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Whale-watching, jet boat mail delivering, sand dune scaling, misty meandering on empty, wave thumped beaches, or swallowing ‘razors’ at surfside restaurants – Cherie Thiessen finds it’s impossible to tire of Oregon’s 363-mile coastal strip.

Our Oregon orgy begins by crossing Columbia River’s expansive girth over the Astoria-Megler Bridge, rolling from Washington State into Oregon. At four miles, it’s the world’s longest continuous truss bridge; a fittingly dramatic entrance to a histrionic coast.
 
Astoria is mile zero. The thing is, we’re always too eager to see our first breakers boiling in from Japan, so our first stop is usually Fort Stevens, ten miles west. The 3700-acre state park is festooned with hiking trails and history, but it’s the skeleton of the Peter Iredale most come to see, shipwrecked in 1906 and still decaying on the beach. That’s where we head; to dip our toes in the Pacific churn.
 
Dripping back to our VW, we next prepare to meet Terrible Tilly (Tillamook Head). Treacherous Tilly wrecked two thousand ships until a lighthouse built in 1881 warned off approaching potential victims. Now she threatens to wreck as many cars, as stunned motorists get her stark beauty full in the face. This coastline is first and foremost about gawking, and Ecola State Park, just north of Cannon Beach, is the perfect place to pull over and practice: mists twist up from Pacific crests, and shatter on a silky expanse of sand. Then, a west coast touch – the scattering of shaggy pinnacles; the first in a maelstrom of magical views. From the park, trails entice stunned first timers to viewing points of Tillamook Rock’s Lighthouse and Cannon Beach’s superstar, the 235 ft monolith called Haystack Rock. Never rush Cannon Beach. The Wayfarer Restaurant beside its shore is where we like to digest the view and tuck into our first ‘razors’ of the year. Razor clams call these west coast beaches home, and they're a signature Oregon Coast dish.

All this and we’ve only gone 30 miles.

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