I agree. Yachats. Love that place. Great open beaches, decent weather, tide pools everywhere, and some fun local shops with two great restaurants.
Newport. Great beaches, a lot of beach areas with near total privacey, areas to sit on the beach out of the gradient winds, bayfront... Runner up is Yachats.
Yachats has turned into a dive town. There's nothing there. Too far to drive for the beaches. That said, I did spend part of my honeymoon down there....at the Oregon House. Nice place. The walls were too thin, though.
I've always liked the beach at Strawberry Hill. Has an excellent combination of tidepools, sandy beach, and sea lions. I've spent half a day there sometimes.
There are miles of good beaches close by as well as Cape Perpetua. Also, Yachats has my favorite beach cafe and coffee shop. http://www.lunaseafishhouse.com/ And my #1 favorite coffee shop http://www.thevillagebean.com/ I reviewed both on Yelp.
Canon Beach would be awesome if there weren't so many people. But there is great hiking at Ecola St. Park. The Yachacts is great for Cape Perpetua, and it's wide open, beaches but it's a long drive.
I've always liked small towns, like Bandon--the old-town area just has the feel of what a little beach town should be. Nehalem is under-rated too, I think.
My family used to have a cabin a mile or two south of Rockaway (and I think about mile north of the jetty). That area will always be my favorite. If we wanted to go into a town, we'd just walk up the beach to Rockaway, but most the time we were at the beach to get away, so staying at the cabin was what we usually did. It was beach front, but their was about a quarter mile of trees/beach grass between us and the high tide line, so it was pretty secluded. My dad and his siblings inherited it from my grandpa when he died. My uncle was convinced we'd lose the land to the rising sea levels (at the time we had lost quite a bit of land) and my aunt never used it so we had to sell (my parents had no chance being able to afford to buy them out). I'm still mad at them for selling it. I miss the Oregon coast in general though. Living in SD, you'd think I'd go to the beach a lot. It's just not the same though. Obviously its ALOT warmer, but its too crowded and too built up.
My grandparents were lucky enough to buy property in Arch Cape before the housing market down there went bat shit crazy, so I was able to enjoy many summers as a kid on the coast. My mom, my sisters, and I would spend a whole month (usually in August) living down there. So many great memories. The funny thing about the coast is that it usually takes about a week to acclimate to the beach vibe. Everything is so much more laid back and slow down there. It takes a while, but once you've transitioned from "city" to "beach" you feel so much better. I'd love to live on the coast at some point in my life. Manzanita - awesome little town. I always loved the ice cream shop across from the video store. Nehalem - also a fun little town. They had a couple of funky stores that sold strange odds and ends. I haven't been there in a while so I'm not sure if it's still there. Cannon - way too hoity toity now. That place is packed during Spring Break and the summer. Still, Morris' Fireside Lodge is a great place to eat. Seaside - I had some very interesting memories of this place during Spring Breaks as a high schooler. I remember all the kids would go down there and there would be a line of cars going down the main drag checkin out the ladies. There were also a ton of cops because of the riots (or something to that effect) that happened down there a long time ago. Still, a fun place to go when you have nothing else to do as a high schooler during spring break.
Canon Beach and Seaside are definitely too crowded for me. We always stay in a vacation rental in Waldport. I could definitely spend a month or two in the summer on the Oregon Coast quite happily. The winters....not so much.
I love the winters. I love the storms. There have been a few times when the wind was really going and the whole house is shaking. It makes me feel so small.
