We took a three-week road trip around the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2017, and I am recounting our trip in a series of blog posts. You can read the previous posts here: Ashland, Portland, Bellingham, Vancouver, Seattle, Kalaloch
Days 16-18: Pacific City, Oregon
We said goodbye to Kalaloch and headed south along the coastline through Washington and into Oregon.
This was easily one of the best driving days of our entire road trip. Winding our way down the coast, the road led us through dense forests that would periodically thin to reveal the rocky coastline, then dart inland for quick bursts of colorful, idyllic farmland. From the passenger seat, I relaxed into a state of silent awe at the ever-changing landscape as we listened to one of the many Spotify playlists we had prepared.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do would be to sit in the back seat of our family car with my CD player on my lap, foam headphones over my tiny ears, and gaze out the window at the world rushing by. I could sit like that for hours. My mother would often remark how easy it was to forget that I was in the car at all with how quiet and peaceful I would become. Outwardly I must have seemed quite mellow, but in truth, my mind was at its most hyperactive in those moments. The combination of the music and rushing landscape would ignite my imagination, and my thoughts would become a whirling tapestry of the various thrilling internal storylines that preoccupied my young mind at that time. I remember thinking that when I was old enough to hire my own personal driver (because all adults seem that rich when you are ten years old), I would be able to practice this same meditation as much as I wanted instead of having to wait to be driven somewhere by my parents.
As an adult, I rarely get the opportunity to slip into that same reverie. I don’t get driven places very often, and when I do I am aware that common adult decorum precludes me from plopping down in the passenger seat of a friend’s car, putting my earbuds in and saying “don’t bother me til we get there”. I’m no Emily Post, but I’m pretty sure that is what most people would call Tremendously Rude.
On the drive from Kalaloch to Pacific City that day, I was compelled by the ten-year-old in me to just listen, watch, and ride.
On our trip down, Alex and I enjoyed the periodic times when our route would lead us through one of the numerous small coastal towns. Each one was as charming as the last, and their pleasant, old town nostalgia was alluring to us city folk. After we had driven through five or six of these towns I started to notice something vaguely odd.
“Every town has its own bead store.”
Alex hadn’t noticed, but once I had given voice to my observations it was impossible not to. It became an obsession for us. We would enter a new town, immediately start looking for the bead store, and invariably a bead store would appear.
This might not seem that odd to you, dear reader, but please bear with me as I explain why the various economic factors at play do not explain the undeniable prevalence of bead stores along the Oregon coastline:
- Population: There cannot possibly be enough demand for this many bead stores on the Oregon coast. The coastal towns being small and not easily accessible to casual consumers, you would need a significant percentage of the population in that geographic area to need beads in order to support each town having its very own thriving, independent bead store. I don’t want to make assumptions about how people in this region choose to spend their time, but unless there is something I don’t know, I’d say the percentage of people who need to purchase beads in any given population is fairly small.
- Economies of Scale/Franchising: Not at play. The bead stores do not appear to be owned by the same company because they all had different names like The Bead Store, Seaside Beads, and Bonnie’s Beads, etc.
- Location: These towns are not that far apart. If you are a bead consumer on the Oregon coast and you really need some beads, you don’t have to go very far to find them. Beads, by nature, are small and travel easily, and there is no inherent benefit to procuring your beads closer to your home.
- Perishability: Beads don’t go bad.
- Sudden Demand: There is no such thing as a bead emergency. End of story.
- Scarcity: How many different kinds of beads can their possibly be? I am making a big assumption here based on my limited bead knowledge, but looking at the circumstances alone, it stands to reason that an independent bead store would need to buy their stock from a supplier that likely services other bead stores in the area. The diversity of stock does not appear to be a compelling reason for why there are so many bead stores on the Oregon coast.
- Weather: This is the only factor that might play a role in explaining the prevalence of bead stores along the Oregon coast. If the weather gets bad and the main road is blocked, you are kind of screwed if your nearest bead store in on the other side of a road blockage (That being said, see #5).
And in case anyone out there interprets these observations as hippie-bashing, I hope you believe me when I say that I would be just as confused if the bead stores were Lazer Tag centers instead.
And call me a shit-stirrer, but I am really only drawing attention to this phenomenon so someone at Discovery Channel will make a docuseries called “Bead Wars of the Oregon Coast”. There’s just no way that all those bead stores competing with each other for a small bead-buying population does not produce some juicy bead-based drama.
We made it to Pacific City and settled into our accommodations. A dear friend generously offered to put us up in their family home that weekend while they were away on vacation, so it came to be that we had an entire three-bedroom two-story house all to ourselves during our time in Pacific City. We delighted in all the comforts that having a full house to ourselves afforded us: home cooked meals, laundry, separate bathrooms, and SPACE.
Our time in Pacific City was leisurely. Alex got to break out his wetsuit and I read an entire book in two days as I alternated between sunbathing on our back porch and sunbathing on the beach.
Late one afternoon, Alex and I observed a family of deer crossing through our back patio. Not knowing if Cosmo had ever seen a deer before, I lifted him into my arms to watch the deer with us through the living room window. He locked his eyes on them instantly and seemed politely puzzled as his brain worked to determine if the beasts were friend or foe. After ten seconds, he seemed to decide that he was better safe than sorry and barked at them anyway.
We had initially planned to leave Pacific City after two nights before proceeding to our next destination, a one-night stopover in Gold Beach, but we decided to stay another night instead. The stopover in Gold Beach was designed to give us a break between Pacific City and Eureka, but we were enjoying ourselves so much that we opted to deal with the consequence of a very long driving day in exchange for one more day at the house. It was the right decision.
After three nights and with an eight-hour drive ahead of us, we left Pacific City at the break of dawn and continued along the coast to Eureka. We didn’t know it then, but Eureka would be the place where our good luck would begin to run out.
