Roaming Oregon Trails : On a quest for low-key towns, low -priced motels and honest food on a drive down the majestic coast

On a ramble down the Oregon coast last summer, my wife and I discovered that decades of tourist development have brought kite stores to every town, more myrtlewood factories than should be legal, standard antique emporiums and plenty of swank dining.

But despite all this civic improvement, we still had no trouble spotting picnic tables near the water where whales cruised offshore, museums and old lighthouses, fragrant chowder joints, crab boilers, local beers and homey motels with ocean views and fireplaces. Even today, the best-laid commercial plans have yet to overpower the beauty of the state’s small beach cities.

Indeed, the Oregon coast still offers one of the great stretches of country for us of the car-and-motel set, something like a West Coast version of Maine. Accommodations are reasonable--in some cases heartwarmingly cheap. And Oregon’s coast boasts some of the world’s most magnificent scenery, with dramatic cliffs rising from the beach to the forest, coves and caves and secret beaches that are literally deserted, particularly during weekdays.

I hadn’t made an unstructured trip along this part of U.S. 101 for more than 25 years, since the days when calm Oregon farmers and housewives routinely stopped to give a lift to long-haired hitchhiking college students like myself.

My wife and I had only one hard destination--a low-key family reunion at Lincoln City, part-way down the coast--and plenty of time to get there. So we decided to traipse the entire western length of the state.

When we have a few extra days, we’d always rather meander the back roads in a car than fly. Last August, we saddled up our ’79 Cadillac and headed north from Los Angeles, up the spine of California. No plans, no reservations, no required reading.

We drove up through eastern Oregon, cruising steadily past Crater Lake, past Bend, through Hood River Valley, down Columbia Gorge--all pleasant enough in their own right, but lacking the acrid scent of the sea. We were headed to Oregon’s northernmost coastal town, Astoria, where the gray Columbia River meets the Pacific.

Astoria is still slightly off the tourist path and a lovable berg of old-fashioned downtown department stores and restored Victorians that climb a hillside from the river’s edge.

Astorians believe that their generally drizzly, blue-green landscape resembles Finland. Waves of Scandinavians settled here beginning in the late 19th Century, many of them as mink ranchers. James Tilander’s Finnish-born grandfather, however, opened a bakery.

At 6 a.m. every day except Sunday, fresh chocolate-bar doughnuts, pastries stuffed with local berries and other savory goods slide into the display racks at Home Baking Co., just as they have since 1915 at this traditional Finnish bakery on Marine Drive, Astoria’s main drag.

We lined up with the locals to buy what my wife said was the best lemon Danish she’s ever eaten. I savaged a couple of chocolate-bar doughnuts, fresh as the breeze from the Pacific. But there were also subtler dining pleasures available.

One distinction of Finnish baking is its use of cardamom, an Indian spice that looks like a pepper seed but tastes like strong cinnamon. Tilander and his wife, Kathy, grind their own for traditional cakes, pies and their specialty, Finnish cinnamon toast.

“If I don’t watch it, I’ll eat a whole loaf,” said Kathy Tilander over the phone when I called later to ask about Christmas gifts (they will ship the toast). Kathy may be a quarter Danish, but she’s more Southern California mall rat, born and raised in the city of Orange. A dozen years ago she came to Astoria to visit her sisters, met the baker, and stayed.

For reasons I’d rather not analyze, when we reached middle age it became an unbreakable travel rule to never pass a museum by. And one reason we came here was to see the fine Columbia River Maritime Museum, just a harpoon cast down Marine Drive, where Astorians have preserved their pasts as fur-traders, salmon-canners and sailors.

Displays of beautifully salvaged boats, navigational instruments, pilot houses and other practical naval machinery tell the region’s history. The morning we dropped by, a Russian seaman and artist, temporarily in port, was showing his stolid portraits and sea scenes in a small gallery behind the museum bookstore.

Astoria would have been a comfortable harbor for a few days; many of the town’s 500 elegant old Victorians have been turned into bed and breakfasts. But we had reservations in Lincoln City that night, so we headed south.

South past tiny Gearhart, where motor vehicles are still allowed to roam the town’s northern beach, an experience we declined. What Oregon jury would convict an environmentalist for shooting a couple of Californians plowing up the sand in their El Dorado?

