Port Orford 16 October 2017

Emotional farewell from the family in Silverton, and then an easy ride across what's left of the Coast Range to Newport, in expectation of one of the best lunches of our lives at Local Ocean Seafoods. (We have eaten here in 2015,  and again in 2017 ...and again in 2018 ...and again in 2019)

Newport is just a bit above the Oregon centerline, on the northern side of Yaquina bay, a deep-water harbor that's important for fishing and ocean research; NOAA bases its research ships and staff here.

Arrived in plenty of time for our reservation at the Chef's Counter, where we watched Gino and his team pump out extraordinary, generous, delicious, sustainable seafood dishes.

I have been looking forward to this meal for years, and so I ordered big: local crab two ways, in roasted garlic crab soup, and a crab cake. The crab in the soup was sweet, and the cake was a delicacy. Rochelle wanted a salad, and we had a field greens salad with local bay shrimp. The two mains that we shared, Rochelle's favorite fried oysters and a grilled halibut preparation over sauteed onions, bacon, chard, and noodles in a gently savory light sauce. (Fish must swim.)

Extremely well fed, we found our way to US 101 and headed south to our evening's accommodations just north of Port Orford. On our way, we enjoyed the best parts of the rugged Oregon Coast, scrambling around wind-swept Cape Perpetua, then south around Hecata head and the massive sand doin's north of Coos Bay, then the sacrifice zone at Coos, where millions of board feet of Oregon lumber head west to Japan.

Into town for salads at Red Fish – more about that tomorrow night; it was good enough that we're going back (although, by way of an index of the quality of cuisine in Port Orford, The Crazy Norwegian's Fish and Chips is listed as TripAdvisor's number one food experience! Oh, boy.