Other Sides to Manzanita Include N. Oregon Coast Places You Can Never Visit

Published 8/29/24 at 7:45 a.m.
By Andre' GW Hagestedt, Oregon Coast Beach Connection

(Manzanita, Oregon) – Some of the locals for a long time have been referring to Manzanita as the “Banana Belt of the North Coast,” and for quite awhile that catchphrase just caused a lot of head scratching around the office of Oregon Coast Beach Connection. Then one day someone explained it, and the National Weather Service backed it up, and then we realized there were still new things to uncover about the old place – even after all these years.

Above: Cube Rock is one place you can never touch and barely even get a glimpse of.

Indeed, even those who've been coming here for quite awhile may find something new, it seems. It turns out, Manzanita has a lot of different sides, and it's a fantastic area to look for something different. Even better news: widening your horizons here takes very little effort. Quite literally, horizons are so broad on these beaches.

Then there's the place's ultimate secrets. There are locales around Manzanita you can never, ever go to. Yet you can catch glimpse of some of them with a simple zoom lens. In other cases, finding something remarkable in this spot just south of Cannon Beach may simply be a matter of timing.

Even if you've been there a lot, there are numerous things you've likely never seen.

Case in point: the famed Neahkahnie overlooks just north of town, where the ocean vistas consistently explode. Hit this spot enough and you'll discover some remarkable sights in terms of weather conditions, like this haboob-like oddity that encompassed the area on one rather stunning summer day. It turns out spring makes for the most interesting cloud creations and conditions on the coast, and Manzanita is no shirker.

Yet this remarkable moment hearkens back to that Banana Belt idea. In this case, the unusual cloud formation lingered offshore and never really encroached on the town. One thing you may notice about the area is that cloud formations fairly often do that: they seem to bump into Neahkahnie (and nearby Cape Falcon) jutting out into the sea, and then don't go any further. It leaves Manzanita sunny while Nehalem Bay or especially Rockaway Beach just to the south get overcast.

That's exactly what's happening. Read the intriguing science behind Manzanita's Banana Belt thing. Manzanita Is Indeed 'Banana Belt' of N. Oregon Coast - Science Behind It -

Another fun fact about Neahkahnie Mountain: try this spot at night when it's clear. Ten to one you'll see a few meteors. There's absolutely no empirical data to back up that up: just experience from those of us at Oregon Coast Beach Connection. Maybe this place is just lucky, but we see meteors a lot up here.

More delights are a quick drive north of here at the cliffs of Cape Falcon. You can actually hike onto some parts of this forested wonder. This is a closeup of the cliffs from a trailhead just a little ways away, using a zoom lens.

Widening the view up a bit, now you see the contours of Cape Falcon. Just below is the famed Short Sands Beach, a well known surfer spot.

These moments of awe-inspiring beauty are a simple matter of right place, right time. From Neahkahnie, incredible sights can pop up rather suddenly and randomly. In the final shot, this could be anywhere on the Oregon coast – granted. Crepuscular rays are not distinctive to Manzanita.

It's proof that stunning beauty is a universal truth, really. Still, it was in Manzanita where this happened. Not anywhere else.

Again, if you want to find a new aspect of the same beach, check it out at night. Here, Manzanita Beach is smothered in darkness, but the streetlamps vaguely light up the beachgrass, and the sky is lit in a seriously surreal manner by the moon and a bundle of clouds. You may be surprised by the finds on the beach at night, such as the occasional glimpse of glowing sand. It can be downright dreamy.

The very tip of Neahkahnie Mountain, as seen from the beach, has always been a bit of a mystery. This is another spot you can never go to. There's a ragged arch visible in the distance, where the tip of the mountain dips into the ocean. This is what the intriguing feature looks like closeup – as seen through a zoom lens.

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