Beachside State Recreation Area

Return with me now to last month’s sojourn down-and-up the Oregon Coast, okay? Our second stop on the southbound leg was at Beachside State Recreation Area, just south of Waldport, Oregon. This would be only 3.5 hours (or so) of driving from our first campsite at Nehalem Bay State Park, so we took our time — stopping after only an hour to check out this nice rest area.

Just south of Tillamook, we found a small but inviting rest area to walk the terriers and humans. It was one of the nicest we’ve seen.

See what I mean? Creek, meadow, split-rail fence, wildflowers, and very few people. Nice rest area.

Sooz caught some nice views on the way south from Nehalem Bay to Beachside. This one was just outside Depot Bay, Oregon, which features the “World’s Smallest Harbor.” This is not the harbor, though. You can see what lousy weather we were having.

Back on the road and soon we reached our destination. I couldn’t remember exactly what kind of campsite I had reserved — surely the best I could manage, but it’s always a crapshoot. Anyway, we were really pleased to find:

This is site 64 at Beachside State Recreation Area. One site — 63 — looked even more inviting, if that’s possible. No complaints here, though. Only a little dune grass (“under restoration”) separated us from the sand.

It was an interesting, three-night visit. We have family and friends in the area, so there was plenty of socializing. We spent our spare time staring at and/or walking on the sand. The campground abuts seven uninterrupted miles of beach-walking bliss (the interruptions in this part of the world are usually river or bay mouths). I think we did the only true fitness-type walking of our trip while at this campground.

The view from Toto’s rear window. We did not tire of it.

I guess you can’t really do a coastal trip without running into kites. One breezy day, while a longtime friend from back in our Apple Computer days in the 80s and 90s visited with us at the campground, these popped up. Or flew up.

You know you’re on vacation when you take the time to make kite images. These kits were amazing! Yuge. Fantastic. You wouldn’t believe.

Beachside is a smaller campground, and doesn’t have much in the way of Day Use facilities. Maybe that’s why it’s called a State Recreation Area and not a State Park. It was the quietest of the places we visited, and that might be why it was one of our favorites.

From the beach, Toto looked like a large RV — or at least not a tiny one — unless you included other RVs in the picture. Most of the campsites nestle in the grove of cypress-ish trees seen here, and they look quite pleasant, too — though the back row would be too close to U.S. Route 101 for my taste.

What’s not to like about a broad, flat, sandy beach? And a campsite that offers this view?

We heard about a food truck in nearby Waldport that has top-rated burgers. But Chubby Burgers closed an hour before we got there. We’ll have to try it another time.

Beachside doesn’t have sewer hookups or a dump station, but the State Parks let you use one at any park you like when you head out. Our next stop — at Bullard’s Beach State Park near Bandon — would have full hookups and was only a three-hour drive south. So we skipped that step, and didn’t miss it a bit.