A rainy day in Manzanita is not a plan B. It is about half the calendar. This stretch of coast gets somewhere north of 80 inches of rain a year, most of it between October and April, and if you only came for sunshine you picked the wrong ocean. The good news: Manzanita is built for rain. It has a wood-stove-and-bookstore energy that only really shows up when the weather turns. Here is how to spend it.
Rule one: go to the beach anyway
Rain on the Oregon Coast is rarely the vertical, cold, miserable kind. It comes in bands. It blows sideways for twenty minutes and then the sky lightens and the beach is empty and enormous and the dog has lost her mind with joy. Put on a real rain shell and rubber boots and walk down Laneda Avenue to the sand. Twenty minutes in the weather makes the rest of the day indoors feel earned.
If the surf is big, walk the upper beach and stay off the drift logs. If it is calm, the tide pools at the north end below Neahkahnie are worth a look at low tide. Then come back, dry the dog, and start the second half of the day.
Laneda Avenue, slowly
Manzanita's main street is five blocks long and holds more good things than it should. Cloud and Leaf Bookstore is the anchor: a real independent bookshop with a staff-picks shelf you can trust and a bench by the window. Across the street, the Manzanita Coffee Company or Bread and Ocean bakery will cover the coffee-and-pastry portion of your morning. Then there is a wine shop, a kitchen store, a couple of galleries, a toy store that also sells kites, and Unfurl for the clothes you did not pack.
Nobody in these shops is in a hurry on a rainy Tuesday in November. Neither are you. This is the point.
The hot tub in the rain
We cannot overstate this. A hot tub while it rains is the single best thing about a wet coast day. Puffin Lane has a cedar tub on the deck about a ten-minute walk from the beach, and the sound of rain on the cover while you sit in 102-degree water is the thing you will remember. Bring a hat. Leave a towel by the door. Do not bring your phone.
The house also has a yoga studio, which in practice on a rainy day means a big empty room with a good floor where the kids can burn off energy or one adult can hide with a mat and a podcast.
Drive for cheese
The Tillamook Creamery is about 35 minutes south on Highway 101 and it is the right kind of rainy-day destination: indoors, free to walk through, a viewing gallery over the production floor, and a counter that serves ice cream in weather that does not call for ice cream. Get the grilled cheese anyway. On the way back, stop in Wheeler or Nehalem for a look at the bay, which in the rain is moody and full of herons.
If you want to go further, Cannon Beach is 25 minutes north and its galleries and the Cannon Beach Distillery make a decent wet afternoon, though it will be busier than Manzanita.
Eat well, indoors
- Neah-Kah-Nie Bistro for dinner if you want the good meal of the trip. Small, warm, reservations recommended.
- MacGregor's for a whiskey bar with fireplace energy and a solid menu.
- Left Coast Siesta for burritos that fix a wet mood.
- Marzano's for pizza to carry back to the house.
- Or the grocery store on Laneda, a bottle of something, and the big kitchen at the house. Rainy days are for cooking the long recipe.
Games, puzzles, and the low bar
Every home we manage keeps a shelf of board games and a few puzzles, because we know what the weather does. A 1,000-piece puzzle on the dining table is a legitimate use of a coastal vacation day. So is a movie at 2 p.m. with the rain going. Nobody is grading you.
If cabin fever hits, the Hoffman Center for the Arts in town runs classes, exhibits, and readings, and the North Coast Recreation District in Nehalem has an indoor pool. Both are five minutes away and both exist because the locals also need somewhere to be when it pours.
A sample wet day
- Coffee and pastry on Laneda, 9 a.m.
- Beach walk in the rain, one hour, dog included.
- Bookstore. Buy the book.
- Hot tub, then the puzzle.
- Drive to Tillamook for cheese and a look at the bay on the way home.
- Dinner in town or the long recipe at the house.
- Second hot tub. This one counts.
The rain is not the thing that goes wrong on a Manzanita trip. It is the thing that makes the town feel like yours. Pack for it and it stops mattering. Everything else about the area, wet or dry, is on our Manzanita rentals page.