It’s free – Oregon parks sometimes ask for donations, but they generally let people dump and get water at state parks even if they aren’t camping there.
Propane can be purchased at either Yachats or Waldport, and there’s fresh water and a dump at Washburne State Park, ten miles south of us. Logistics? There’s a bread-milk-eggs store in Yachats, a real grocery store in Waldport, and a Walmart and Safeway for serious restocking in Newport. Thor’s Well erupting – part of our evening entertainment at Cook’s Chasm. As twilight falls, it’s time to go back to Cook’s Chasm, watch the sunset, eat dinner, wash dishes, have our tea, and then watch the phosphorescence and listen to the waves booming in the caves as we drift off to sleep. We just pick one at random, drive down there, set up the dishes, and watch the ocean, whales, and sea otters all day.
These are administered by the state park system, which prefers you be in one of their campgrounds if you’re going to spend the night, so it’s day stay only for us.
South of Cook’s Chasm are a series of day stay areas to which we decamp every morning – Neptune North and South, Stonefield Beach, Ocean Beach, Strawberry Hill, and Muriel Ponder Memorial. Fiona enjoys the view (and the floor show by the local field mice) at one of the day stay areas, Ocean Beach And this is where I spend the night – the daytime places are even more scenic. It’s an eerie blue-green glow in the breakers – unforgettable. And the best part is – the waves are phosphorescent on moonless late summer nights. It’s a large parking area on the ocean side of the highway, overlooking Thor’s Well, a giant blowhole in an underwater cave that you can watch for hours as the waves come in and waters sloshes in and out of it. Old lava flows to the ocean are all up and down the coast here, and at Cook’s Chasm the lava has been eroded by wave action into caves and chasms – the waves really boom and spout out the blowholes of these when the surf’s up and the tide is right. My main overnight spot is called Cook’s Chasm. It’s maybe 2-3 miles south of the town of Yachats. Over the wall are lava outcrops, Thor’s Well, sea caves, and the famous chasm. My kind of place ? Cook’s Chasm parking area. Oregon also has a liberal boondocking policy – you can stay for 12 hours at any spot not otherwise posted, as long as it’s outside a state park. After seeing developers in my native Florida buy up chunks of oceanfront and actually move the coastal road inland to keep the riff-raff out of their gated communities, this is indeed a breath of fresh air. Private property on the seaward side of the coastal highway is the exception rather than the rule, and the land use policy is all about public access. Oregon made some very wise land use decisions fifty-sixty years ago, and practically the whole coastline is state parks and national forest. The lava makes for great seaside exploration.
There’s not much business down here – a few summer cottages and some campgrounds – so the local merchants’ smile when you walk in their store is genuine. Once you get down to the Yachats area, people are actually glad to see you coming. The big city stuff falls away, and by Tillamook you start seeing $1.65 a gallon propane at the farmer’s co-op and farm machinery driving down the highway. I thought I was having a Florida flashback.ĭrive an hour or two south down Highway 101, though and the “NO OVERNIGHT PARKING” signs festooning every oceanfront pullout start to disappear. Looking for a better land-to-people ratio, we drove south into Oregon, but the northern part of the Oregon coast is too close to Portland, another megapolis, and it’s all salt water taffy shops, helicopter rides, and posh B&Bs with no vacancy signs. We came out to the coast along US Highway 20, smack into the northern part of the Seattle metro area, all 4.2 million peoples’ worth of it. It’s sandy beaches interspersed with igneous headlands. Never heard of any of these? Good – that means I’m in the right place ? This is the view of the stretch of coastline I’m boondocking on from a 500 foot high headland, Cape Perpetua. One sure sign that this is a great place is that it’s nowhere near any large towns – Waldport is maybe ten miles north, the slightly larger town of Newport another ten north of that, and Florence 20 miles to the south. Where I’m taking about is the middle Oregon coast south of the tiny seaside town of Yachats. I may spend weeks here – I did the last two years as we drove through the area, bumming up and down the shoreline. All the ingredients are in place – beautiful scenery, suitable supplies nearby, and a welcoming local environment that makes boondocking easy. I’m back at one of my favorite spots along the Pacific Coast Highway, and I’m going to stay here awhile.