South past Seaside, Oregon’s oldest resort town, with its 8,000- foot elevated promenade along the sand that dates from the 1920s.

South to Cannon Beach, where a historical site brought us to a stop just outside town. But as we pulled off the road we found another Oregon treasure: berries.

Bring a bucket to Oregon, particularly if you come in summer or fall. One wild berry or another is usually in season. We were repeatedly told by the locals that it was considered sensible, not environmentally exploitative, to pick from the sprawling thickets at most roadsides. (It’s perfectly legal as long as you park well off the road and pick only on the strip of state land on each side of the highway.)

We picked huge Himalayan blackberries--common, aggressive non-natives treated by the locals as weeds--and ate them as we drove. I later learned from John Williams of the Oregon State University Extension Service that it was wise to avoid blackberries from bushes that look unhealthy. The Himalayans grow so fast that farmers occasionally spray them with herbicides if they threaten to take over a pasture. However, “if they have the nice green look on the plant, you’re undoubtedly OK,” Williams said, since the herbicides turn the leaves brown almost immediately after application.

The locals told us they prefer the smaller, sweeter wild blackberries which are most prevalent in August. The insistent Himalayans are abundant beginning in mid-summer. Mid-to-late summer, huckleberries can be found in higher elevations a few miles back from the beach. Small wild strawberries are often plentiful from late June through August. Late June and into July, some wild currants and gooseberries can be had.

Blueberries, which I remember gathering in handfuls in my days as a youthful hitchhiker, are now hard to find, we were told.

As to the historical marker that stopped us in the first place, it was a replica of the Cannon Beach cannon, painted a fairly ugly red. The original cannon, a distinguished example of the oddball items that wash up on Oregon’s shore, came from the USS Shark, a sloop of war that wrecked as it sailed out of the Columbia River in 1846.

The first descriptions of Oregon to reach the East Coast had come from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which passed through the Cannon Beach area 40 years before the Shark sank. William Clark bought 300 pounds of appetizing whale blubber from the local American Indians, with his guide, Sacajawea, negotiating.

Today, the beach is big, clean and relatively deserted. The town population of 1,250 doubles on summer weekends with Portlanders and others who keep vacation homes there. The town commercial center is beautiful, crowded with expensive shops and better motels--14 right on the beach--all with the tailored air of Southern California’s La Jolla.

The sand was inviting in the early afternoon. We threaded our way through a rare crowd--apparently all from a large Christian convention center downtown, and all wearing blindingly white new Reeboks. At the beach, we finally stuck our toes into the damp sand for a half-hour of peace.

Then we continued south 40 miles to Tillamook and its cheese factory. This is one of the grand sights of 101 as it winds through a great gallery of conifers. Ocean views seen through openings in the trees are as dramatic as those at Big Sur.

But pulling in at the cheese factory parking lot an hour later was less other-worldly. I could see that time had marched on.

Since 1894, Tillamook cheddar has been a beloved Oregon product. On long weekends away from college in Portland, I and a carload of friends always stopped at one of the Tillamook County Creamery Association’s factories on the way. We would buy a couple of bricks of cheese, for what I remember as a nominal fee, and hack away at them in the evenings as we slandered our teachers in various run-down motel rooms.

And at the factory, a tour commenced when a cheesemaker stopped paddling a vat full of white curds, wiped his hands on his apron and explained the process. Today, the cheese tastes as good but the big, central plant in Tillamook has embraced late 20th-Century merchandising. The cheesemakers now tell their story on videotapes and peddle T-shirts as well as dairy products in the main factory’s visitor center. When my wife pointed out that the loaf of special reserve extra-sharp cheddar we were buying cost $2 less in our neighborhood Costco in Southern California, the sales clerk shrugged: “Well, you get the (mumble mumble) of buying it here.”

Lincoln City, 44 miles southwest, is more as I remember it. Highway 101 becomes the winding main street through town, which offers an unassuming but extensive collection of antique stores, junk stores, fishing tackle stores, salt-water taffy stores, restaurants and kite sellers.

Lincoln City bills itself as the best kite-flying site in North America, as it happens. Kite-flying demonstrations are often staged on the beach for visitors. On our first morning there, we hiked along the sand and crossed paths with a small boy flying a 20-foot-high pterodactyl next to a smaller girl who was trying to get Minnie Mouse up into the air.

