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Finally, some pictures to accompany my Oregon Coast travelogue post from the beginning of this month. Nothing earth-shaking here, just what you'd expect.

Their big sign on Highway 101. You can't miss it.

Click through for the rest of the pictures

We spent the weekend on the Coast, and while I don't feel like writing a 2000+ word recap like I did for our Ashland trip last year, I wanted to highlight some of it—the (shall we say) less obvious things. So I thought I'd present it more travel guide style.

(Inspired largely by the Fodor's Pacific Northwest guidebook I picked up from the library for ideas. It covers a lot of ground but is still frustratingly sparse.)

Tillamook, Oregon

First thing to note: Tillamook smells like cows. Lots of cows. To me it's not at all unpleasant since I grew up around cows; to others, it depends. Sometimes it smells only like cows, sometimes there's also a bit of cow manure in there too.

The Tillamook Cheese Factory - This is the thing to see when in Tillamook. Open seven days a week, from 8 until 8 during the summer (8 until 6 the rest of the year), tours are self-guided and best of all, free. Kids will love it, as you get great views of the vats, production, and packaging lines—but note, the packaging line (the biggest part with the most moving parts) only operates from Monday through Friday. So if you come on a weekend (like we did), you'll just see a lot of inactive machinery.

There are two gift shops, a café and, of course, a full range of flavors of Tillamook ice cream for sale. You can't stop here and not get a cone.

Blue Heron French Cheese Company - Down Highway 101 a ways from the Tillamook Cheese Factory, Blue Heron specializes in French cheeses: Bries, Camemberts, blue cheeses, and the like. The have a charming gift shop/deli/wine bar with lots of samples of all sorts of foods: cheeses (naturally), dips, sauces, jams and jellies, wine tastings, and more. They also have a very decent beer selection by the bottle (not that I'm an expert for the area, but it could be the best in Tillamook for all I know).

There is also a "petting farm" for the kids; for 75 cents you can buy a small bag of animal food and feed it to the goats, donkeys, and miniature horses on the property.

Oceanside, Oregon (9 miles west of Tillamook)

This beachfront community strikes me as being almost entirely a vacation rental "town." Aside from a couple of restaurants (one of which was closed) and a gift shop, it looked like there were only vacation rentals and very nice houses. Odd, that.

Down on the beach, there's a great find: a tunnel cut through the cliffside that juts out into the water, leading to a very secluded rocky beach on the other side. Great adventure for kids.

Roseanna's Cafe - The only restaurant of note in Oceanside. It overlooks the beach and occupies a creaky old building built in 1915 or something. It was pretty good food, but we had a bit of a wait—they don't take reservations. Other than that, it was worth the visit.

Newport, Oregon

Newport is my favorite city on the Oregon Coast (though Lincoln City and Pacific City are tied for a close second). There's just so much to like about it: their Historic Bayfront, the Nye Beach district, the Oregon Coast Aquarium, good food, and of course, Rogue Ales.

Prepare for chillier weather than you'll get elsewhere on the coast, though. Lincoln City was in the 70s (and maybe 80s) during the weekend, and Newport barely broke the 50s and low 60s.

Fishtails Café - This has to be the best-kept secret in Newport, because in my opinion it's the best breakfast place in town. Though I had their excellent salmon hash, the breakfast they're known for is their marionberry French toast. Check this out:

A favorite at Fishtails Café, we take our homemade bread rounds and stuff a slightly sweetened Cream Cheese mixture between two slices, dip it in Cream and Eggs and sautee it to a delicate golden and top it with our homemade Marionberry sauce.

It's a steal at only $6.95 (I'm not kidding), and this thing is huge and freaking delicious. The restaurant itself is homey and charming and over in the South Beach section of town (across the bridge).

Port Dock One - This restaurant is located on the Historic Bayfront and overlooks, er, Port Dock One. The food is decent, but the real draw is the view. Not only of the Bay, but also of the sea lions that tend to sun themselves and nap on the piers below the main dock. It's like every visit comes with a show.

Rogue - Being the only brewery in Newport, Rogue is of course big in the area. Most restaurants have Dead Guy Ale on tap, but you'll definitely want to visit their Public House, also on the Bayfront. Not only are all the Rogue beers on tap (along with several from their Eugene and Issaquah breweries), but they also have their full line of Rogue Spirits, and good food. Plus, there's an adults only section of the place decked out with video poker and pool tables, so they're covering all the bases.

You can visit the actual Brewery itself in South Beach, where they also have a tasting room and restaurant and gift shop. Tours are available, as well.

