Oregon’s novel nirvana

IT was a dark and stormy night.

Finally.

I hadn’t come to Oregon’s Central Coast -- where 8 inches of rain in March is the norm -- for sunshine. I had packed my bag with books, expecting a solitary reading holiday at the Sylvia Beach Hotel, one of my favorite hideaways and the self-declared bed-and-breakfast for book lovers.

I had planned to curl up in front of the fireplace in the top-floor library. I intended to sip tea while the waves pounded and the sky lowered its brow. Behind closed doors in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Room -- all the hotel’s rooms are named for authors -- I would also work on my novel.

Except that the plot thickened. The sun came out.

I closed my book and revved up my rental car. Barely a mile south, I stopped at Newport’s historic bay front for lunch -- and suddenly was inside a John Steinbeck novel. Who needs “Cannery Row” when you have a real, working wharf?

Newport, less than a three-hour drive southwest of Portland, Ore., is a maritime village bursting with salty charm. Though Newport is the hub of Oregon’s fishing industry, I hadn’t quite expected to find fresh-caught crab for sale, a quaint lighthouse and a major aquarium within a mile of one another.

The bay front has been the heart of the town since the early 1900s. Fishing boats nudged the docks. Round crab pots, dripping seawater, lined the sidewalks. The air smelled of fish, occasionally tinged with caramel corn from a few touristy candy shops. Sea gulls cawed and looked for scraps. Sea lions snorted and hollered.

Fishermen sold crab from their boats docked in the bay. I bought mine from a shack on shore, where I picked it out, saw it dropped into a boiler, then ate it steaming with butter. Vintage taverns poured the local Rogue Ale. Hemingway, I thought, would have loved the place.

For people who wanted to catch their own, shops hawked fishing or crabbing trips, as well as oyster-bed tours. Because I’m a landlubber, I drove a few minutes to the well-restored Yaquina Bay Lighthouse, which looks more like a clapboard cottage with a beacon on top, in use only from 1871 to 1874. Forget stories about preventing shipwrecks too: The tale of how a couple lived in the tiny quarters with their seven children was far more intriguing to me.

At least they had a spectacular playground. Broad, hard-packed beaches, interspersed with forested crags and rocks, make up much of the central Oregon coast. The water is shallow quite a distance from shore, creating undulating lines of waves. At Agate Beach, a few miles north, I joined combers scouring the sand for the sparkling pebbles under a blue sky scudded with fluffy clouds. Moolack Beach, farther north, has a petrified forest beneath it, and sometimes the treetops poke through.

Still smelling the sea, I tumbled into bed that night in my Gatsby-inspired chamber. All I could hear were waves: Rooms at the Sylvia Beach Hotel don’t have TVs, radios or phones.

What they do have is a lot of literary whimsy. I was next to the Poe Room, complete with red velour bedspread, a stuffed raven and a fake ax suspended above the bed. Earlier I had peeked into rooms inspired by Colette, Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville (the only king-size bed), Jane Austen and more. The popular Agatha Christie suite is filled with “clues” for guests to find. No marble baths or designer soaps -- but each room carries its author’s complete works.

Nineteen years ago, Goody Cable and Sally Ford transformed this nearly century-old clapboard hotel from a flophouse into a bestseller. (The hotel is more than 80% full year-round.) The name is a tribute to Sylvia Beach, literary patron and noted owner of the Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore in Paris in the 1920s.

Cable, Ford and staff often join their guests for the family-style, fixed-price dinner at Tables of Content, the hotel’s ocean-side restaurant. The tradition is for each 10-person table to play “Two Truths and a Lie” to break the ice. But my table preferred just to get to know one another over salmon mousse and Greek salads.

Our eclectic group included a Canadian corrections officer and two honeymooning musicologists. Cable told me she created the hotel to meet the people who would be drawn to such an eccentric place.

Glad not to be staying in the Poe Room, I read Fitzgerald into the night and woke rested to find another gorgeous day on the Oregon coast. Five miles north of Newport, the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area has terrific tide pools, sweeping views, an interpretive center and the region’s second-oldest lighthouse. Handicapped-accessible pathways make it easy to admire fluorescent green sea anemones and starfish at low tide.

But no touching. That’s allowed only at Newport’s two major educational attractions, the Hatfield Marine Science Center and the Oregon Coast Aquarium. They’re south of the bay front, across the Newport Bay bridge.

Besides the touch pools -- where I joined schoolkids in fingering the squishy anemones, prickly urchins and starfish -- the Science Center offers dozens of interactive educational displays on subjects as diverse as coastal ecosystems and tsunamis. The Oregon Coast Aquarium whisked me under the sea. Its “Passages of the Deep” exhibit is a 200-foot clear acrylic tunnel through three deep-sea habitats, including shark-infested waters. Other tanks held a giant octopus, turtles, friendly otters and gorgeous jellyfish.

Emerging from the aquarium hours later, I found that at last the Oregon weather was living up to its reputation as a drama queen. Dark clouds huddled on the horizon. Wind whipped. I scurried back toward the hotel, hoping for rain and the perfect ambience to curl up with my books.

The hotel sits on historic Nye Beach, the largest swath of sand in Newport. When I got there, the sunlight was streaking through clouds and turning the shoreline to silver. I walked out to join the kite-fliers, the frolicking dogs and their owners. Courting couples used the sand as a slate for their messages. Toting plastic buckets, little kids industriously dug for China.

At sunset, the sand held a long, thin sheen of water, making the earth as luminous as the sky. The horizon was soft with mist. I didn’t have to read poetry. I was living it.

*

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Literary license

GETTING THERE:

Several airlines fly nonstop to Portland, Ore. From LAX: Alaska, American, Northwest, US Airways and United. From Burbank, Orange County and Ontario: Alaska and American. Long Beach: Connecting service (change of planes) on Alaska, America West and Delta. Restricted round-trip fares start at $198.

From Portland, allow 2 1/2 hours to get to Newport. Drive southwest on Oregon Highways 99W and 18 to U.S. 101.

WHERE TO STAY:

The Sylvia Beach Hotel, 267 N.W. Cliff St.; (541) 265-5428 or (888) 795-8422, www.sylviabeachhotel.com. Oceanfront suites are called “The Classics,” $178; smaller, ocean-view rooms are the “Best Sellers” (including Poe and Fitzgerald rooms), $127; then there are the “Novels” (no ocean view), $91. Eight dorm beds, $29 each. All include breakfast, library access, coffee or tea, and mulled wine each evening. No TVs or phones in rooms.

Hallmark Inns and Resorts, 744 S.W. Elizabeth St., Newport; (888) 448-4449, www.hallmarkinns.com. This large property on Nye Beach welcomes pets ($8 per night extra). All rooms have ocean views. Double room with fireplace $116.

WHERE TO EAT:

Tables of Content, Sylvia Beach Hotel (see above). $20 for four-course meal served family-style. Reservations essential.

Local Ocean Seafoods, 213 S.E. Bay Blvd.; (541) 574-7959, www.localocean.net. Serves superb local delicacies and includes information on where it was caught, how and by what boat. Oyster shooter $1.50; seared king salmon and pasta $12.50; crab po’ boy $11.15.

TO LEARN MORE:

Newport is the tourism capital of Oregon’s coast, and several websites list information about attractions, events and lodging. Try www.newportchamber.org (the Greater Newport Chamber of Commerce) or the city’s own site, www.discovernewport.com. Historic Nye Beach has a calendar of events at www.nyebeach.org.

-- Cherilyn Parsons