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Two Emerald staffers take a day and bring the Oregon coast back to
carf buy at perhaps
the'#teesiest gift shop m tSSsta#
Story by
Jack Clifford
Photos by
Azle Malinao-Alvarez
Oregon Daily Emerald
On a short stretch of Highway 101, along the
Oregon coast between Yachats and Wald
port, there are several streets named after
states, with Kansas and Nebraska among the hon
orees.
That’s certainly a striking contrast: the image
of flat fields of wheat and corn vs. the Pacific
Ocean’s expanse and the shoreline’s diversity in
terrain.
Just ask two experts.
“We love the trees, the hills and the water [along
Highway 101] — we don’t get much of either back
home,” says state of Nebraska resident Brandi Beins,
formerly of Kansas, the state.
Beins was with her husband, James, at the Cape
Perpetua viewpoint just south of Yachats, enjoying
their third day of honeymooning, a trip that start
ed June 11 in Seattle. James is a student at the Uni
versity of Nebraska in Lincoln and he says the
choice to visit Oregon was made because the cou
ple wanted to go somewhere they had never been.
And to get away from the cows and corn for a bit,
he adds.
Hordes of people from Eugene will likely follow
the Beins’ lead and make at least one coast excursion
this summer. Most veteran beachcombers already
have their fa
■
vuiiic iiiutJciwciy
or know the best
spot to just plop
down for a day
in the sun.
If you don’t,
the following
mini-guide — it
encompasses
just the span of
Highway 101
from Florence to
Newport —
might help es
tablish a get
away plan for a
day trip to the
beach.
Don’t forget
your sunscreen,
though, and
binoculars are
always great to
have for bird
watching or
spotting marine
life.
Sea lions, kitsch and sand
dunes, oh my
Once Highway 126, heading
west from Eugene, spits you out
onto 101, take a left for an aside to
the Oregon Dunes National Recre
ation Area.
Unfortunately, sand walkers
have to sometimes compete for
space and tranquility with the pres
ence and constant sounds of all-ter
rain vehicles or motocross bikes.
But the views from the dune tops
are enchanting, with sandscapes
visible for miles.
This portion of the dunes area is
the northernmost tip, but offers a
nice spot to play. The Jessie M.
Honeyman Park, approximately 3.5
miles south from downtown Florence, is a good site
to munch food, catch fish or lose yourself in the end
less sand.
The town of Florence is an interesting stop with
quite a bit of history, as Dick Kirby, a 32-year resi
dent and volunteer at the town’s Visitor Information
Center, can tell you. Today, however, he says that
Florence is populated mostly with retirees, the ma
jority of which have escaped from the southern
wreck known as California.
Kirby says Florence has everything he needs to get
by and rarely does he “have to go to the big city,” Eu
gene.
Whatever Kirby can’t find in his small burg, at
least in the realm of kitschy coast souvenirs, he and
other visitors can certainly score at the Sea Lion
Caves gift shop, 11 miles north of Florence. You
haven t seen bad art until you’ve been inside this
place.
Customers can sift through the shelves for such
gems as “Oregon Coast in a Bottle” for $6 or a 6-inch
blue, ceramic whale tail — just the tail — glued to a
piece of wood. Other beauts include little skiing
snowmen made of small seashells (a mere 75 cents)
and a cougar head carved inside a set of moose
antlers. Get out the credit card for that one, however;
the cost is $195.
Skip the Sea Lion Caves because the gift shop is a
hoot, and it’s free to wander and laugh. The “attrac
tion” does sit on a small space with a nice overlook,
however, one that is perfect for taking in the Pacif
ic’s immensity.
I love the ocean because in Japan you can’t see
it,” Mayo Hotta says, as she and her two friends,
Sayaka Mimura and Mikako Kiue, sit outside the gift
shop. I love to see the green of the trees and smell
the ocean.”
The Central Oregon Community College students
were spending a few days of their school break on
the coast, away from the Bend campus, and very far
away from their homeland,
Japall.
