One of our church responsibilities this year is going around Oregon doing trainings for members that teach classes. One of the day long trainings lead us to the central coast area. Since we both like the coast we decided to go down two days early and enjoy the sounds of the ocean and stop at some of our favorite restaurants.

On the beach — Photo Galley

Our dog Mackenzie, a shelty collie, was with us on the trip. She is a great dog, smart, quiet and loving. Plus she is a good traveler. If the car is moving she is standing up and refuses to sit or lay down. This is fine except for her sliding around on the leather seat in out 4Runner. To make it easier on her I decided to take the less twisty route.

The straight route turned out to be the long route. It usually takes about three hours to get to Yahats from home. Today it took five hours. I forgot to check the map application on my phone before choosing which route to take. If we checked we would see that a tractor trailer and lost its load of wood chips on the road to the coast around 2:30pm and the road was expected to be cleared around 7:30pm. The traffic jam was miles long when we reached it.

We were glad that the mess got cleaned up earlier than expected. We all very hungry when we rolled into Lincoln City. around 7:00pm. Dinner at Maxwell's helped settle us, McKenzie got the leftovers. The food was good and the apple pie was excellent. While there I called Deane's, our motel, just north of Yahats to let them know we would be there about nine. When we arrived the hostess had turned on the heat and lights in our room.

Deane's Motel — Photo Galley

Steps to the beach — Photo Galley

I ordered the halibut fish and chips with sweet potato fries. It were excellent. I bit into one piece and realized that this is not fish, it is pear. It was a battered and deep fried piece of pear. It was exquisite. The next time the waiter came by I asked him if they had deep fried pear on the menu? He said they had fresh pear in a salad. I told him what had happened and that it was very tasty. He said that they prep the pear in the same area as the fish. He went back to the kitchen to let the chef know what happened. The waiter came back a little later and said chef was intrigued and would try to deep fry a pear.

Sunday morning we headed north to Newport where we did the two trainings. Afterwards we headed home along the twisty route that turned out to be not twisty at all. After four or five years of construction the the Eddyville bypass on Highway 20 from Corvallis to Newport is complete. The new roads has a few graceful curving turns through the mountains instead of the old narrow road that had numerous 20mph corners with nowhere to pass. The bypass reduced the travel time between the coast and Corvallis by about 15 minutes.