Heading to the Oregon Coast

After Portland, my first stop is in Mapleton, OR. I'm staying at another place I found on AirBnB.com. This time with a very nice lesbian couple, one of whom grew up in Evansville, IN, just like my mom.

Mapleton is not an exciting place itself, but it is located about 14 miles from the Oregon coast. I had some time to kill this afternoon before the women I am staying with got home, so I decided to go and check out the coast a bit.

The Oregon coast is unlike anywhere I've been before. The coastal mountain range runs along the coast creating areas with very dramatic cliffs and stunning overlooks. The water here is apparently always too rough and cold for swimming, but I didn't come expecting warmth, so I was not disappointed. In fact, there was even a bit of sun, which has been something of a rarity up to now.

In one of my guidebooks I had read about Yachats (the ch is pronounced like Chanukah), and it sounded like a neat place. It's a little town on the coast, something like 30 miles north of Florence (which is pretty close to where I was staying). I stopped in at a tiny restaurant called Lunasea and had a beer and an enormous bowl of "slumgullion," a deceptively delicious chowder. The name certainly wasn't appetizing, but the chowder was full of cheese, potatoes, clams, bay shrimp, and dungeness crab meat. And the beer was a Rogue Amber Ale, also delicious.


After my early supper I was feeling energetic and scrambled around on some rocks for a while. I was unable to find any particularly cool tide pools (that would take me a few days), but a rocky beach is novelty enough for me to enjoy myself.

I retired early with the intent to more fully explore the area the following day.