And across the lot from the Brewery, in the South Beach marina area, is the Rogue Spirits Distillery (though their main one is in Portland). You can pop in here to check out their distilling operation (three years old) and get a drink from the bar. Beers and gift shop breweriana are also available.

Ugh, did I say I didn't want to write 2000-plus words? I'm already approaching the halfway point for that with this post. So I'll wrap it up for tonight, but I'll probably have a bit more to write about Newport before all is said and done. And of course, I have some pictures, but I don't have them on the computer yet so those will have to wait for a later post as well.

We are off to Portland for the long weekend; the first such trip we've done in awhile. A chance to relax, do some shopping, maybe visit OMSI, that sort of thing. No real plans, just a relaxing vacation trip.

One stop I'm definitely planning to make—the only one I actively campaigned for, actually—is John's Marketplace. It's a stunningly amazing beer store, with more selection than I've ever seen. I blogged about it on The Brew Site last year after my first trip there; this time I'll take the real camera and get some proper pictures. And some beer.

As usual, computer with us, but I don't know how often I'll be online. If anyone wants to reach me, shoot me an email or fill out the contact form. Otherwise, have a good weekend!

We left Friday morning (just the wife and I; Grandma had the kids for the weekend) and headed down to southern Oregon for a play and a getaway. The weather turned out great, and the trip was largely a winery tour, among other things; we visited four wineries and ended up buying just over a case of wine.

The last time we'd been to Ashland was nine years ago, before the kids were born. Compared to Bend over the past decade, few things in the area have changed; both Medford and Ashland have remained pretty stable, and even though there are signs of growth, much of it (particularly downtown Ashland) is as I remember it.

(Holy smokes, this post got long.)

Click through to read on...

A few link-worthy items that caught my eye but that I can't squeeze a full post out of (yet)...

The Real Oregon: a new(ish) blog subtitled "Oregon for the eccentric traveler." Looks promising, with travel tidbits about Oregon that seem pretty interesting to me.

How a $2 bottle transformed the wine industry: Charles Shaw wine (AKA Two (or Three) Buck Chuck) turns five. Who'd'a thunk it? And for the record, I rather like the wines.

Burst Culture: A bit of brilliance from Warren Ellis that's been making the rounds online. Pretty much ties in with ideas I've been having about the web and blogging, and giving me stuff to think about.

Next week is spring break around here, and this year we decided to pack up and head down to San Diego for the week, to visit my brother and his wife.

We're driving down, spreading it out over two days each way. It's roughly 1000 miles from Bend to San Diego, so that's a lot of driving. But hey, that's the Jack Kerouac experience, right? Sort of. Though I'm pretty sure Kerouac didn't have a family along with him.

It's been awhile since I've taken this much time off from work. I wonder if I'll be able to go back.

I'm taking the day off from work this Friday and going to Portland for the Oregon Brewers Festival! Woo hoo! My original plan was to stay in Portland the entire weekend, but as it turns out I'd already obligated myself to a friend's wedding Saturday evening, so I'll be spending Friday night with my friend Justin (who's also going with me to the Brewfest) and leaving Saturday late morning sometime.

It's going to be an eventful day. Aside from the Brewfest, there's a beer blogger meetup that evening (starting at five) over at the Rogue Ales Public House, so I'll get to meet yet more bloggers from Portland and other far-flung places (Arizona, for one, I think).

Are any other bloggers in the area going to the Brewfest? Let me know.

At any rate, I'll have the camera and notebook and plan on writing a bunch about it. And, Friday right now is looking at an 80-degree forecast for Portland, so that's just about perfect. Three days and counting!

Our big Memorial Day weekend was spent over on the Oregon coast, chillin' out in Lincoln City.

...I of course mean "chillin' out" quite literally; it was chilly and windy and rainy on Saturday and Sunday, and finally started getting nice on Monday, when we were leaving. It was in the 50s and maybe low 60s, so by Central Oregon standards, just like spring!

It was nice. It'd been ages since I'd been to the coast, so the chance to get on the beach and touch the ocean and taste the salty air far outweighed any minor weather concerns. We stayed at the 'D' Sands motel right on the beach, just below the D River (the shortest river in the world). It turned out to be a pretty good place to stay since we had a fantastic view, easy beach access and a full kitchen room (condominium style). That worked out well since we had the kids and didn't have to rush to meals anywhere if we didn't want to.

The trip was split between relaxing, shopping, gambling, and drinking. I know, the perfect trip, right? The drinking largely consisted of driving up to Pacific City and visiting the Pelican Pub and Brewery (right on the beach), and having a bottle of wine later while the kids watched TV, and a few odds and ends here and there. Gambling was two hours spent at the Chinook Winds casino (not my cup of tea). Shopping was, well, shopping... Lincoln City improbably has a large and busy complex of factory outlets, and then there's all the tchotske and souvenir shops that you invariably find on the coast.

