Pacific Coast Break

I was down at the seaside town of Gearhart, Oregon for a few days to have a little time away. I’ve gone just over a year without going anywhere overnight. This was the only mini-break I’ve taken and I’m not a huge vacation fan anyway. Four days away, and I’m ready to get back to my work. I typically work every day, weekends included and with COVID, I’m guessing I’m out of the house only once or twice a week at the most and I’m constantly on Zoom instead.

I’ve been going to that area, between Newport, Oregon and Pacific Beach, Washington going back to the mid 80s. It was the first place I went when I finally got a car again after six years without one. What draws me to the Pacific Coast isn’t just the ocean, but the rich history of the region that so few know about. I was extremely close to the end point of Lewis and Clark’s epic journey across the US. Having read their journal, I’m not sure I could have survived what they endured.

In all the years I’ve headed to the coast, I always try and come up with a new route. There has to be a dozen ways to get to the Oregon Coast and I’ve taken all of them that I can find. This is the first time I threw in some “unimproved” logging roads to make it more of an adventure. It was especially fun because of a winter storm.

It was sometime in the mid 1980s as I recall, when I stopped at the maritime museum in Astoria, Oregon. I couldn’t get over the hardship sailors and coastal settlers endured. Ships were first spotted somewhere off the Oregon Coast as far back as the 1600s according to local tribes.

When I first went to the coast alone, I was kind of feeling sorry for myself over something dumb until I read some of the stories of what these coastal sailors and early pioneers went through. By comparison, nothing I was experiencing came close to what their lives were like every single day. I’ll bet my worst day was better than their best days. It slapped me out of my funk in a hurry. Since then, it’s where I go to remind myself that no matter what I face in life, these people had it far worse and survived and thrived. Well, most of them. It’s also where I started my love of Northwest history.

History has played an important role in my various ventures. I’m forever looking at what others did before me for examples of what to and not to do. History is a great resource and it’s often underutilized.

In recent years, I discovered that Washington State maintains the history online of just about any state road. Some of the stories are interesting. This route I found in particular was very old, with long sections along the river starting as a trail thousands of years earlier, then as a tribal route before eventually becoming what it is today, however it was first punched in as a usable road for horse and buggy, sometime in the 1920s.

Maintained since the 1920s.

There is no cell service out there. In fact, for more than an hour, I never saw another moving car. It’s one of those routes where you bring survival supplies and your emergency locator. You never know when you’re going to be trapped between trees and for how long, especially in a storm.

I didn’t stop to take pictures because the storm was expected to get far worse as the day progressed and I didn’t want to guarantee an overnight stay between a few fallen trees. Locals have two things in their trucks; a rifle and a chain saw.

This is what I love about where I live. There are so many places to explore with plenty of history to keep it interesting. Yet, what makes a four day break meaningful for me is that reminder I get every time I go to the coast that no matter what stress I have in my life, it doesn’t come close to what others have endured before me. Somehow that reminder invigorates me to get busy.