(Thursday, October 6)
We spent this morning exploring Eugene and the University of Oregon. We started with breakfast at a cute little cafe called Glenwood, where we had incredible scrambled eggs with spinach, tomatoes, cheese, and bacon (we’ve eaten a lot of bacon on this trip), and delicious fresh fruit. I’ve discovered that I miss fresh fruit while on vacation, as restaurants don’t seem to offer that very often.
We had breakfast with two current UO students, one who was a former professional European basketball player! How cool is that? He knew all about UK basketball, which was pretty exciting, considering we were all the way on the other side of the country!
We wandered around UO for a bit and enjoyed a street fair that was set up on campus. We were blessed with lots of sunshine and somewhat warm weather, so we took our time strolling the campus, taking in the excitement of game day (everyone was wearing UO stuff, which reminded us of game days at UK).
This afternoon, we got in the car to travel to our final vacation destination: the Oregon coast. We had to drive a few hours from Eugene to Depoe Bay, but the drive was mostly through mountains and farmland, so it was really beautiful. After hours of tree, after tree, after tree, after tree (Oregon is just as green as you can imagine), we finally hit the coast, and it was incredible! All of a sudden, there was an ocean! It’s amazing how different the west coast looks in comparison to the east coast. The coast in Oregon was full of jagged cliffs and rock faces, with just a few small beaches. And while standing at the water, you are only a short distance from the mountains. It’s incredible.
We took the coastal highway up to our destination for the night, The Channel House, which is a cute little bed and breakfast located on a 40-foot cliff overlooking the ocean and a channel, which boats use to get into a marina. Our room had a fireplace and a deck with a jacuzzi overlooking the ocean. Not bad, eh? We arrived just before sunset, so we got to watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean before heading off to dinner.
The Channel House employee suggested a place called Tidal Raves for dinner, so he made reservations for us. This place was a hoot. We were definitely the only people in the restaurant under the age of 60. Our waiter, who was approximately our age, must have thought this was funny or something because every time he came over to us, he looked like he was trying really hard not to smile or laugh at us, especially when he asked us if we would like any alcoholic beverages, and Eric ordered a root beer. Eric and I got a big kick out of him.
Another thing that we really enjoyed? The Channel House guestbook. I guess each room has a book for the guests to sign and write something about their stay. We read through several of them (I read them aloud, selecting different accents for each guest), and really got a kick out of this one. Somebody loves their adjectives.
I’ll skip the adjectives and just tell you that I really like it here.
-Ally
[…] Bay. Eric and I vacationed there back when we lived in Kentucky (you can read about that visit here and here). We had a really pleasant, quaint experience then, which I suppose is the benefit of […]