The relaxing was the money, though. The kids and I flew a kite. We walked on the beach and played in the sand and threw rocks at the ocean. We swam in the swimming pool (a bit chilly there, too). We lazed around the room. I even got up early in the morning and walked barefoot on the beach, collecting a few rocks and shells here and there and splashing in the sea a bit. Yes, nippy! But totally worth it.

Unfortunately, those coast trips never seem long enough. We left Monday bound for Portland, as we had an early Tuesday morning eye doctor appointment for the kids there. Perhaps we'll have to see about a summer trip, when the weather is much nicer... the ocean's still damn cold even then, but that's never stopped us from jumping in anyway.

This is sort of like those "How I spent my summer" essays—did anyone ever really have to write those? Anyway...

The main purpose of our day trip to Eugene was to visit one or several of the children's stores they have over there that specializes in kid beds; our four-year-old is soon to turn five and it's time to move him from the toddler bed to a regular bed. We'd looked around here in Bend but there's just not a great selection.

It was a beautiful day to cruise over the Santiam, and aside from some controlled burn haziness, ran into no problems at all. It's been years since I've actually been to Eugene, so it was a nice drive. And only about two-and-a-half hours, easier than the trip to Portland, even.

Our travels brought us first to the Valley River Center, to check out a store that, as luck would have it, was having a 20% off clearance sale. We looked at a few things, made some mental notes, and headed for downtown to check out the other store and get some lunch.

A quick note about navigation in Eugene: it's almost criminally easy. (Granted, we only went to a few places.) I always expect more complication, but the few times I've been there I've never really had any problem figuring out where to go. Today, for instance, I think we found every place we needed despite ourselves.

Downtown Eugene led us to the other children's store and then the Steelhead Brewery for lunch (I wrote a review of that on The Brew Site). We still hadn't decided about a bed, so after lunch back across the street we walked (nice, eh? The store and the brewery were next door to each other) to take another look at the styles we liked, and then it was back to the Valley River Center and the first store again.

That was the store that won out; we bought the bed we liked, but it was the floor model and they needed an hour to disassemble it for us, so off we went back downtown again.

This time, we were looking for a store named Down to Earth, which sells "natural products for the home and garden." My mom had ordered a couple of plants from them and asked if we could pick them up for her; no problem. Good grief, but this is a big store; it's basically a warehouse that spans the length of a city block and packs in an amazing variety of things. We were able to find my mom's plants (they had to search) and while we were wandering around the nursery, an employee asked the kids if they'd like to plant some free flowers for Mother's Day.

Turns out, they had planned and promoted this "Free Flower Day" thing for kids, but not that many showed up. It was a very cool idea though; we left with three extra pots of flowers, all free. And I was even tempted by a "hardy banana" plant, with the bold claim of being able to withstand temperatures as cold as -20°F. It was close, but I resisted. Aside from the exotic idea of having a banana plant growing in the backyard, it's not like we don't already have plants that can withstand that kind of cold: they're called "trees."

Back to the store to pick up the bed components, and some creative minivan-loading later, we were ready to head out of town. Almost, anyway; we had to make the obligatory trip to Trader Joe's.

Come on, you know the routine: Trader Joe's simply rocks, and whenever a Central Oregonian travels to a city with one, they have to stop and stock up on Three Buck Chuck, or shepherd's bread, or ten-pound bars of authentic Swiss dark chocolate, or whatever. Often, there's even a list of things to pick up for other people. It's okay. We've all been there. :)

Anyway, one quick TJ's stop later and we were on our way. We made good time coming back, just as in the morning, and pulled into the driveway at about 6:30. Sure, it made for a long day, but not as long as a Portland trip, for instance.

Hey, that makes me think of a great tag line for Eugene: "We're closer than Portland. And criminally easy to navigate."

Tomorrow we're off to Eugene for a day trip. We doing some kids bed shopping, and will likely stop at the Steelhead Brewing Company (fodder for The Brew Site) for lunch and beer. Likely it'll be a decent trip. It's supposed to be 71 in Eugene tomorrow, so that's good.

On Sunday we'll be heading up to Portland to see Bon Jovi in concert at the Rose Garden. Yes, we've done this before (warning: I sound like a drooling fanboy in that post).

Anyway, we're casting about for something to do Sunday after we get to Portland... we'll be seeing some friends, probably, and of course my wife would love to do some shopping. Myself, I don't really have any real plan; I like going to Powells and I wouldn't mind hitting a brewpub or two, but I'm pretty open.

