Taking the long way to the Pacific Ocean

Day 4 of our summer vacation. We had a great breakfast at the Comfort Inn; biscuits with gravy, juice, tea and fresh Belgian waffles! Yum!

After breakfast we gassed up the Prius, no-touchy-the-pumps in Oregon, and headed to Mike’s aunt and uncle’s house in Manzanita, OR. The drive was beautiful! Lots of forested areas with tons of trees; pines, oaks, maples, spruces, firs and cedars.

We passed more agriculture areas too including apple orchards. We stopped at a really nice rest stop and had our leftovers from last night’s dinner.

Since we were driving through Salem, we decided to stop at the capitol building there and take a tour. Unfortunately the building was closed to the public. They had some carpet cleaning crew outside and some other moving vans. Not sure what was going on. The park around the building was super nice and the weather was great so we walked around and took some pics of the outside.

On our way to Portland, we had some great views of Mt Hood, so I took some pics of that.

The traffic around Portland was awful and it was only 3pm. I guess Phoenix traffic gets pretty bad by 3pm too. I would sure like to know how all these people get to leave work at 3pm everyday!

From Portland we headed west to the coast and we reached Cannon Beach at around 5pm. What a cute little town; lots of restaurants and little shops. The beach and view of the ocean from there was fantastic! I’m so glad we stopped there. We were low on gas, and Cannon Beach does not sell any, so we went down Hwy 101 to an RV park where they sold gas for about 20 cents more than the normal price. We bought 2 gallons and headed down to Manzanita where we’ll get cheaper gas in the morning.

We met Harvey and Sandy in their restaurant around 6:30pm and the place was hopping. They saved a table for us and served us right away. We both had halibut dishes and shared a chocolate parfait with brandy soaked cherries. All was very delicious! We can’t wait to eat there again tomorrow! Sandy is a great chef! :)