Start from 23 curated places around Yachats, OR, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Luna Sea Fish House
A working fisherman's cafe where the catch comes off the owner's own boat and lands on your plate the same day. The slumgullion — clam chowder baked with cheese and bay shrimp — is the thing to order, and the fish tacos use whatever came in that morning. Counter service, plastic trays, paper napkins: no pretense, just honest seafood.
Green Salmon Coffee Company
The town's quirky community anchor, part coffeehouse and part eccentric general store with tarot cards and spell books at every table. They roast their own fair-trade beans and stock an unusually deep selection of loose-leaf teas, making it a strong pick even if you're not a coffee drinker. The garden patio is where locals linger on slow mornings.
Trails & outdoors
Captain Cook Trail and Thor's Well
A 0.6-mile paved loop from the Cape Perpetua parking area that packs in Thor's Well, Spouting Horn, Cook's Chasm, and the tidal pools — the single highest-return short walk on this stretch of the Oregon coast. Easy terrain means it works for all ages, but the tidal features are genuinely powerful and require attention near the edge.
Giant Spruce Trail
A 2-mile round-trip through the Cape Perpetua rainforest to a 500-year-old Sitka spruce with a root mass large enough to crawl inside. The trail follows a mossy creek through old-growth coastal forest and is particularly atmospheric in fog or rain. It starts from the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center.
Things to do
Earthworks Gallery
A well-curated gallery two miles north of downtown where roughly 80% of the work is by Oregon artists — clay, glass, jewelry, watercolor, and sculpture shown with enough breathing room that nothing feels crowded. The staff actually knows the artists and can tell you the story behind each piece, which makes it worth spending an hour rather than a quick pass-through.
Little Log Church Museum
A compact 1930 log church built from timber hauled down the Yachats River by community volunteers, now housing a small museum of settler photographs, shell collections, and works by former local artists. Free to enter, run by volunteers who actually know the history — the kind of quietly absorbing local history stop that works well in the first half hour before lunch.
Landmarks & sights
Cape Perpetua Scenic Area
The dramatic headland that defines this stretch of Oregon coast — 2,700 acres of coastal rainforest with 26 miles of trails, and the highest car-accessible point on the entire Oregon coast at 800 feet. From the overlook on a clear day you can see 70 miles of coastline in either direction. The same complex includes Thor's Well, Spouting Horn, Cook's Chasm, and Devil's Churn all within easy walking distance of the parking area.
Thor's Well
A collapsed sea cave that looks, at high tide, like a hole in the ocean that swallows the Pacific whole. Water rushes in from below, surges up, and pours back over the basalt edges in a cycle that's equal parts hypnotic and unsettling. It's accessed via the short Captain Cook Trail paved loop from the Cape Perpetua parking area.