Annual Stephanie Inn Trip

Every year our group of ladies heads for Cannon Beach to spend a few days at Stephanie Inn , walking on the beach, eating amazing food, and enjoying all the things that the Stephanie Inn has to offer.

We always start out our trip with a little wine tasting:

 Our first stop was Duck Pond Cellars. Look at those ladies (Mom, Penny and Donna) with their matching shirts!

Mom and Penny at LaChini winery.

Cheers, from Stoller Vineyards! This place was pretty cool... the tasting room is 100% self-sufficient, with a large array of solar panels, a green roof, and some water catchment. Anything they don't use in the tasting room, they send to the actual winery, so it is about 30% sustainable.

Donna hears no evil, Penny sees no evil, and I speak no evil. Really. I swear. :)

Once we are done enjoying the fruits of Oregon wine country (literally!), we continue on to Stephanie Inn. It is located on Cannon Beach. And I mean, right on the beach. 

This is the view from the balcony of our room.

We like to take walks on the beach, and we can walk all the way into downtown Cannon Beach from Stephanie Inn on the beach. We don't see a single road until we hit downtown.

The weather was perfect while we were there. It was about 60 to 65 degrees, a couple of hours of sun in the afternoons, and no rain. The mist kept rising up off the ocean and I liked the way it made Haystack Rock look like it was floating.

Haystack Rock

Now isn't this the life?

We also like to make sure that we get some good food while we are there, and that is not hard to do at the Stephanie Inn! Even with my food allergies, they were able to make sure that we all got some amazing food and drink. We dressed up for dinner one night, and it was fantastic!

Me!

Mom

Donna

Penny

The whole gang!

We started with salads:

Now I will be honest and say I am not normally a huge fan of salads. They tend to get a bit boring for me, especially since I don't get cheese, or dressing, or croutons, or any of the fun stuff. But this was a truly incredible salad. The onions on top were dredged in rice flour and then fried. It had lime oil on it... it was fantastic!

 I didn't get the scallop starter because of my shellfish allergy, but as you can see, it was pretty fantastic looking!

The soup was a roasted tomato with fresh basil and gorgonzola cream. I didn't get that either, but at least I got to smell it!

For the main course, we had the marinated rack of lamb. It was served with creamy polenta, roasted beets, braised greens, and garlic Dijon reduction sauce.

My plate had fingerling potatoes in place of the polenta due to my dairy allergy.

For dessert, they served me the most wonderful fresh berries!

The other ladies got a Lemon Swedish Cream, that was silky vanilla bean almond custard swirled with lemon curd, shortbread cookie, and fresh berries.

Doesn't that look great?!?

The following day we decided that we really needed to work off that dinner, so we went for a hike out at Hug Point State Park. This park is actually more beach, but it has some really interesting features. It has caves, a waterfall, part of the original stagecoach trail, and they also happened to be filming a pilot for a TV show on Vikings while we were there. So I got some random photos of the set and vikings.

When the tide is in, there are parts of the beach that are completely covered in water, and these large caves have formed. They have some amazing colors inside!

 The viking set was right over by two caves I wanted to visit, and the large waterfall, so we had to steer clear of that area, but I still got some pictures.

Random viking... wonder if he is someone famous?

 The viking set was actually pretty neat, and it was kind of fun to watch them film for a bit.

This is one of the caves that has formed from the water coming in at high tide.

 We needed to pose in front of it because it was cool. You know how these things are.

This is the old stagecoach road I mentioned earlier. As you walk along it, you can still see the areas where the wheel had grooved ruts into the rock. This section is also covered completely in water when the tide is high, so you have to time this hike a little carefully!

This old stagecoach road actually joins the two beaches together, but make sure you watch the tide table, you don't want to get stuck on the side that is nowhere near your car!

As you can see, we made it back just in time. The tide was just starting to come in, and already it was getting to the point where you needed to wade to make it on to the trail. This is a great picture, though, because you can see those ruts I was talking about.

This has to be the saddest looking wheel I have ever seen. But at least all that sea life now have a lovely home!

This guy was stalking me, so I took a picture to have in case I needed to identify him in a line-up at a later point.

And it's these ladies again. The "see no evil" one is peeking. I wonder what that means?!?

When we came back from our walk, the cast and crew were at lunch so I got a better shot of the waterfall.

Hug Point State Park is a neat little place if you get the chance to visit. It is about 3 miles south of Tolovana Park and Cannon Beach on Highway 101.

Hope you enjoyed our trip... I know we did!