Norwegian Encore Alaska Cruise Review: Day 3 – The Oregon Coastfeatured

I have such a special place in my heart for the Oregon Coast.

Back when I was frequently traveling to Seattle for work, I’d fly from Chicago to Seattle on Sunday morning, spend the rest of the day settling in and wandering around Pike Place, work from sun up to sun down on Monday through Thursday and Friday afternoon, I’d return to SeaTac, rent a car and drive down to Seaside, Oregon. I’d spend the weekend tracking up to Astoria, where I’d put myself at the chef’s mercy at the Colombian Cafe, down to Cannon Beach, where I’d stare out at Haystack Rock and try to run to the shore when high tide would come in. I’d drive through Oswalt State Park and hike down to Hug Point to catch the sunset splash the sky in pastel colors. I’d drive to Tillamook for cheese and ice cream and stop at what felt like every antique shop in Rockaway Beach. I’d return to Seaside, to this little boutique motel I’d always stay at, and spend any remaining hours between the beach and the boardwalk. I soaked in the solitude and learned to love spending time by myself.

I introduced Stephanie to the Oregon Coast on our first trip to Portland and she’s been clamoring to go back ever since, finding the charm of the coast as irresistible as I did.

So when we began planning this trip, we knew we wanted to spend at least a day back driving along the coast. It’s actually quite easy — if you start in Portland take the route to Astoria and down to Tillamook, coming back from Tillamook (which, to be fair, is not even a quarter of the way down the coast, but it’s the furthest we’d ever gotten!), it makes a circle, so it’s a nice and easy day trip.

It takes just under two hours to get to our starting point in Astoria from Portland, so we got an early start, rising with the sun and skipping the hotel breakfast in favor of a quickie at a roadside McDonald’s drive through next to our gas stop. As we got out of Portland and drove northwest, the skies started getting darker, but there was no rain and none would come — Oregon was facing a heatwave and high temperatures that would near the record. This meant a high risk of wildfires, which broke out and sent smoke skywards over the western part of the state.

By the time we got to Astoria, the sun was a bright pink orb in the sky, covered by a sephia haze that looked straight out of a cinematic masterpiece. It was peculiar and a little eerie, made a little more so by the fact that Astoria was still recovering from the pandemic. Many cafes (including my beloved Colombian Cafe) were no longer, cruise ships hadn’t docked there since before the pandemic and the quiet buzz on a weekend morning was all but nonexistent. But Astoria was still beautiful, and we enjoyed our time walking through the antique mall, strolling as much of the tracks as we could before we hit the construction barriers and snapping pictures of the Astoria-Megler Bridge through the early morning haze.

Typically, we’d stop next in Seaside for some time on the boardwalk, but we’d decided to add a new stop into our day and to make time for it, we skipped Seaside and went straight to Cannon Beach. We beelined to my favorite coffee shop, Sea Level Bakery & Coffee, where they still serve up a mean cup of coffee and the most incredible cheese biscuits you’ll ever try.

We dropped our coffees off in the car and walked down to the beach, which was buzzing in the way it usually does on an early Saturday morning, but it almost looked like someone had thrown a filter on it because the sky was so dark, tinted a burnt orange color as far as the eye could see. Low tide left some expired sea creatures laying in the sand (a stingray, a duck and a seagull), which just made things even more eerie! I’ve seen Cannon Beach in brilliant sunshine and in dreary rain, but I’d never seen it the way we saw it on this visit — it was really an experience.

Once we’d snapped our pics and pulled ourselves away from the magnetic pull of the ocean waves crashing onto the shore, we hopped back in the car, stopping at the scenic outlooks we found on our way to Tillamook. One of my favorite parts of spending time on the Oregon Coast are these scenic outlooks, where you can see the water, the coastline and the distinctive fir trees stretching up towards the sky. It’s stunning — like a live postcard in the most captivating colors and patterns.

