February 13, 2025

CPS

Travel Adventure

Transit Trip: We Took the Bus from Portland to the Beach

Transit Trip: We Took the Bus from Portland to the Beach

Tillamook County’s bus service can drop off beachgoers in downtown Oceanside, just north of Netarts on the Oregon Coast.

Maybe I should take more tropical beach vacations. If I’d been to Thailand, I might have had a stronger showing in that category when I lost on Jeopardy!. And if Hawai’i weren’t my one state left to visit, I might not be tanking the round about the Aloha State at Wednesday-night bar trivia at the Schooner in Netarts. Victory would mean a Schooner gift certificate and even more cause to come back to this picturesque bayfront establishment, an elegant but homey restaurant on one side and a boisterous pub decorated with fishing-net fairy lights and broken surfboards on the other. But it’s 80 miles from my house, so victory would also be a little inconvenient.

The Wave picks up right outside Union Station, with daily departures at 11:20am and 6:30pm.

As a Portlander, of course, my beach vacation norm is not at all tropical. I find myself on a barstool in Netarts on a Wednesday night in December, on a trivia team of one, as part of a midweek getaway on public transit, having ridden the bus nicknamed the Wave from Union Station to Tillamook and then made a tight connection to Netarts. A $25 three-day pass (or $30 for seven days, cash only, purchased from the driver) through NW Connector, an alliance of transit agencies with coastal routes from Astoria to Yachats, grants riders one round trip from the Willamette Valley and unlimited local trips on the coast. In addition to Union Station, the Portland-Tillamook route picks up passengers at the Sunset Transit Center, at a shopping center on NW 185th Avenue, and in downtown North Plains and Banks before following Highway 6 west. (There’s also an Albany-Newport route that stops in Corvallis, but a Portland-Astoria route through Rainier is no longer running.)

The Wave has seat belts (I recommend clicking in for the roller-coaster route over the Coast Range) and room for luggage and bikes. Boarding outside the train station at 11:20am, I’m a little nervous about the 1:25 planned arrival time in Tillamook, since my bus to Netarts is scheduled to leave there at 1:30. The driver radios ahead that he has a connecting passenger, but we cruise into the Tillamook Transit Center right on time. There are two other passengers on my bus to Tillamook, a Rockaway Beach resident and her visiting friend. The bus to Netarts, where I’ve booked a room at the Terimore Inn, is more crowded with locals, many of whom the driver knows by name. One gets dropped off at the hospital; several are bringing groceries home.

A December day on the beach at Oceanside.

I hop out near the Upstairs Bar & Grill, where I inhale a delicious plate of nachos (riding the bus over the mountains makes you hungry!) washed down with an overpriced Narragansett (essentially the Rainier of Rhode Island). A regular advises me to get my salsa on the side, since the cook tends to be pretty generous with it, and it’s pretty hot, he says. A few other regulars pop in to close out their tabs from the night before, when a windstorm knocked out power to much of Tillamook County and bargoers finished their night in the dark, with no way to run a card.

Even when it’s closed, Lex’s Cool Stuff in Netarts is a sight to behold.

From the Upstairs, it’s about a 10-minute walk to “downtown” Netarts’s main drag of Crab Avenue (there’s a Clam Way nearby, too). The big commercial draws are Lex’s Cool Stuff, packed with nautical knickknacks but closed on winter Wednesdays, unfortunately, and the Bayside Market and Deli, a general store with fishing and crabbing gear, cold beer, firewood, painting supplies, cozy sweatshirts, and a hot deli counter whose offers range from cheeseburgers and breakfast burritos to Indian chicken curry and veggie samosas. I grab a samosa to go for an afternoon snack, which I enjoy later on the balcony of my room at the Terimore, overlooking Netarts Bay.

Stairs lead down to the beach, and a sandy stroll along the bay takes me to Happy Camp, a pleasantly ramshackle collection of cottages with a pirate-ship play structure, a firepit, and Adirondack chairs overlooking the beach. It’s at the end of a road lined with several raised homes, some still under construction, built on pillars to (hopefully) survive a tsunami when the Big One hits. Other lodging options include the Surf Inn, tucked behind the Bayside Market, with quirkily decorated rooms and suites big enough for families, and a slew of VRBO rentals.

Balcony rooms are worth the extra money at the Terimore Inn, according to our correspondent.

At the Terimore, my check-in is all remote, with a door code instead of a key. My queen room is perfect for just me, and there are larger options that sleep more people. Like the Surf Inn, it’s pet-friendly. I could use a Gen Z-er to help me with the app-packed TV; while I manage to get a Hallmark holiday movie to play, I find myself longing for some good-old motel basic cable for bingeing Law & Order. I find a better show outside, where from the balcony I can watch crabbers walk the bay at low tide, some of them flipping their finds into improvised backpacks made from laundry baskets.