More important to us adults, Lincoln City may have more homey, inexpensive motels with kitchens, fireplaces and big ocean views than any other Oregon beach town. According to local authorities, more than 2,000 rooms are available at 50 motels, rental condos and B&Bs.; And there are more nearby.

One, a few miles south at Gleneden Beach, is the classy Salishan Lodge, tastefully laid out in the trees across the road from the beach. Salishan’s golf course and indoor tennis courts are a big draw, as well as the fireplaces and views in all rooms.

But my family--all but one of whom wouldn’t know a five-iron from a fireplace poker--has been coming to the less-imposing Ester Lee Motel in Lincoln City since 1963. An aunt ran across the place while looking for clean rooms with a view and a rocking chair for my grandmother. Aside from being freshly painted, most of the plain, white-shingled buildings don’t look much different than when they first were built in 1937.

Inside are picture windows with wide-screen views out across the Pacific. Perched several hundred feet above the beach, the rooms are a whale-watcher’s delight, particularly when there’s a log on the fire, local crab legs on ice and something warm and moderately alcoholic in hand.

That is not to say that the decor inside is particularly elegant. The overstuffed chairs are mostly mismatched and slip-covered in orange flowers, or a kind of green described in words that are unwelcome in a family newspaper. Current management refers to this as “Like Grandma’s House.”

As for the whales--mostly California grays--they migrate south along the Oregon coast December through February and head back north March through May. But resident pods, stragglers and assorted other whale species also show up year-round.

One resident pod of grays hangs around tiny Depoe Bay, eight miles south of Lincoln City, where scheduled tours offer eyeball-level whale-watching and fishing (sea bass, ling cod, red snapper and cabazon year-round; salmon, June/July to late August or early September.) Most other Oregon towns up and down the coast also offer seasonal whale-watch cruises and charter fishing.

Just south of Depoe Bay is Whale Cove, named by American Indians who found an 80-foot whale washed ashore a century or so before the bay became a favored midnight port for Canadian bootleggers during Prohibition. Whale Cove Inn is a no-nonsense joint where either bikers or the cashmere sweater set can comfortably hover over a plate of Yaquina Bay oysters while keeping an eye on the cove below.

Being of the blue-jeans and cowboy boots set, my mate and I saw this trip’s first whale--more accurately, the flukes of the whale--during lunch at the Whale Cove Inn. The chowder was thick and highly seasoned. And the bun that came with the chowder, apparently a signature item of the house, was a doughy cube literally 10 inches on a side. A whale of a bun, if you are starving.

For family dinners, cooked in our various Ester Lee kitchens, we got fresh crab and slabs of salmon filets at the roadside Crab Pot, just south of the motel on 101. Disregard the first impression that the Crab Pot is no more than the seafood equivalent of a seasonal pumpkin stand. Despite the old blue shack’s lack of tourist niceties, it has been selling fresh and home-smoked local fish and mollusks since 1930. Normally available are crab, sole, halibut, salmon, ling cod, snapper, oysters, clams and shrimp. Allen Black, owner for the last 18 years, also smokes his own local chinook and coho salmon, Columbia River white sturgeon, tuna, halibut, cod and snapper.

It turns out that Black is another Southern Californian who happened onto a simpler, small-town life, a daydream that often has haunted many a Californian traveling the Oregon coast. Black is a former aerospace worker from Fullerton who was lured to the state in the 1960s by a friend.

“I probably don’t make as much as I would have had I stayed,” says the stocky fish peddler, “but I eat better than anybody you know.”

After the family gathering broke up, on a drizzly morning, my wife and I pushed south to Newport, a seaside timber and fishing town. Its oldest building is a lighthouse that burned whale oil during the early 1870s. But Newport also recently completed the very modern Oregon Coast Aquarium, an innovative exhibit of the state’s coastal sea life that lets kids fondle sturdy tide pool denizens while their parents take a breather in the courtyard.

Three surviving sea otters from the Exxon Valdez oil spill have become celebrity attractions. But an even more popular exhibit owes its fame to a last-minute fluke of planning, I learned from aquarium spokeswoman Diane Hammond.

