Like many transplants to the Northwest, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the Oregon Coast.

After moving to Eugene in 1976 to attend graduate school, and afterward getting hired for my first newspaper job in nearby Cottage Grove, my first wife and I regularly drove with our daughter over to Cannon Beach. We had a favorite cabin that we’d rent for long weekends, our favorite pastime being long walks on the beach.

Our visits came less often once we moved to Spokane in 1980. But I still do get back on occasion.

Most recently, I stayed for a week in Manzanita, the coastal town some 15 miles south of Cannon Beach on Highway 101. My friend Tom owns a house there, and it’s where he, another friend from graduate school, Dave, and I enjoyed the latest of our semi-regular reunions.

During my stay, I also met up with another old buddy, this one from my San Diego days. Like others from my California past, Bill moved to the Pacific Northwest (Portland to be specific) just in time to enjoy all the 1980s had to offer – the music, the movies and the four full seasons that San Diego never sees.

Here’s a sentiment that all my friends would surely agree with: It was only when I moved to the Northwest, first Eugene and then Spokane, that I discovered the meaning of good coffee.

Speaking of which, it was Bill who pointed me toward what he thinks is Manzanita’s best coffee spot, Manzanita News & Espresso. He does, though, offer a caveat:

“If the weather is decent, you can sit outside and enjoy the trees and birds,” he says. “Unfortunately, once the pandemic hit us, all indoor seating was closed at any coffee place. If you want to sit indoors, you need to go to a restaurant.”

As for those restaurants, Manzanita has several. A quick glance at Tripadvisor.com will acquaint you with several, from the Big Wave Café to ethnic offerings such as A Mighty Thai and El Trio Loco 2.

For a good breakfast, I’ve made a couple of trips to Wanda’s Café + Bakery, which sits just a couple of miles east of Manzanita in Nehalem. Most recently, Bill and I ate there, and I had trouble finishing a simple two-egg dish (with bacon, potatoes and toast) and so had no room left over for the home-made baked goods for which the place is famous.

When I meet up with my grad-school buddies, we typically drive south on Highway 101 to Bay City to lunch at The Fish Peddler. If you have no problem with fried foods, try the Captain’s Sampler (I couldn’t finish it either). But if we want to stuff to grill on our own, we stop in Garibaldi, which offers several good places to buy fresh sea food.

Enough about food, though. On my most recent trip, which lasted most of a week, Tom drove us north to Astoria – another cool Oregon city – where we spent the day posing as tourists. Our itinerary included visits to:

Columbia River Maritime Museum: The entrance to the Columbia River is famously known as a ship’s graveyard (actually “Graveyard of the Pacific”). The meeting of the river and the ocean, complicated by wind, waves and currents, has meant death and destruction for unfortunate sailors for centuries. Full of a number of exhibits, films and interactive displays, the museum gives a good sense of the area, both geographically and historically.

Godfather’s Books & Espresso Bar: No matter where I go, I can’t help but look for a bookstore. And this store is a good one, the kind of place that encourages browsing while serving a decent cup of coffee. I ended up, as usual, buying a couple of novels (one by Haruki Murakami and the other by Percival Everett).

Lewis and Clark National Historical Park: One our way back to Manzanita, we stopped here to see the museum, which offers a variety of interesting exhibits, and to take a short tour of the immediate area – though, short of time, we skipped past the spot where a costumed “re-enactor” with a stentorian voice was entertaining a group of visitors by describing life as settlers lived it during the early 1800s.

So, yeah, the Oregon Coast has a lot of features that make it worth the long drive from Spokane. The bad side of that, of course, is that those very features have made certain parts of the coast feel as overpopulated and overdeveloped as most of the Southern California coastline. The sleepy town of Cannon Beach that I recall from the early 1980s has been replaced by a traffic-heavy collection of restaurants, souvenir shops and resorts, all of which front the town’s magnificent beach.

Which brings me back to Manzanita, which is described on the Tillamook Coast website in these terms: “Snuggled within a landscape of spruce and pines on the north coast is a pretty little oceanside city boasting a stretch of seven miles of pristine white sandy beachfront.”

My friend Tom has a more protective view of his town, which I understand. He doesn’t want Manzanita to end up becoming a second Laguna Beach … or even Cannon Beach.

And, too, I see the irony implicit about writing such glowing things about a place that I then hope doesn't get overwhelmed by visitors.

 Maybe it's enough to hope that, at least this time, that people will come, enjoy what they can, and then -- as Dave and I did -- leave this particular “pretty little oceanside city” just as it is.