Trip to OREGON
We recently did a bucket list trip to the state of Oregon. I often see people take these types of vacations and find it overwhelming to actually plan it. The questions swirling in my mind are usually: Where should we stay? How much time would we spend driving between everything? And how could we make the most of our trip without exhausting our kids or ourselves? I thought it would be fun to break down our trip for others that might possibly be interested.
My husband has visited Oregon many times and always raved about how beautiful of a state it was.
He desired to take us someday and with our oldest starting Middle School this Fall (how?) and our youngest now being 4, we thought our kids were at good ages to attempt a big trip like this. So here is the breakdown of what we did and where!
We flew on a direct flight into Portland. We are admittedly not city people so we only spent a half a day there but made the most of it. In Portland we:
Ate breakfast at Pine State Biscuits which everything was delicious.
Shopped at Powell’s Bookstore. This was the highlight of Portland for us. Powell’s is the flagship store and is the largest independent used bookstore in the world. It is 4 stories tall and takes up an entire city block. We had an absolute blast roaming around. Each of us came with a list of titles or authors to search for, and we found tons of treasures.
Saw Multnomah Falls - This is a “tourist attraction” but was definitely worth the stop. It is a two tiered waterfall in the Columbia River Gorge and is just east of Portland. It was absolutely gorgeous and had a coffee shop as well as a gift shop. .
After Portland we drove about 2 hours to the coast at Manzanita Beach. We rented an airbnb here that was 2 blocks from the beach and 2 blocks from the Main Street in Manzanita with restaurants, shopping, as well as a library (which was great if you have kids for those inevitable rainy days in the Pacific Northwest). We also really enjoyed the children’s toy store, the old fashioned candy shop, ice cream shops, several coffee shops, and more. We truly loved the Manzanita area.
Everything we did for the rest of the week was 30 minutes or less from where we stayed! This made it so much more enjoyable after 2 pretty big travel days. Here is all we did:
Haystack Rock - this was easily one of the highlights of our trip. Haystack Rock is at Cannon Beach and has been featured in several movies such as the Goonies. We planned our trip for the last week of May which just so happened to be a great time to visit. Every spring, tufted puffins return to Haystack Rock to nest. They lay their eggs in April, the chicks hatch in early May, and by the end of the month, the parents are busy teaching their young to fly before they all head back out to sea in early June.
We were able to watch hundreds of puffins flying around, diving into the ocean, and returning to their nests. It was such an incredible sight and one of those travel moments we'll never forget.
Crabbing - My husband planned a day to catch crabs using Jetty Fishery in Rockaway Beach at Nehalem Bay . It was pouring rain on this day but that didn’t stop them! It was fun to do something different and was very educational. Only 2 of my kids tried them for dinner.
Oregon Coast Scenic Railway - We caught the train in Rockaway Beach, rode it to Garibaldi, and back. This was a fun way to check out some small towns as well as enjoy beautiful scenery on the ride. We saw 2 eagles and happened to have beautiful sunny weather on this day too!
Short Sand Beach - We did a relatively short hike down to this beach inside Oswald West State Park. It was amazing and had the biggest trees I’d ever seen. Be mindful of watching for the signage, as there is very little signage for the hike! There were a lot of surfers at this beach (even in the freezing temps) and is known for whale sightings, although we didn’t see any.
Arch Cape - This was our boys’ favorite day of the trip. We were lucky the tide was in our favor the day we went because oftentimes this whole area can be under water. Arch cape was simply stunning. There were rocks to climb, caves to explore, and tide pools full of sea anemone, starfish, clams, crabs, and more.
Our boys spent over 5 hours exploring here and it felt like something out of the Little Mermaid. Be mindful of the sneaker waves!
This sums up our trip. The weather was wild and spanned from us having 2 pretty warm and sunny days, to raining all day, to extremely windy and everything in between. We bought good rain jackets for all of us as well as Keens for the boys to wear on the beaches. There was driftwood everywhere and the boys enjoyed building shelters etc. It also was perfect weather for flying kites on the beach which was really special.
Oregon far exceeded my expectations and it really was a stunning place to visit.
It was a great balance of having fun adventures and exploring each day as well as resting and being at our airbnb. We only would eat out for dinner and didn’t feel like we spent all day in the car. It was also really wonderful to be able to walk to the beach and restaurants! There are beautiful views, cottages, and scenery everywhere. I hope you enjoyed reading this and add Oregon to your “bucket list” trip ideas to do with your family.
Here are a few other ideas that we had on our list but didn’t get around to.
Seaside Aquarium
Tillamook Creamery (we did try this brand ice cream while here! but you can take tours at the creamery)
Hug Point
A bonus idea that we did do, is we watched Free Willy as a family one night. Free Willy was filmed in Portland and surrounding beach areas so it was fun to see the scenery as well as share a classic with our kids from our own childhood.
There is a lot more to do around the state if we were willing to drive several more hours up and down the coast. We landed on Manzanita Beach and decided to stay in that area and are so glad we did.
We lowered our expectations, did our best to not over plan, and tried to set ourselves up for success!
On this journey with you,
Rachel