What to do at Rockaway Beach

Rockaway Beach is a beach town sandwiched between two bays - Nehalem & Tillamook, which sometimes can make the area cloudy when just north or south a few minutes on HWY 101, the sky clears and the sun is out. With a strange railroad track separating the highway from the beach area and very little charm to the town itself, Rockaway can easily be missed. But we found the low-key beach area and great proximity to other beach towns (in case you needed to buy some party decorations, get fresh seafood or find a large capacity laundrymat) to be a great location to spend a full week on the Oregon Coast with family.

The beach wasn't ever really crowded, but there was always people around.

Having dogs definitely made it a priority to go to the beach daily, but we also went to the beach to play bocce ball.

And roast marshmallows on a beach fire.

Our family really likes to play tennis and we managed to squeeze three trips to the tennis court in cute-as-can-be Manzanita.

We spent a majority of our time together, leisurely gathering to play dominoes, ping pong and games found in the beach house.It really was exactly how we wanted to spend this special time together.

Daytripping: Crabbing on the Oregon Coast

We didn't plan many activities during our beach birthday vacation, but one thing we did plan to do was go crabbing. Fresh crabs is a real treat and catching/eating them within a few hours is not to be missed. We arrived early at the Marina Jetty early in the morning when it was foggy and eerie.

After getting all our equipment and a quick run down of the boat, areas to stay away from and how to get unstuck if you end up on a sand bar, this motley crew was ready to catch some crabs!

If you've never gone boat crabbing, it is so much fun. It is mellow and leisurely due the sandy bottom jetties/bays where crabs live. We would toss out a crab ring and then tool around the jetty for bay-level-views of the sandbar in the calm waters.

Then came the real action, time to pull up those rings, filled with crabs, some may say it was like shooting crabs in a ring!

After 2 hours we were ready to return to the dock and cook up the crabs we caught. A boat returning when we arrive was overflowing with crabs, but we only manage to catch 1 crab per person (males only!) but that yielded so much crab meat we're kind of glad we didn't catch any more.

Now with as many crabs as we caught, it could have easily taken the same amount of time it took to catch these suckers to pick out all the meat, but we had professionals and this was done in record amount of time.

Actually I think it took longer to make post-crabbing Bloody Marys. Ours had homemade dilly beans, fresh picked crab meat and smoked oysters.

Here's to boat crabbing on the Oregon Coast, the most rewarding leisure activity out there!

Dogs and the Beach

We don't have dogs, but everyone else in our family does and it was so fun to see these little fur babies go bonkers over a little salt, sand and sea.

The only female, or bitch of the group, was the only one well-behaved enough to go off leash, which meant hours of fetch with anything, especially smooth round rocks, ocean be damned!

We had to leave all the doggies at home when we planned on playing games on the beach, such as frisbe or bocce ball, because it was all a game to them.

They were adorable off the beach too, crashing where ever due to exhaustion, especially if a free dog bed was in sight.

Or where ever it was warm and comfortable.

But by far their favorite place was the beach, even if they had just gotten back from a long walk, and it wasn't uncommon to be faced with this look right after a trip to beach begging for more.

It was so much fun to see them run around all crazy, chomping at the waves, chasing other dogs and trying to chase people. If you have a dog definitely take them to the beach, and often. Best. Therapy. Ever.

I have no idea what's going here and Barley doesn't seemed phased by it at all. Must be the ocean air.

Mid-Vacation Break

We decided to take one day where everyone could do whatever they wanted. For the most part we didn't go/do very much when we were together besides going to play a lot of tennis and crabbing. And the only meal eaten out was for Dad's birthday, so this was our chance to do all the things we love to do on the Oregon Coast. We chased the sun and headed out of the bay to Oswald West State Park for a hike to Cape Falcon. Needless to say, the beach was packed.

Oregon hiking is hard to beat with old growth forests, canopy of lush scenery and views to die for.

My favorite stretch of Oregon beaches is south of Cannon Beach and beyond, with cute beaches such as Hug Point, Manzanita and everything inbetween, so we decided to stop off at cute little Neahkahnie Beach for some lounge time after our hike.

We had the best of intentions to eat the small lunch we packed, but it was way pass lunchtime and we were ready for dinner, so we jumped in the car and headed to cute Cannon Beach for something to eat. Technology is simply amazing, instead of wandering up and down Cannon Beach's main street (which isn't a bad way to spend an afternoon), we simply consulted the TripAdvisor app on our phones and quickly found out there was a sushi and Japanese cuisine restaurant newly opened in town. Owned by the same chef who has a successful upscale French/Italian Seafood restaurant in town, we decided to give it a try. Fishes looked very uninviting like we were stepping into a conference center at first, but the interiors were very cute, especially the sushi tiki-styled bar.

So how was the food? Well sometimes you can't separate the food from the service, especially when it comes to sushi and if you end up sitting at the sushi bar. And all we can say is Fishes seemed to be ran by a bunch of high school kids who wanted to hang out and make some extra summer cash. The whole operation was amateur to say the least, but one thing we can say for Fishes is it is damn lucky they are so close to the ocean, the quality of the ingredients made up for the lack of proper sushi rolling technique and poorly executed/timed service. The menu is very limited to just the basics, so we didn't expect too much. However, how often is it you can get dungeness crab california roll and a chirashi bowl that actually had locally caught tuna and not imported/unsustainable bluefin? The sushi rice was also really good.

We had ordered the teriyaki beef medium rare, which came scorched to beyond well done, so we sent it back and waited for a re-fire, like we said a bunch of highschool kids running the place. But our sweet waitress felt extremely bad and offered up two complimentary desserts. We had been eyeing the desserts since we haven't had many sweets since Dad's ice cream cake a couple of days ago, so we opted for the ginger creme brulee and the sake sorbet. The creme brulee was custardy and exactly what we were expecting. The sake sorbet on the other hand was stellar. When it arrived we thought it was nicely shaved iced with sake poured over, but no, it was creamy like ice cream with a definite punch of sake. Delish!

It was such a lovely day. We had a great time and a well appreciated vacation break from our vacation.