either.
We walked along the beach, hunted unsuccessfully for agates and tried the seafood chowder at nearly every restaurant we visited. We saw seals in the ocean near a lighthouse, heard and saw sea lions at the docks and petted sea urchins and star fish at the aquarium. Sea urchins actually wrap their spines around your finger and give it a little squeeze, sort of a finger hug. Of course, if your finger were a smaller animal, it would be trying to eat it.
After leaving Newport, we drove down the coast and stopped at Cape Perpetua. On a clear day, you can see at least twelve miles along the coastline from the top. Nearby was a sea feature named Devil's Chasm, where waves rushed violently into the fissure. A relatively short hike (although the husband was unenthusiastic about it) from it was a sea geyser called Spouting Horn (all sorts of jokes were made about seeing it go off) but since it was low tide, the show was not that impressive.
Our next stay was at Heceta Head Lighthouse Bed and Breakfast. It's supposedly haunted...we didn't experience and paranormal activity during our stay, which was just fine with me. The lighthouse was a quarter-mile walk from the lightkeeper's cottage. Guests were provided with flashlights and encouraged to visit the lighthouse at night. The shafts of light from the lantern were actually visible going out to sea in the dark. In the morning, breakfast was a seven course, two hour long meal.
On our last day, we drove up the coast to Tillamook. We visited the Tillamook Cheese Factory (where no one was actually working) and the huge, decrepit Tillamook Air Museum, which was used to house blimps during World War II. There were no blimps there any longer and part of the building was being used to store RVs. There was a decent variety of other aircraft but I'm glad we hit it late enough in the day that admission was half-price. I still felt a little like there should have at least been a kiss...
Our room that night at the Sandlake Country Inn (which is actually built from timber that washed up from a shipwreck) was very nice, with a jacuzzi tub, fireplace, in-room breakfast, and warm bathrobes and socks waiting on us. The innkeepers even left us a special honeymoon treat of cupcakes. We had cheese fondue and just stayed in that night, enjoying the last night of our honeymoon. It's funny that we went so far away to spend a lot of time in our room...
The next morning we had to leave early for the airport, so the innkeeper prepared our breakfast and put it in our fridge the night before. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, so stopped into the Rogue Brewery restaurant for a second breakfast. It was 10:00 AM and the husband decided that the perfect finish to this honeymoon was two pints of his favorite beer of the trip, Rogue's Dead Guy Ale.
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