We spent 4 days camping and hiking along the Oregon Coast in mid-August. The area is gorgeous, with miles of perfect white sand beaches, large forests, and stunning sunsets. The weather is a bit moody, but we managed to catch some sun in between the foggy days.

You could spend weeks exploring all the towns, beaches, and parks along the Oregon Coast. We only had 4 days and spent most of our time along the North Coast, around Cannon Beach, Tillamook, and Pacific City.

We camped at Cape Lookout State Park. The Oregon State Park system is amazing. We had access to hot showers, flush toilets, and they even had recycling. We used this excellent website (campsitephotos.com) to pick a nice treed spot close to the beach.

On Sunday, we spent 6 hours hiking the North Trail and Cape Trail (15 km round trip) from our campsite out to the point. The hike took us through old spruce forests, up muddy trails, up high ridges with sweeping views, and along the sandy beach.

On Monday, we drove down to Cape Kiwanda to checkout the sand dunes. We had lots of fun exploring the tidal pools, climbing up to the top of a large sand dune hill (harder than it looks), and then running down to the bottom. Sadly, I damaged my camera when I was running down too fast and face planted (not my smartest move) – the lens has sand in it and makes a horrible crunching noise when it opens and closes, but it does work (for now).

The hiking along the coast was good, but it was also nice to just sit in the campground, cook our meals on the fire, and watch the sunset on the beach. I started every morning off with a barefoot run along the beach with frequent stops to explore tidal pools. It was an excellent vacation.

More Pictures of our Oregon Coast 2012 road trip.