Stephanie had been dreaming of our return visit to Tillamook since our last visit — it was just about her only mandatory for this trip. The Tillamook Cheese Factory was renovated a few years earlier and is a fun (and free!) way to pass an hour or two. You can watch the factory in action from a perch up above, there are interactive displays and exhibits and even free samples (which, in a positive post-Covid change, were individually wrapped slices of cheese in many of their most loved flavors!).

But what draws the crowds is the food hall off the entrance, where you can get all kinds of cheesy fare, like their famous grilled cheese, mac and cheese, cheese curds, tomato soup with cheese — it’s a dairy-lovers dream. And not to be outdone by the savory options, there’s a full ice cream bar with dozens of flavors. It’s overpriced and the lines are ungodly on the weekends, but they get it all so right. It’s worth it.

Normally, we’d drive back to Portland after getting our fill of cheese, but a Google search the night before led us to the Depoe Bay Whale Watching Center. About an hour and a half south of Tillamook, there’s another charming seaside town where throughout different seasons of the year, you can spot whales. And we were full-fledged obsessed with whale watching now. Ever since our Hawaii trip in 2021, if there’s an opportunity to whale watch, we take it — we cue up Will You Be There and get our phones ready to take videos because of all of the majesty we’ve experienced in nature, watching these larger-than-life creatures gracefully skim the surface and dive back down — it kind of leaves you speechless. It’s such a special experience.

So we drove down to Depoe Bay and we weren’t really sure what to expect. There’s a whale watching center that closed ten minutes after we got in and we weren’t sure if all of the whale watching had to be done at the center or if they could be seen elsewhere. We found a parking spot a five minute walk from the center and as we were getting out of the car, I spotted a tall spray of water no more than 100 feet from the shoreline. Stephanie didn’t believe me until she got out of the car and spotted two more. We were literally just getting out of our car, watching the shoreline from the sidewalk up above and there were dozens of gray and humpback whales frolicking near the coast. We’ve paid hundreds of dollars for excursions that would take us whale watching and here we were, on the coast of Oregon, getting a full on show three steps in front of our rental car. It was incredible. We stayed for more than an hour, calling out BLOWHOLE when we’d catch a spray jetting up off the water, holding our breath and hoping we’d see one breach.

We probably would have stayed until the sunset, until the skies turned so dark we couldn’t see anymore, but Stephanie didn’t want to do the two hour drive back to Portland in the dark and I couldn’t fault that, so we peeled ourselves away, hopped back in the car and left the whales in our rear view mirror.

The drive back to Portland took us through some new towns we’d never visited before (like Lincoln City!) and we found so many cute roadside stops — cafes and boutiques and all of the fun kitschy places we love to discover. I added them to our lists for next time and we kept trekking until we were back in Portland.

It had been a full day (nearly 12 hours!) of driving, walking and wandering and we didn’t really have any energy to put towards figuring out our plans for our last night in Portland, so because we really are creatures of habit and like the things we like, we went back to Dough Zone for another round of their incredible soup dumplings and fried dumplings and…all the dumplings. Really. There were so many dumplings. I feel full thinking about it.

There was a S’mores bakery that Stephanie found on TikTok not far from Dough Zone and we made the decision that if we found parking, we’d get s’mores and if we didn’t, we’d go back to the hotel. And then we broke it when we couldn’t find parking and still wanted s’mores. So Stephanie dropped me off in front of 1927 S’mores Company and I ran in to buy us s’mores. The bakery almost reminded me of a scene from Frozen. It was cozy and full of hygge, and as an added bonus, it smelled like the most incredible toasted marshmallows (they torch them fresh in front of you!). There was an expansive menu with all kinds of fun twists on s’mores. I did one with fudge, caramel and coconut (kind of like a Samoa s’more) and ordered Stephanie a traditional one. We took them back to the hotel with us, and they were as messy and incredible as you’d hope a good s’more to be.

We knew we’d have an early morning with the drive back to Seattle (where we’d board the ship!), so we packed as much as we could, taped up our bag tags and planned all the things we’d do when we got onboard. We didn’t know if the weather would fare any better than it did the last time we sailed to Alaska, but we knew we were in for a fun adventure once we got onboard and we could not wait to get it started!