Beach Livin

Life, they say is a string of unexpected moments. You can plan, but it just gives you a false sense of control. After having a couple of well planned, turned disastorous trips earlier this year, any vacation was the last thing on my mind, let alone a small weekend one. However, it was the friday of the memorial day weekend and with the guilt of letting this one pass made me look at the Google maps to see what could a random throw of mouse on the map could do. It turned out Bandon in Oregon could give me a 500 mile driving exercise.

Oregon can be summed up as a long green story punctuated by mountains, valleys, rivers and open pastures with fattened up containers of milk and steak, lazily munching the greens.

Since Bandon was the luck of the draw, so was the hotel. A few inner streets led me to the vast expanse of the beach side with houses, cottages, and vacation rentals nestled cosily atop the cliff overlooking the foggy beach. Table rock motel had just the room and location. This was Beach livin.

All beaches are public in Oregon. The houses around the beach are simple structures nestled between the edges of the cliff, surrounded by the greens.

The coastal Oregon is beautiful in colors, textures and solitude. I would say many notches up from its coastal cousin California.

You can spend an entire morning tripping on drift wood to wading in the sand or looking under the tide pools for sea anemones, star fishes and occasional trapped crabs.

The small downtown of the city of Bandon offers plentiful choices to fix your appetite from crabs, clam chowder, taco salad, coffee, chocolates to beach souvenirs.

The miles of connected beaches offers the perfect excuse for a long meandering stroll, or a quick jog. One can laze in a makeshift driftwood shelter and listen to the heartbeats of the crashing waves amid the caw caw of the sea gulls.

An ocean of memories later, I was still here once.