Would any Portland bloggers want to meet up? I'm not promising anything, but you never know. ;)

For that matter, any bloggers/readers going to see Bon Jovi too?

Ah, we're quite the travelers this year: tomorrow we're flying out to Florida for a week. We'll be visiting my wife's grandparents near Fort Lauderdale and yes, taking some time to drive up to Orlando for Disney World.

It probably goes without saying that I won't be online much, or at all. We're taking the laptop, but time and connectivity may not permit much. I'm not too devastated by this.

See y'all on the other side.

Yep, we're heading up to Portland tomorrow, for the weekend. We've got a bunch of clothes shopping to do. And appointments to keep. And friends to see, if there's time. With all the running around, I wonder when (if) we'll find time to relax...

Taking the laptop, though, so I'll still be checking in.

A bit over a year ago I blogged about the PHP Cruise. Well, this year there's another PHP conference organized by the folks at php|architect, though it's not a cruise this time: php|tropics!

It's in Cancun, Mexico, from May 11 through 15. Now, if I only had a few grand lying around and could convince work that it's a business trip...

Vacation is about to start. Once I leave work, we're pretty much on the road, and while we're bringing a laptop, there's no guarantee I'll be online much, so this may be the last post for a while. Or not; I'll try to update from the road if I get the chance.

Au revoir!

We'll be on the road all next week—well, starting this week, really, since we're leaving Friday night—on our way to visit my brother in San Diego. Road trip!

From Bend, San Diego is about a 16 or 17 hour drive. Since the kids are little, we're spreading that over three days each way, taking it easier than just plowing on through. Of course, the portable DVD player we bought for the car should help out, too.

Needless to say, I'll be mostly offline for nine or ten days, starting Friday afternoon. I have a slightly older laptop computer that I'm taking, but I just got it and it doesn't have network access, either Ethernet or wireless (has the slots for them, though). I may be able to get it set up for network before we go, otherwise I'll just rely on the modem in a pinch.

Or not. We'll just see.

Ha, fooled you. The third day of the trip was pretty basic: caught the hotel shuttle to the airport, caught the airplane, made it home.

Okay, well, something happened: when we got to the airport, we found out that the corkscrew we had bought the day before at Viansa Winery would be taken away if we tried to board the plane with it (really!), so we ended up having to check one of our bags and put the corkscrew in it. I mean, really. A corkscrew?

Oh, and when we got back to Bend, we killed a few extra hours by going to see Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. It was fun; not an Academy Award winner certainly, but a lot more fun than a lot of the dreck making it to the big screen these days.

Saturday the 12th in Frisco was the busy day; we took the Napa Valley Wine Train, which ate up about 8 hours.

It was a lot of fun. The tour bus that took us to Napa only had 3 other couples on it, so there were 8 of us total. The driver was a really good tour guide, named Roberto, with an accent that I couldn't quite peg; I knew it wasn't Spanish, so I had settled on Italian, but he ultimately revealed himself to be Portugese. On the way to Napa he detoured through Sonoma (he does that on weekends, because the train leaves later and there's an extra couple of hours to do this kind of stuff. So take the Wine Train on Saturdays) and stopped at the Viansa Winery. We toured the Winery, tasted a lot of really good wine, and bought a few things. We ended up with 3 bottles of wine to take with us, and signed up for 4 months of their Tuscan Club. Very good detour.

More...

Herewith the beginning of several entries detailing our anniversary trip to San Francisco last weekend (the 11th through the 13th).

It was a good trip! We had to get up too early, though: five in the morning on Friday, so we could be at the airport by 6 or so (our flight was 7:15). I always dread traveling when I have to get up early, but this time it wasn't too bad.

It was a good flight though, quick and without incident. We had everything we needed in carry-ons, so we didn't have to worry about checking luggage. So we were able to go straight from the airport to our hotel, the Tuscan Inn, even though it was too early to check in. We left our bags with the hotel and wandered around the Fisherman's Wharf area of San Francisco.

It was cold, too; we had just come from 90+ degree weather in Bend, to 70-ish degree wind and fog. Fortunately, it cleared up later in the day and warmed up.

More...

This weekend my wife and I are going to San Francisco for our (5th) anniversary trip. Leaving early early early Friday morning, coming back Sunday. It should be a fun trip.

Friday night we're doing a dinner cruise of the Bay, and all day Saturday we're taking a train tour through wine country. Ah, le vin.

Of course, I'd love to be able to stop in at Anchor Brewing, but we don't have the time. Bummer!