“The coast here is more calm
[than in Japan],” Kiue says.
“And we have no sea lions over
there.”
The country probably has
nothing similar to the Sea Lion
Caves gift shop, either.
Presto chango, the road
reappears
In February, when heavy
rains caused some of the ocean
side terrain to give way, taking
big chunks of Highway 101 with
it, the gloom-and-doom forecast
I
rhe Oregon Coast Aquarium’s new Passages of the Deep ex
hibit (left) is getting mixed reviews from visitors. But the ma
rine life doesn’t seem to mind the environment.
for coastal businesses matched the crappy weather
that brought about the slides in the first place.
With the damaged stretch of road now reopened,
shopkeepers along the affected area, especially in
the town of Yachats, are gearing up for a less sus
penseful summer season.
Jeune Arnold, who owns a small gift shop called
Comfort,” scrunched in between a diner and the
town s Visitor Information Center, says most every
one in the area made it through the ecological
calamity. Despite the financial setback she incurred,
the former Eugene resident can’t imagine moving
elsewhere.
This isn’t a place to come to make a living,” says
Arnold, who has lived in Yachats three years and
has had her shop location for half that time. “It’s a
matter of survival just to have the privilege of living
here.”
Arnold remembers coming to the Yachats area
since she was a small child, and she’s used the coast
as a place in her adult years to “relax and find a
serene place to be.”
“It just kind of calls you,” she says.
Michael Deutsch knows all about the call of the
coast. In fact, he recently fled Arizona and landed —
temporarily, at least — at Beachside State Park,
halfway between Yachats and Waldport.
“I came for the rhodies, the moss and the ferns —
everything they don’t have in Arizona," Deutsch
says, while sitting in his van, which is a veritable
house on wheels. “It has all the necessities and some
of the niceties. Sometimes I live in it.”
Deutsch and Betty Hoffmestfer, who has lived for
24 years in a small neighborhood directly across
from the park’s entrance, are shooting the breeze as
the wind gently swirls off the beach. Hoffmester says
she is happy she moved from Long Island, N.Y., to
California to what she calls “God’s country.”
Deutsch is more of a drifter, he admits, and his
eyes sparkle when he talks about traveling the Pacif
Betty Hoffmester (left) and Michael Deutsch discuss the finei points of escaping to the coast.
ic coastline from Alaska to Chile
on one particularly long trek. He
first passed through this span of
coast in 1955, as a runaway head
ed from Seattle to San Diego.
He laughs when asked what he
does for a living.
‘“Is’ness is my business,”
Deutsch says, smiling with a look
a contentment as his dog Murphy
rolls around on the parking lot
pavement with Hoffmester’s
pooch, Prince Andy. “I’d be happy
if this is the apex of the whole
deal.”
Look! Up in the air!
It’s a... shark?
The Oregon Coast Aquarium in
Newport created quite a splash on
May 27 when it opened its newest exhibit, the Pas
sages of the Deep. Replacing the aquarium’s most fa
mous resident, Keiko the killer whale, was no easy
nor inexpensive undertaking.
The $6.9 million used to refurbish Keiko’s former
home bought a lot of water — 1.32 million gallons
are used for the exhibit — in addition to a plethora
of sea life.
You want quillback rockfish? Check. Red Irish
Lord? Covered. Cabezon? Oh yeah, there’s cabezon.
Shortspine thornyhead? Come on, what aquarium is
complete without a few shortspine thornyheads?
There’s also literally tons of sharks swimming un
der, over and around the 200-foot underwater tun
nel, which is actually separated into three parts: Or
ford Reef, Halibut Flats and the Open Sea, which
contains most of the “Jaws” imitators.
Not everyone at the aquarium was impressed,
however.
“It’s smaller than I thought,” says a middle-aged
visitor who would only give Julius Caesar as his
name. “They need more lighting so you can see the
color of the fish.