Shortly before opening last year, a big, cylindrical acrylic tank was scheduled to show off an assortment of schooling fishes. Then aquarium designers decided that an unadorned close-up view of live jellyfish would be “more informative.”

“We didn’t expect it to become such an ‘Oh, wow!’ exhibit,” Hammond said.

Now, as we joined the crowd around the undulating silky blobs, many were searching for the right metaphor to capture the moment.

“It’s like a ballet of jellyfish,” tried one awe-struck visitor. Another bard compared them to “undulating Tiffany lamps.” Yet another, a bit older, to bloomers.

Built in the current golden age of briny public exhibits--in Monterey, Calif., New Orleans and elsewhere--Newport’s $24-million nonprofit aquarium is well-run and intelligently laid out, with an indoors-outdoors feel to it. But it is more modest than Monterey’s.

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Meanwhile, many Oregonians think of Newport mostly as home to the original Mo’s restaurant, widely acknowledged to serve the best clam chowder on the coast.

Mohava (Mo) Niemi was named for California’s Mojave Desert, where she was born. Niemi, who died in 1992, began what eventually became a string of restaurants with a tiny place on the Newport waterfront. It still has linoleum floors, plank tables and an old garage door that is opened to the street in warm weather.

Mo’s original has been a favored diner for the likes of Bobby Kennedy, Paul Newman, Shirley Maclaine, Henry Fonda and Pierre Salinger when they’ve passed through town, as well as generations of local fishermen, hippies and whoever might by Oregon’s tolerant standards be considered normal folk.

I don’t remember Mo’s from the old days, but won’t forget it now. The chowder--a gravy-thick, West Coast style--easily lived up to its reputation. But diners used to small portions and low fat should know that Oregon chowders are not for the thin of heart. Bacon and yellow lakes of butter are standard ingredients.

Our next stop was 11 miles north of Florence at a roadside attraction called Sea Lion Caves. The immense cavern opening on the sea is a venerable tourist sight that lately bills itself as one of the earliest private wildlife conservation efforts. First noted by European immigrants in 1880, the site is the only known mainland breeding and wintering area for the Steller sea lion.

Now, for $5.50 each, we were smoothly lowered by elevator into the cave for a peek at the contented--if smelly--sea lions. As a bonus, a window-like hole also offers a haunting, perfectly framed view of the Heceta Head lighthouse. We learned from the usual gift-shop pamphlets that Heceta Head is the most photographed lighthouse in the world (in the world ?), and Sea Lion Caves, “America’s largest sea cave.” The marketing proceeds.

We stopped after dark in Florence, an attractive old logging and fishing town. One of the drawbacks of an unplanned vacation is that you occasionally wind up in characterless lodgings, in our case the River House Motel. No matter, because the next morning brought one of the highlights of the trip.

Anyone happening through Florence in the morning could do a lot worse than to order the house blend of Columbian-Costa Rican- Mexican coffee, with a fresh chocolate doughnut, at Old Town Coffee Co. on restored Bay Street.

Every 25 miles or so along Oregon’s southern coast, beautiful old stone or concrete bridges span rivers meandering out of the coastal forest. A particularly elegant example arches over the Siuslaw (Sigh-OO-slaw) River, just across the street from Old Town Coffee. Built in 1936, it is a wonder to behold over a steaming cup.

By now we were anxious to push on to what Oregonians call their Banana Belt, the southernmost beaches, which are less well-known than those closer to Portland but which offer the mildest weather in the state.

Reedsport, Coos Bay, Bandon--all have their charms, from smoked local fish to junk/antique stores where nary a potpourri nosegay can be found. Instead, we pushed on 80 miles to Gold Beach, which would be an ordinary, one-street seaside town were it not for one traveler’s gem: Ireland’s Rustic Lodges. A motel since the late 1920s, the immaculate cottages and newer units have stone fireplaces and are tucked around beautifully tended gardens of fuchsia and hydrangea. A short path through salt grass leads to a quiet, clean beach. Despite a popularity that requires reservations six months in advance for summer holiday weekends, Ireland’s is unexpectedly reasonable, but it was booked solid and we found ourselves in a mediocre motel.

