The Beaches of Brookings, OR — LIVE RAD AND TRAVEL

Being on the Oregon Coast gives us the opportunity to sink our teeth into one of Amity’s favorite pastimes: sitting on the beach. I am personally a little more adventurous! So, knowing that we are literally minutes away from dozens of beaches, I know we are both going to enjoy them to their fullest! With limited time, we do not expect to see all the beaches, but we will give it our best try! Now that we have been here for several weeks, we have compiled a list of beaches that are absolutely amazing! We have yet to be on a beach that didn’t live up to our expectations! So, without further ado, we present to you the Beaches of Brookings, Live Rad style!

Mile: 90,021

Quote of the Blog: “You will never experience the earth with all its wonders in this time again. Don't wait for one last look at the ocean, the sky, the stars, or a loved one. Go look now.” – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler

Song of the Blog: “Edge of the Ocean” - Stick Figure

Our closest beach is Harris Beach State Park. Upon moving here, we figured we would be spending a bunch of time down there, so we purchased the $70 annual Oregon State Park pass, as we figured we would need it in other places as well. Within a couple of weeks of living here, we learned that Harris Beach is the only beach in the general area that requires this. We will use it in other places, but it was very ironic! The second bit of irony is that, since we have lived here, we have also found multiple walking paths from our neighborhood down to the beach. They take us down to a more secluded and quieter portion on the far north end of the beach. One has a gate (losers!) that is locked, while the other is wide open, and we now use it all the time. One of our favorite times to go down there is for sunset. We spend a good portion of our evenings walking down to Harris Beach to enjoy a walk on the beach.

From there, the coastline is littered with beaches! We will probably not be able to see all of them, but one that we had to find was a little bit of a “secret.” Secret Beach is just north of Brookings. It’s not too much of a secret anymore, as there are large signs for the trailhead to the beach. Upon our research, we learned about a different parking spot that takes you closer to the beach but gives you a more vertical walk down to the beach. This parking spot has since been closed by the Oregon Highway Patrol because it is 10 out of 10 sketchy to get out of it and back to the highway. Glad we got it while we could, though, because even though the walk was steep and a little hairy in places, it was super quick down to the beach, and we were all alone on it. We even got a good amount of time on the beach by ourselves! We hiked around some of the little points and rocks along the beach. At one point, I was going to walk out on a very large rock that sticks out into the ocean and has large cliffs on both sides, but the sheer heights made my stomach turn, and for safety, I decided not to risk it. Still got some amazing photos of the cove it was overlooking! I have a feeling we will be back at this beach again before we leave.

The next beach to celebrate is the main beach in Brookings: Sport Haven Beach. We have gone down here a couple of times to walk along the waves and decided this was going to be where we celebrated the 4th of July. We had heard that the harbor area can become quite a scene, so we made sure to make a plan and headed down there early. Sport Haven Beach is right next to the main harbor in Brookings, where the Chetco River meets the Pacific Ocean. Once we got ourselves situated for the afternoon, we enjoyed the sunshine and did a little exploring. The beach runs quite a ways south. At low tide, you can get around some corners and find a small tunnel. We have not been through the tunnel yet, as each time we have been out there it has been high tide. For a 4th of July beach day, this area was not overrun. I was slightly surprised and welcomed it. Not to say that it was not still busy and had screaming kids everywhere. We were able to have some good space and didn’t feel stacked up on each other like you are on some of the New Jersey beaches we got to see. One of the main reasons they call it Sport Haven is because of the consistent surf break. It is cool to watch, but the water in the Pacific Northwest calls for a wetsuit to be worn in order to comfortably go swimming, so no personal surfing for us! As the day turned to night, we headed up to the harbor area to get some dinner and find a quiet place to watch the fireworks. Dinner was at Zola’s on the Water. This spot is delicious! They have a good variety of food options, but they specialize in hand-tossed pizzas and craft cocktails. This made for the perfect 4th of July dinner mix. Following dinner, we took a little walk down the boardwalk on the harbor, which also consistently has art festivals and craft tents set up selling stuff. We had heard a rumor that you can never see the fireworks in Brookings on the 4th. We quickly learned why. Because of the humidity and the proximity of the marine layer of fog, after the third firework went off, the entire show was blocked out by a layer of smoke and fog that just sits on the shoreline above where the fireworks are going off. This was a cool sight and a signal for us to head out and call it a night. Overall, it was a great spot to enjoy a sunny 4th of July day, and it was nice to have dinner options so close!

