Go! Road Trips 2010
Seattle’s nice, but rolling out of town in the springtime is even sweeter. Here, five excuses to load the trunk, get behind the wheel, and put rubber to asphalt.
By James Ross Gardner, Jessica Voelker, Christopher Werner, David Laskin, and Lia Steakley Dicker
Travel time: 9 hours
Hot Time in Brookings
by David Laskin
The Brookings Effect is a quirk of topography and air pressure that brings occasional balmy blasts to Oregon’s southernmost coastal town. I’d heard about it, but I expected it to be one of those fine meteorological distinctions, like the difference between partly cloudy and mostly sunny. Then I drove down the coast one serene early summer week and did a double take as my car thermometer spiked at Harris Beach State Park at the northern edge of town. Unlike bathers in most Northwest coastal waters, the kids were all the way in the water. The retirees promenading on the main drag of Chetco Avenue sported deep mahogany tans. As I walked through the garden of my B&B, the perfume of the flowers all but shimmered in the heat. On a rugged coastline more famous for storms than sun, Brookings is a heat island.
If you think you know coastal Oregon because you’ve been to Cannon Beach or Newport, keep going south on Route 101. Past the sand dunes around Florence and the salmon runs of the Rogue River, the continent’s edge gets wildly sculptural. The beauty climaxes right before Brookings in a pageant of sea stacks. Stone arches rise from the swells and pine-clad headlands drop down to pocket beaches. Local boosters have christened this the Wild Rivers Coast in homage to the stunning rivers, each with a town at its mouth, that spill down from the coastal range. Oregon’s final fling is the Chetco, a strip of liquid satin that divides Brookings proper from its twin city, Harbor.
I neither boat nor fish, but I must say I envied both the owners of the pleasure craft moored in Harbor’s picture-perfect boat basin and the occupants of the drift boats casting for steelhead and Chinook in the river’s gravelly reaches. Charles Kocher, the publisher of the local newspaper, is the town’s biggest booster. “What I love about Brookings is that it’s drop-dead gorgeous and two hours from anywhere,” he told me. “One hour in any direction and the landscape is incredible.” But you don’t have to leave town. Breakfast with the fishermen (starting at 4am) at the Oceanside Diner near the boat basin; spin south past the lily fields (all of the world’s Easter lilies originate here—the flowers are at their fragrant peak in June and early July); sit down to a sushi lunch (Tuesday through Friday) at soothing Café Kitanishi ; then stroll back to Harris Beach to watch the sun go down over rock, sand, grass, and water.
The banana-belt climate is nice, especially in winter, which explains the predominance of retired folk; but the Brookings Effect only kicks in when the wind blows down the mountains. The best thing about this town is that the beauty pressing in from every direction is permanent.
Published: April 2010
You totally skipped over The Big Burrito on Road 68; you really missed out!
You totally skipped over The Big Burrito on Road 68; you really missed out!
Unless you live in Woodinville or thereabouts, you have to be flying to get to Chelan in 3 hours!
Yes, Ben is a nice guy. The whole family is. You can’t do the lake area justice in a short visit. Even a long weekend isn’t long enough to find all the smaller but excellent wineries on the out-of-the-way roads. And you have to go to the end—to Manson—to get to CR Sandidge. Ray Sandidge is a noted winemaker who was one who helped make wine what it is there today. Capers restaurant is a favorite of locals and tourists, too, and the Red Apple stores have great wine buys plus food to go. The Golden Florin-known to some as “Charlie Bears” is well known as a natural foods source. And on and on……And I’m not plugging my town, because I don’t live there! It’s 70 miles from Leavenworth to Chelan, but we go when we can.
I work in Redmond and commute to and from Chelan weekly. It’s 3 hours on the nose door-to-door going the speed limit or reasonably close to it, although as my wife will attest i’m not much for stopovers (although I do like the ham and butter on baguette from Anjou bakery in Cashmere!) so I don’t generally dilly-dally. It does take time to find all the great wineries and we are starting to have more food options – more of the wineries are offering happy hour food, regular dinners and lunches and special winemaker dinners, etc. Just be prepared to slow it down a bit when you come and enjoy “Chelan Time”.
Thanks for the write-up of the area. We really do have a rich choice of taco options. If you make it out on a Sunday, be sure to make the Pasco Flea Market (http://www.yelp.com/biz/pasco-flea-market-pasco-2) for the best food, people-watching, & overall cultural experience.