Brookings, on the California border, is the true heart of the state’s warm belt, heated even in winter by a phenomenon known at the Brookings Effect. Warmth is a question of degree, of course. Far from sweltering, Brookings averages between 50 and 70 degrees year round. July and August are the least likely months to expect the legendary Oregon rain. But even in Brookings, no one seriously expects to go to the beach with a book and a towel for a balmy day in the sun.

Instead, Brookings was the site of one of our best, if final, Oregon food experiences. At the Wharfside Seafood Restaurant--a clean, modest affair in a parking lot next to the marina--we shoveled through delicious mounds of butterflied prawns, fresh fishes of the day, clam and squid strips, all the better dipped in a mysterious but wonderful horseradish sauce. There, too, I had a last steaming bowl of--what else?--their “nationally famous” chowder. It was very, very good.

Minutes later we cruised quietly over the California line.

GUIDEBOOK

Coasting Through Oregon

Getting there: U.S. 101 runs the length of the Oregon Coast. You can follow it north from Eureka and Crescent City, Calif., with your first Oregon town being Brookings. Or you can start at the top of the map, as we did, taking the back route from Interstate 5 to U.S. 97. From Portland, take U.S. 30 west along the Columbia River to Astoria.

Going south:

Astoria: Home Baking Co., 2845 Marine Drive, (503) 325-4631. Open 6 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

Columbia River Maritime Museum, 1792 Marine Drive, (503) 325-2323. Open 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. daily; adults $5, seniors $4, children 6-17 $2.

Tillamook: Tillamook County Creamery Assn., 4175 Hwy. 101 North, (503) 842-4481.

Lincoln City: Ester Lee Motel, 3803 S.W. Hwy. 101, Lincoln City, Ore. 97367, (503) 996-3606. Off-season rates start at $37-$45 double (no kitchen); in July and August, rates start at $60. Two-bedroom suites with full kitchen are $85-$95, $110 in July and August. No restaurant or bar; dining spots are all a good piece down the road.

Lincoln City Visitor & Convention Bureau, 801 S.W. Hwy. 101, P.O. Box 109, Lincoln City 97367, (800) 452-2151 or (503) 994-2164.

The Crab Pot, 6019 S.W. Hwy. 101, Lincoln City 97367, (503) 996-2487. Strictly fish-market takeout (except for the ubiquitous snack of a small, unadorned shrimp cocktail; every fish purveyor along the coast sells them for about $1). A sampling of recent prices: Chinook salmon steaks, $5.50 a pound; local halibut, $5.50; local Dungeness crab, $3.50.

Gleneden Beach: Salishan Lodge, 7760 Hwy. 101 North, Gleneden Beach 97388, (800) 452-2300. Two hundred and five rooms; summer rates range $156-$227, October-May $104-$198.

Depoe Bay: Depoe Bay Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 21, Depoe Bay 97341, (503) 765-2889.

Newport: Oregon Coast Aquarium, 2820 S.E. Ferry Slip Road, Newport 97365, (503) 867-3474. Open daily except Dec. 25, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. in summer, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. in winter; adults $7.35, seniors (60 and over) and youths 13-18 $5.25, children 4-12 $3.15, under 4 free; wheelchair accessible.

Mo’s Restaurant, 622 S.W. Bay Blvd., (503) 265-2979. (Other Mo’s Restaurants are located in Tolovana, Lincoln City, Otter Rock, Florence and Coos Bay.)

Florence: Sea Lion Caves, 91560 Hwy. 101, Florence 97439, (503) 547-3111; open daily except Dec. 25, 8 a.m.-dusk in summer, 9 a.m.-dusk in winter; age 16 and older $5.50, 6-15 $3.50, under 6 free.

Old Town Coffee Co., 1269 Bay St., (503) 997-7300.

Gold Beach: Ireland’s Rustic Lodges, 1120 S. Ellensburg (Hwy. 101), P.O. Box 774, Gold Beach 97444, (503) 247-7718; double occupancy (one queen bed) $40-$61 in summer, $35-$47 in winter.

Brookings: Wharfside Seafood Restaurant, 16362 Lower Harbor Road, (503) 469-7316.

For more information: Contact the Oregon Tourism Division, 775 Summer St. N.E., Salem, Ore. 97310, (800) 547-7842. Or Oregon State Parks and Recreation, Region 2, 3600 East 3rd St., Tillamook, Ore. 97141, (503) 842-5501.