Trip to Newport:

Last week, my Best Friend Husband and I went on an unplanned excursion to Newport, Oregon. While the weather was cold, foggy and even freezing fog in some spots at home and in the valley, we had beautiful weather on the coast ... 60 degrees, sunny and absolutely gorgeous. When you enter the town of Newport coming from Corvallis, there is a hand carved sign that simply says, "Newport, The Friendliest". We found that to be very, very true.

We stayed at the Shilo Inn on the beach and found it to be a nice hotel at a reasonable price ($90.00 per night/off season). You can even bring your dogs with you in your room if you are so inclined. They are right on the beach with two restaruants, a lounge, two pools and many other amenities. The rooms were big and clean and the view was great. The service was excellent. (The only draw back that we could find was that there were no balconys.) Here are some pictures of the room we were in:

There are private steps that lead down to the beach, and there are almost 100 of them! My legs hurt for 5 days afterwards, but that is my own fault for not climbing stairs often enough.

Handsome Cary on the steps, taking a break.

He said the steps were no problem for him.

Lovers at the beach.

Not us.

Beautiful sunset!

The first night was so fun. We went down to the lounge/fine dining area at the Shilo and met a classy bartender named Lisa who is friendly, fun and had everything under control. We also met a really neat woman named Angi, who works at the wine shop in Waldport. There were some people from Hood River, and a nice local couple too. We had delicious pan fried oysters off of the bar menu and went back upstairs to bed around 9:30.

The next morning, we got up and went to breakfast at the Red Door Cafe, where we met the owner, Chris, and visited with him for a while. The food was great, as were the service and the decor. I took some pictures of the way things looked, because if I ever redo our house, I'd like it to look something like this place. (BFH groaned when I suggested this to him, but this cafe reminds me of living in Eugene...something that always makes my Cary groan. But being from Eugene is the secret ingredient to being me!)

After breakfast, we had an hour to kill before the Oregon Coast Aquarium opened up. We went down to South Beach, the area where the aquarium and science center are. South Beach is located on Yaquina Bay, across from the Old Town and fisherman's wharf. Here are some pictures of the area:

After we were done taking pictures we went down the block where some of the Aquarium Shops were open. (My good buy of the day was a box of 3400 old baseball cards for $10.00. Wow! ) This mall is a really neat idea where they took old warehouse buildings and put new fronts on them to make them look like an old time ocean village:

Kathy and a local hunk.

Cary with two local hunks.

Finally, the Oregon Coast Aquarium opened up at 10:00. It wasn't inexpensive, but is really neat, and you can stay as long as you want to. There are many more pictures of the aquarium under the My Photography section.

Two (live) Wolf eels. Wolf eeks really are not eels

at all, come to find out.

After we were through with the aquarium, we went down the street to the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center. This is an interactive museum that you donate as much as you want to when you enter. This is an awesome place to bring the kids.

Me outside the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center.

Oops, two pictues of me ... I am glad to not have to really be living

in a Yellow Submarine.

The dried insides of a sea turtle.

A display about growing oysters.

Interactive tidepool ... where touching is encouraged.

After we left the above area, we went across the bay to Old Town/Fisherman's Wharf. We walked around a little bit and stopped to have a beer at a microbrewery, where we spotted this cute sign:

Cary and some crabpots.

There is a lot more to do on the wharf (the Wax Museum, Ripley's Believe it or Not, The Undersea Gardens, and walking on the docks and looking at the boats). We could have also gone to the park and the lighthouse. But we were getting tired of sightseeing (and walking) so we headed back to town to get haircuts and new clothes.

We got our hair cut at Precision Cuts. I learned that the little girl who cut my hair was one of the last batch of babies to be born at the Toledo hospital, and has the newspaper article about it in her baby book. The guy that cut Cary's hair was from Malaysia. Both haircuts were good ones.

After that, we went to Fred Meyer and I got a pair of new jeans and some tops. I can fit into a size 10 again, but they are stretchy and I honestly think that if you weigh 160 lbs. you are not really a size 10. Something is sneaky with this sizing business these days. Oh well, what the hell, I am a size 10 and have the tags to prove it!

We returned to our room and I put on my new clothes. Did I mention that my new jeans are size 10's? Then we went downstairs to see our new friend Lisa and had a glass of wine.

Later, we went to dinner down the street, which turned out to be a bad, bad move. We ordered oysters, pan fried, but they looked and tasted funny. We didn't eat them all, thank God. By the time we got back to the Shilo, we were both sick. Yuck! Lisa gave me bitters and soda and that is some cool stuff, I need to buy some of that. It did help to settle my stomach. She even called up the place where we had eaten and told them to not serve anybody else those oysters. They said to tell us they were sorry and removed the cost of the meal from our credit card. Thank you, Lisa, you are the BEST! We both felt better by morning.

Good night, Newport! We got up early the next morning and left for Corvallis.