Olympic Trip : Day One - Pacific Coast

After we left Lake Quinault, we drove west until we hit the coast - and what a pretty coast it was! We booked a cabin at Quileute Oceanside Resort for the first two nights of our trip - I found out about it on TripAdvisor (my favorite place for travel recommendations!). It's on a remote part of the coast, about 15 minutes from the nearest town, down a two lane road, with nothing but forest on either side.

The resort is owned by the Quileute Tribe, on their reservation, where they've lived for almost a thousand years. It was a beautiful place, and it was really cool to see folk art all around, another language along with English on all the signs, and learn a bit about the history of the people and the place. It was like we were in another country...and we basically were! 

Of course, we were also staying right on the ocean! 

We stayed in one of the "normal" cabins - but there were also luxury cabins, which were overlooking the water and had fireplaces and decks. Ours still seemed pretty fancy for a cabin, since it had electricity and indoor plumbing and a real mattress! The beach was only a few hundred feet away, and the sunsets behind the sea stacks were perfect. This would be a cool place to watch storms in the winter. Here's where we ended our day, a 5.5 hour drive from home...not too shabby!

Cape Lookout : Day One

After we saw one of the cabins at Cape Lookout State Park on the cover of Portland Monthly last year and it looked amazing, we knew we had to visit. We booked our cabin around the first of the year for the end of February and wondered if anyone else would be at the other cabins, or if we were the only crazy people to book a cabin at the coast in February. Well, all of the cabins were full - and they're now all booked up through September! We were ready to rebook ours the minute we got home, but apparently we aren't the only ones who appreciate a cheap cabin with a view of the Pacific Ocean.

We drove in through Tillamook, land of cows and delicious cheese, and headed out to Cape Lookout. It's only a little over an hour and a half from Portland, so even though we left kind of late in the day it didn't matter at all.

We were so happy when we saw our cabin - it was perfect! Look at it, all nestled in the fir trees - it looks like it should be on the cover of a magazine. The view from it was just as good - the ocean was just down a hill, a few hundred feet away.

We expected the whole trip to be rainy and grey and damp but instead it started off with a clear sunset and warm weather (50+). After watching the sunset, we headed back up to the cabin to unpack and build a fire. Last October, we went to Silver Falls State Park and stayed in a "rustic" cabin there - no private bathroom or kitchen. This cabin was "deluxe" - we had a bathroom, a kitchenette with microwave, and a TV with DVD player! (No TV service, but still.) The deluxe cabin beds with their weird plastic mattresses weren't any more comfortable than the rustic ones (note to self: bring a sleeping pad next time), but the fridge came in handy! We're sad that we can't book it again for sometime in the summer, because it'll be even more perfect in the summer, but there's always next year (and tent camping)!