Lincoln City to Grant's Pass (Newport Harbor)

Our end goal today was to make it to K’s home in Grant’s Pass. We felt like we had experienced a couple of very full and successful days in the Lincoln City / Depoe Bay area, but we wanted to make at least one stop on the way down. We decided on Newport Harbor. This is a working harbor, but also features a street with restaurants and retail. While it certainly caters to tourists, it is funky enough to avoid being cloying. No boardwalk with ferris wheels, cotton candy or funnel cakes as was common along the eastern seaboard.

We decided to fuel up before heading out to photograph. K remembered a restaurant right on the water that also featured a view of sea lions hauling out on a couple of floating wood platforms. Clearwater also has excellent food. As an added benefit, our waitress happened to also be a photographer and videographer, so we had some interesting conversation in between ordering and eating, We agreed that this was our best meal of the trip to the coast. Once our bellies were full we walked around a bit and decided to concentrate on a dock area focused on catching and selling crab. This turned out to be a bonanza of for both portraits and abstracts.

Between lunch and photography, we realized we had long missed our window to arrive in Grant’s Pass by nightfall, which is now occurring around 4:30 PM. We ended up driving the four and a half hours through a very dark, very foggy night. It was one of the more stressful drives of the trip as I have normally avoided driving at night. However, we made it safely, if exhausted, and I settled into the comfortable guest room in K’s very lovely home.

Tomorrow I plan to drive out to Crater Lake.

Additional images are found in the Gallery .