Cape Perpetua To Cannon Beach, OR

We left Bandon and continued ~125 miles north along the coast to another great campground at South Beach State Park in Newport.

About 2/3 into our trip, as we were driving through the Siuslaw National Forest, we came around a turn, saw the Heceta Head Lighthouse, and decided that we would come back to explore this area the next day.

The Cape Perpetua Scenic Area is just north of Heceta Head. Some popular Oregon coast landmarks are here – Spouting Horn (left) and Thor’s Well (right), so we spent a couple of hours walking around various viewpoints.

South Beach State Park got some extra points in our nonexistent campground rating system because it was biking distance to a brewery! Rogue’s Brewery on the Bay was just two miles away along campground trails and a jetty road with no traffic. Michael kept our bikes unpacked all week for the beer. I did for the tsunami signs.

The town of Newport is Oregon’s largest commercial fishing town. The historic district is built along Yaquina Bay and is a mix of shops and restaurants and working seafood plants. And I love towns with resident sea lions.

The Oregon Coast Aquarium and OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center are also on the bay. We went to the latter and finally touched all the creatures that live in tidepools.

Newport is the only Oregon town to have two lighthouses. The Yaquina Bay lighthouse was only used for a few years until they realized it was too far inland to be beneficial so another was built ~10 miles north on Yaquina Head.

The Yaquina Head lighthouse is managed as part of the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, administered by the Bureau of Land Management. It has an impressive interpretative center/museum and fantastic tide-pooling and we visited twice.

The following weekend we moved to our last stop in Oregon, Nehalem Bay State Park in Manzanita. But first, cheese. And ice cream.

Our ~100-mile drive from Newport to Manzanita took us through Tillamook and of course, we had to stop. The Tillamook Creamery is a massive operation and you can watch every step of the cheesemaking process.

Visiting in the shoulder season meant a lot of rain, especially in a La Niña year. I am mainly showing pictures of the sunny days from our 3 weeks on the Oregon coast because that’s when we left the camper, but in reality, it rained more days than not.

Our full weekend day in this area was a little disappointing because of the rain. South of Nehalem Bay, is the “3 Capes Scenic Drive” around Cape Mears, Cape Lookout, and Cape Kiwanda. The route included the little Cape Mears Lighthouse (8th out of 9) and by now we were committed to seeing all of them. The picture on the right is of waterfalls on the beach at Cape Lookout State Park.

On one sunny day, we headed north towards the town of Cannon Beach. We stopped at Hug Point State Park, which we loved so much.

At low tide, you can “hug” the headland and walk along an old road to get to a secluded beach.

Next, was Ecola State Park where we could view our last lighthouse, Tillamook, which is built on a rock out in the ocean.

If you want a good look at this one, bring binoculars! It was nicknamed Terrible Tilly by lighthouse keepers because of the terrible commute and terrible weather conditions most of the year.

We couldn’t find parking in Cannon Beach so we took an RV parking spot and just ran out to take a photo of its famous Haystack Rock. Ecola State Park and Cannon Beach were filming locations of The Goonies, which was fun to rewatch on a rainy afternoon.

And on our way home, saw this pretty view from a pull-off.

This wraps up our 3 weeks of state park hopping up the Oregon coast. If/when we return it will be in July/August.

Our next destination was an RV park in Washington where we left our camper for a trip back to NC!