Portlandia 5: Leave Town

[darkemeralds]

Before the Great Bedroom Remodel got underway, I began a Five Places I Love In Portland series. I ran out of focus after only four. So let's call this Portlandia 5: The Coast.



I got to get out of town yesterday, thanks to my energetic and still-car-owning sister. We made a short and targeted trip to Cannon Beach (pick up Mom at 7:20, pick you up at 7:30, get to the coast by 9:00, walk on the beach, have breakfast at the Pig 'n' Pancake, home by 1:00 p.m.)


Niece, mom, sister and Haystack Rock

The town, population around 1000, I think, is made up of cedar-shake-covered houses--even the million-dollar ocean-front properties are covered with cedar, which weathers to gray within a season. On the main street (there's just the one), the art galleries, gift shops, restaurants and candy stores that you'd expect to find in any beach town are all weathered cedar and river-rock, with bright trim and artsy signage and flower pots.

But all of that is just support structure for the main reason to go there: the beach itself. Cannon Beach is grandiose, wide, windswept, gray, and incredibly photogenic. And it's public. That's a key thing about Oregon beaches: they're all public. You can access the beach at the end of every street, walk for miles, and head back into the town from any point.

It's 85 miles/135 kilometers northwest of Portland along a mostly two-lane highway that winds up over the Coast Range through fir forests.

Cannon Beach, for all that it exists primarily to be visited and is preciously touristy, is still and always one of my favorite places in the whole wide world. It's a de rigeur trip for my Portland visitors, and a pilgrimage I still like to make whenever the opportunity arises.

Comments

[donutsweeper]

I love the fact there's a restaurant named Pig 'n' Pancake. The beach looks lovely too.

[darkemeralds]

The name says it all. :D

[cookiemom6067]

We were there in 2001 or 2002 - we dipped down to Cannon Beach during our big Pacific Northwest vacation, which was mostly spent in Washington. John's cousins recommended it and we enjoyed it very much

[darkemeralds]

Oh cool! I'm so glad to know you've been there and enjoyed it.

[greghatcher]

We actually prefer the tickytacky of Seaside, just up the road a bit, when we go there for a couple of days... and Lincoln City is a mecca for book people. But for the beach itself, yes, Cannon Beach is undoubtedly the best.

It's been a couple of years for us. I wrote up our last bookscouting-and-antiquing trip there in a series of columns here a while ago... it tickles me to know you and your family also are unable to resist the siren song of the Pig 'n' Pancake.

[darkemeralds]

I remember your lovely coast bookscouting posts, and I'm so glad you still get down here now and then. My bias for Cannon Beach isn't rational (I think I'd prefer to stay in Manzanita these days, and I've had some lovely visits in Lincoln City and Newport). It's that my grandparents had a tiny cabin there when I was a little kid, and my very definition of "beach" includes sand dollars and wind-bent Monterrey pines framing the view of Haystack Rock.

My folks lived in Gearhart for years and I spent a lot of time in Seaside, where my mom ran the library. Funny little town, but much more of a real civic entity than Cannon Beach. Something about CB being off the highway lets it be quaint, while US 101 bisecting Seaside has given it a Safeway and a movie theater and a hospital, along with the arcades and saltwater taffy shops.

Really, though, the whole Oregon Coast, from Astoria on down, is pretty damn wonderful.

[darkemeralds]

PS: I was actually disappointed in my Pig 'n' Pancake breakfast this time. It wasn't as satisfying and delicious as I'd hoped, given that I can only get there perhaps once a year. Ah well.