When it’s time for dinner, I decide against walking along the shoulder of the Netarts Highway in the dark and instead climb up Pearl Street and then down to Netarts Basin Boat Road to reach the Schooner. I should have brought a real flashlight, but my phone keeps me from accidentally stepping off the road and into the water. My Cape Lookout Chowder (with milk from a local dairy—one of the little guys, not giant Tillamook) arrives with a float of paprika oil and some oyster crackers, while I note the oysters “Rockoyaki,” Dungeness crab cakes, shrimp po’boy, Thai-inflected calamari salad, and wood-fired oven pizzas as reasons to come back, with or without a trivia-prize gift certificate to spend. Like the food, the trivia is custom-made for the spot, not canned questions from some national outfit. The host grades everything himself, with pen and paper.

I recognize a few people who were at the Upstairs for lunch, and after trivia ends a few players are on their way there, since the Schooner is closing up. One man says he was missing his regular cribbage game at the Upstairs to play trivia instead, so I gather that Wednesday is game night in general in Netarts.

Cell service can be spotty in Oceanside, but several businesses, including the Blue Agate Café, have Wi-Fi, in case you need to text home that you’ve decided to stay out at the beach another night.

With its two pubs, the town offers a bounty of nightlife. What it has less of is breakfast, and so the next morning I grab a cup of coffee and some Christmas gifts (an octopus cloth pouch and a blue plush stuffed-animal axolotl) at Seaworthy in Netarts and then use my three-day bus pass to go north to Oceanside. The Blue Agate Café serves up scrambles, classic breakfast combos, and crab cakes with eggs under an image of a mermaid who looks remarkably like Taylor Swift, and there’s a perfect spot in the front window for a solo diner to look out at the sea and the Three Arch Rocks offshore, a national wildlife refuge for puffins and other birds. If Roseanna’s weren’t closed for an extended vacation, I could have had crab and shrimp on an English muffin there, also with a view.

With plenty of time to kill before the bus returns to take me back to Tillamook, I take a long beach walk and then brave the tunnel through Maxwell Point to Tunnel Beach, an otherwise hidden cove. Getting there involves some scrambling over rocks, and midway through the man-made tunnel the walkway changes from flat to uneven, covered with driftwood logs and other beach debris. There are more hidden coves to the north, but continuing past Tunnel Beach is ill-advised in general and especially when the tide is coming in (and you’re alone).

The light (and the hidden beach) at the end of the tunnel under Maxwell Point.

Back in town, the Current Café on the ground floor of the Three Arch Inn slings coffee, avocado toast, sandwiches, beer, and, if you didn’t pack enough layers, some very cozy-looking sweatshirts and pants. It makes a good spot to wait for the 1:55pm bus. I’m glad I checked the schedule beforehand, as a sign posted at the bus stop is very out of date, showing four departures from Netarts per day instead of the current two.

Back in Tillamook, I have an hour and a half to wait for the bus back to Portland, so I try on some clothes at Re:Current, a shop selling new, vintage, and consignment pieces from the likes of Pendleton, Free People, and Eileen Fisher. There’s also time to sample a few pours from de Garde Brewing, too, with its wild-fermented ales and barrel-aged blends, plus guest taps if you just need a trusty Ruse IPA or Schönramer pilsner.

Street names stay on-brand in Netarts.

Netarts and Oceanside are the closest transit-accessible beach destinations from Tillamook, but they’re not the only ones. Instead of wandering around downtown Tillamook I could have caught a northbound bus at 2:30 for Rockaway Beach (and its rideable Pronto Pop), Nehalem, Manzanita, and Cannon Beach. A southbound bus leaves at the same time, headed to Pacific City, Neskowin, and Lincoln City. My three-day visitor pass could take me to any of them, and then bring me back home via Tillamook the following day. I can’t return to Oceanside: The same storm that knocked out power the night before my visit caused a major washout on the way to that town, and the next day the road is closing for repair, putting bus service to Oceanside on hiatus. (Cars can take a detour past Cape Meares, but that doesn’t work with the bus schedule.)

I also could linger in Netarts, figuring out my motel TV, watching the crabbers at low tide, sampling more of the Bayside Market’s Indian options and the Schooner’s seafood. Technically, since my first stop was at lunchtime in full daylight, I’ve experienced only half the nightlife the city offers, and Thursday is karaoke night at the Upstairs. Who needs the tropics?

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