Just north of our house, is one of our favorite beaches; Lone Ranch Beach. From our house to this beach is an 8 min car ride. It offers every element you would want from an Oregon Coast beach. It has hikes going off it up to amazing vistas; like Cape Ferrelo. It has easy access tide pools, and a very long beach right next to the parking area. To fit our more adventurous side, we took a long walk down the beach towards what looked like the end of it, only to realize that it was only a small saddle of sand between the main land and an outcropping of massive rocks. Once we got over to the other side, we realized this was going to be the best tide pool zone in our area. All we had to do was wait for the next minus tide to happen and we would make it our priority. The next minus tide just so happened to fall on a weekday morning just after sunrise. This was perfect! We were able to head down there and do some exploring before Amity had to go to work. It lived up to all of our expectations. We saw so many little creatures. Mostly thousands of pink/maroon sea urchins, a variety of purple and green sea anemones along with purple and orange starfish. After some more exploring, I was able to find a couple small crabs in one of the pools. We have not seen many living crabs on the beach, but instead just the remnants of crabs left over from the hungry seagulls. To make the morning even more dramatic, the fog had stuck around. The sun was doing its best to burn it off, but instead gave us a mystical landscape of sun cracking through the sea fog, gigantic boulders lining the coast line and the light crashing of the waves in the distance. All in all, it was one of the best ways we could have started a work day! Since then, we have been back to just chill on the beach and fly the drone. We can’t pass up on a spot that is so close and hits all of the check boxes!

Moving slightly north from Lone Ranch is the next beach on our list, and the beach I first found in the Brookings area over 20 years ago; Whaleshead Beach. I first came to this beach in 2005 for a family reunion. It is very close to a resort with several condos and homes we rented out. The first time I headed down to this beach, I forgot there was another access point, and found myself getting sporty down a very steep trail. It was right when I hit the beach that I realized that you can drive down to a parking lot right next to the beach. Typical Billy moves! Amity and I have spent a couple days down here walking, looking for starfish along the rocks and just soaking in the sun. The natural landscape here gives for a little more wind relief than other spots. This gives us a perfect spot to spend the day chilling! I am getting better at just sitting at the beach, and not having to run around doing things, and Amity couldn’t be happier! We have seen many seals in the waves here, which we love to watch from the shore. What we are learning as we get out onto these beaches is that they are not very busy (outside of the 4th of July on Sport Haven). This quite vibe is perfect! We love taking the time to head down here and have it all but to ourselves. This is one of the perks of this area of the Oregon Coast!

The next town up on the coast line from Brookings is Gold Beach. There are so many more beaches around this area for us to eventually check out. The one we have checked off the list is Meyer’s Beach. We had originally planned to go further north to hike up to Kissing Rock, but the wind was so strong, Amity was not able to open her car door. That made for an easy audible down to Meyer’s Beach. This beach sits south of Cape Sebastian. This cape give a good amount of wind protection for this beach. We did some exploring and found the only sand dollar we have seen in the entire time we have been here. Eventually, we found a wind protected spot that felt like we were hundreds of miles down south and being baked by the sun. The weather here is funny. It may be 65 degrees out, but if you can find a spot protected by the wind on the beach, you will find the temps jumping up to the 80’s and 90’s. We hit the jackpot with this spot! Nothing like getting sun baked on the beach after exploring. Toss in a cold beer or two, and its GAME OVER! All in all, we were kind of happy that the Oregon Coast wind blasted us 20 miles south, so that we could find this zone!

There are so many more beaches north of us. We have lots to explore still. The furthest north beach we have explored is up in Port Orford; called Battle Rock Beach. We headed up to this area for our Wedding Anniversary, and planned some extra time to check things out before having dinner at a restaurant overlooking the beach. Again, it was a quite evening on the beach. One of the craziest things happened when a truck came out of nowhere and was driving along the beach. The tide was fairly high, and there were rock points where the truck had to navigate around waves were crashing up against the rock walls. All in all, super sketchy and made me question the legality of it and where the heck the truck came from. This beach has a lot of gigantic rocks littering the surf and waves. It makes us think about what kind of crazy geological forces, erosion, earth quake or ocean activity it takes to get these rocks to separate from the mainland and jettison out into the ocean like they do. It’s very inspiring and intriguing to see. The main rock here is called Battle Rock, and was massive. It has trails going out onto it, but we were not dressed appropriately for some steep rock climbing, so we left it for another adventure up there. Dinner that night was at one of the only ocean side restaurants we have found on the southern portion of the Oregon Coast. It is appropriately named Rockfish. The restaurant sits on top of a cliff overlooking the beach we just walked on. We got a table with a beautiful view of the ocean below. We hit the jackpot with this spot for our anniversary!

The last beach to note, is the one we frequent the most. This is Mill Beach and is a 3 minute drive from Amity’s office to the beach. We have gone out before her work day starts, during her lunch break and frequently in the evenings to unwind. While it is quite windy down there, we did find a nice little nook in the rocks that is a tidal cave in the making. This spot is protected from the wind, and gets hit with that afternoon sun perfectly. As long as the tide is not too high, we take full advantage of this spot. All in all, we typically find ourselves coming down here to just take a little time to explore the ocean, unwind and relax. These beaches all have a lot in common. They also have very unique traits about them; allowing them to stand out from each other. The access to Mill Beach from town is its most important trait, and makes it too easy for us to head down to. We still have a few bucket lits things to see and do on the beach. We have yet to see any whales from the beach, we haven’t found an octopus in the tide pools and we still are looking for a good spot to find crabs! Don’t you worry though! We are set on seeing everything we can in the time that we are here! If we are not working, not at home and answering our phones… you can find us at one of the dozen beaches close by! Living Rad is one thing, but Living Rad on the coast is one of our favorite things! Until next time, you know where to find us!