South Beach State Park
30 Aug 2026August 30, 2026
We drove with our camper down to South Beach State Park in Newport. We stopped for lunch on the way at the Pelican Pub in Lincoln City and had a very nice meal.
Once settled in to our site we walked up to Safe Haven hill, the tsunami refuge for this very flat campground, and then under 101 to the marina where Rogue Brewery used to be.
August 30, 2026
We played the 27 hole disc golf course in the State Park. We are definitely still learning disc golf! Julie made pizza for lunch afterwards.
We rode our bikes up to the south jetty and then under 101.
We rode up to the Wilder development near the community college. There is a large timber land area that has roads and mountain bike trails as well as the Wilder Disc Golf course. We looked at the course and it seems challenging. We rode the logging road over a ridge to where we could overlook the Yaquina river. Then we took a mountain bike shortcut back to the entrance.
Near the course and trailhead is The Wilds Tap House and BBQ. We went in and had a couple beers and an early dinner. The Rusty Truck Imperial Red Ale was delicious and the Cooper Mountain Belgian Blonde was also very good. Good BBQ, too.
September 01, 2026
In the morning we played 22 of the disc golf goals. We had watched a couple of videos on technique the night before and they did help, but when your arm gets tired you don’t want to practice bad technique. We gained a disc that someone left - the owner had lost it years before in Portland and it somehow ended up at South Beach. That is, someone found his disc and played with it for a while before losing it. There are some plants with very prickly seeds on this course.
After eating leftover pizza for lunch we rode our bikes across 101 up to the Wilder area again. After reading about people losing their discs in the brush at the Wilder Disc Golf course we decided not to try our beginner skills there. Instead we hiked through the Leprechaun trail on the timber property down to the Mike Miller County Park. The county park has a lot of big, old trees and interesting terrain with a pond and marshy area, and a few trails creating a big loop.
We returned to The Wilds Tap House because both the beers we had the previous day were so good. We repeated the beer order and tried their cauliflower tacos which were tasty but light. After riding back to the camper we had a light dinner.
September 02, 2026
A low pressure system arrived and it started raining and there were some strong wind gusts from the south, like an early taste of winter. We had put the bikes and chairs away the night before in anticipation of the storm but still got pretty wet packing up in the rain. We emptied the camper’s waste water tanks and then drove over to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. We spent several hours and got to watch the sea otters at feeding time, and then the seals and sea lions feeding, and then a pelican who could do a number of tricks. The displays are pretty good and the touch tank is fun. The aviary was surprisingly neat. A fair portion of the displays are outside and we should have brought our umbrella.
After going through the aquarium for a while we were hungry but decided to return to the Pelican Pub in Lincoln City for a late lunch. While we were there we realized that Rusty Truck brewing was less than a mile away so after lunch we stopped in to for a tasting flight. They have some interesting stouts as well as the red ale but do not sell any bottles or cans. We’ll have to go back some time with a growler.
