A New Kind of Adventure in Newport, Oregon

My general kind of adventure is, as many of you know, traveling to new and different places, learning about new cultures and expanding my perspective.  I’m currently trying out a new type of adventure, one on which I very rarely embark.

I’m staying in the United States for a while, and trying out the serious relationship thing.

I know this isn’t that kind of blog and I don’t particularly want to go into details, so I won’t bore you by talking about him.  However, we recently took a weekend trip together within the US, and because that still constitutes traveling (albeit, in a very short burst), I thought I’d write about it.  After all, the majority of my traveling for the foreseeable future will be within the United States of America.

For my birthday this year, he took me a few hours southwest of our hometown to Newport, Oregon, a nice beach town, for a relaxing weekend away.

I did the majority of the research for the trip, because I’m a nerd who loves travel research way more than any person should.  I generally like Trip Advisor because its mostly user generated information and has pretty accurate information about the quality of different sights.  I only made one small mistake in my research for this particular trip.

I was looking at Newport, Rhode Island.  If you want to go there, hit me up, because I know a couple cool things to do there.

I only realized I’d done that when we got there, but it was fine because Newport, Oregon has a couple of great things to do as well.  On our way down we stopped at the Devil’s Punchbowl, which is a large sea cave whose roof partially collapsed, leaving a large circular hole that looks down onto the sea floor, where the waves crash into the walls of the cave and the rocks along the shore.  It was beautiful, but a pretty quick stop.  Then we kept driving down toward Newport.  When we arrived we mostly just hung out, and went to the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area.  After an appropriate amount of time spent mocking the name, we headed into the area and saw its main attraction: the lighthouse.  It was closed, so we couldn’t climb up to its top, but a nearby hill provided a good viewpoint of the lighthouse and the edge of the coastline.  A small pod of whales were hanging out nearby, and we spotted a few coming up for air, spouting and showing their backs on the way up and their tails on the way down.

We looked over the map we’d been given at the entrance, and found that there were a few spots that had some good tide pools.  We planned to get up early and come back the next morning.  We went on another hike through the area, down to the spot where some of the tide pools would be exposed at low tide in the morning.  There wasn’t much to see when the tide was high, but it could be cool tomorrow morning.

The rest of the night was very relaxed.  We just went swimming at our hotel and used the sauna, which was nice.  Then we headed out for dinner at The Chowder Bowl down on Nye beach.  We shared the clam chowder, calamari, and marionberry cobbler, and every bite was delicious.  We watched a movie in our hotel room and went to bed early so that we could get up early for the tidepools.

We left the hotel at around seven in the morning in order to get to the tide pools during the lowest part of the tide.  The tide pools in the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area were really cool, even though there was a large group of middle school students there on a field trip.  We climbed all over the rocks, trying to avoid stepping on anything living.  We saw anemones, starfish, and a large amount of other really cool sea life.  The starfish were particularly surprising because a disease had recently wiped out the vast majority of the starfish all along the west coast.  But we were lucky and there were still a few to see.

After that, we were tired because it was so early, so we took a nap.

The afternoon was spent at the Aquarium, always conscious of the time so we wouldn’t miss high tide in the afternoon, which is the best time to see Devil’s Churn, Thor’s Well, Spouting Horn, and Cook’s Chasm.  The Newport Aquarium is pretty cool, and we had a lot of fun, again in spite of the group of high school children there on a field trip.  They have great interactive tide pools there where you can touch the starfish and anemones, which are a weird combination of wet, sticky, and smooth.  The jellyfish were my favorite part, as they always are at any aquarium. They just look so cool.  The octopus and giant crabs were pretty cool as well.

We headed to Devil’s Churn first, since it was the northernmost spot.  The churn is a spot in the coastline that was weakened by strong waves, resulting in a long, thin inlet that endures a constant barrage of waves against its walls.  You can walk right down to the edge of the rocks, where the water crashes against the sides just a few feet below you.  I’d been there before, but he hadn’t, so we stayed a little while to explore.

From there we headed a little further south past Yachats (pronounced Ya-hots because English is stupid) to Cook’s Chasm.  Captain James Cook discovered much of the Oregon Coast, including this particular chasm, which look much like a larger version of the Devil’s Churn.  Cook’s Chasm, however, has two really cool sights among its rocks.  First, right at the edge where the open ocean meets the rocks, there is Thor’s Well, a hole in the rocks that seems bottomless, but fills with water from below each time the waves hit the shore.  The water bubbles up from below and cascades over the sides, emptying itself partially over its own borders and partially in the hole below sight, where it is fed by the waves.

Again, you can walk right up to the edge of the well, but it can be dangerous at high tide.  Luckily, there are some slightly raised rocks nearby that look down on the well, but are too high to be affected by the incoming water.  It was pretty cool.

On the other side, along the chasm’s edge, was Spouting Horn.  As the waves crashed up against a small underwater cave, water was forced up toward the ceiling of the cave, which had a small hole.  Mist burst up through the hole with each large wave, spitting water high into the air seemingly in imitation of a spouting whale.  It was pretty cool, and the mist shot pretty high, although getting pictures was pretty difficult.

At the end we stopped for dinner in Newport along the boardwalk, at the original Moe’s.  We decided to mix it up this time, and so we shared the clam chowder, the calamari, and the marionberry cobbler.

We’re so cool.