“When you see something on TV, you get all the
color.”
“Caesar” was visiting from Hillsboro, Ore., and
was glad he came out to the coast to see the Deep set
up;
“Now I don’t have to come back and see it again,”
he says.
In contrast to that curmudgeonly outlook, 8-year
old Sarah Leuck from Dublin, Texas, wasn’t all that
sure how to respond to questions about the aquari
um, but she knew what she enjoyed the most.
“The sharks. Because they look cool when you
walk over the glass,” she says, with her grandmother
Judy Jacques standing nearby.
“I was impressed,” Jacques says. “Although I
thought it was one consecutive tube, it’s nice that it’s
uiuft.cu up liliu UU1BIBIU IldDl
tats.
“We saw two rock fish peek
ing out in the Halibut Flats sec
tion, and they were really
tough-looking characters.”
Hmm, perhaps they were re
lated to Mr. Grumpy.
Home away from home
While the distorted rectangle
of a trip — west from Eugene to
Florence, then north to New
port, then east to 1-5 at Corval
lis, and finally south to Eugene
— can be made in a day, albeit a
lung uay, nidy warn 10
The Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport (right) offers rooms with
literary themes from the likes of Dr. Seuss and Alice Walker.
Less enchanting rooms are available for the budget-minded.
stay the night on the coast.
Everything from small motels to glitzy resorts can
be found along Highway 101, but for a real treat, one
should consider renting a beach house.
Judith Ross is the owner of Horizon Property Man
agement in Waldport, and she says that although
most of the rentals have been snapped up through
late August, a few vacancies are available. This time
of year, she says, is prime-time for her business.
“We’re not like Sun River, where they have a win
ter and a summer season,” Ross says. “We have only
a summer season.”
The houses that Ross manages range in price from
$40 a night up to about $120 a night, but she says a
few other coastal companies have deluxe homes at
upwards of $200 a night. Reserve now, however, un
less a night at one of the cookie-cutter “Daze Inns”
sounds more enticing.
“The busiest weeks of the season are the last
weeks of July and early August,” Ross says. “It gets
very crowded, very fast.”
Of course, not all hotels have that “seen one, seen
'em all” feel. The Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport is
unique and a bibliophile’s dream come true.
Owners Sally Ford and Goody Cable, who live in
Portland, named the hotel after the owner of Shake
speare and Co. Bookstore in Paris, which was a hop
ping place in the
1920s and
1930s. Beach
was a patron of
literature and
each of the 20
guest rooms in
the building,
which was built
around 1910,
have been fur
nished and
named after dif
ferent authors.
The notables
are impressive as
you scan the list:
Agatha Christie,
Mark Twain, Al
ice Walker, Jane
Austen Gertrude
Stein, Oscar
Wilde, and even
Dr. Seuss made
the cut, among
others. The rates
range from $75
ilaRc&sSV
Photo illustration
to $162 per double occupancy from now through
late October, and the charge includes breakfast in the
Tables of Content restaurant.
“As a storm watching building it can’t be beat be
cause it s like an old novel in itself— it has its own
mantra, says Marcia Schwartz, who was working
the front desk at the oceanfront site.
Cable and Ford have been friends since age 3, says
the hotel’s manager, Ken Payton, and the two looked
at an old mansion in Portland and an old hotel in
Eastern Oregon, before settling on this place.
“Both women are voracious readers and one of
them thought to create a literary theme where peo
ple could interact with each other,” Payton says.
“The other thing that’s fun is that the guests are com
ing here as a destination, as an event. They didn’t
just see a vacancy sign of the corner.”
Payton has a tip for any poor, struggling college
student who just needs a day or two to chill. Hostel
rooms, not mentioned in the hotel’s brochure, run
just $22 a night and Payton says he sees his share of
students bunking up with a good book or a load of
studying.
“We get the world’s nicest people who stay here,”
she says, “because it’s such an easygoing and laid
back atmosphere.”
Sounds like the drive along the coast.