seattletimes.com: Paddler's paradise: South Sound offers quiet and beauty

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Comments from sender: Lets go do this for a weekend! Sounds like a ton of fun!

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Paddler's paradise: South Sound offers quiet and beauty

A kayak trip around the South Sound's Hope Island is like visiting the San Juans without the crowds.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2009408404_nwwkayak02.html

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Outdoors | Manzanita is a laid-back beach burg just right for family fun | Seattle Times Newspaper

Outdoors | Manzanita is a laid-back beach burg just right for family fun | Seattle Times Newspaper: Manzanita

Getting there
Manzanita is on the Oregon Coast, west and slightly north of Portland. From Seattle, take Interstate 5 south to Longview, cross into Oregon on Highway 433 and then take Highway 30 west through Astoria to Highway 101. Manzanita is off 101, about 45 miles south. Total travel time from Seattle is about four hours.

Lodging

There are dozens of vacation homes in Manzanita that are available as short-term rentals. We found our place through the Manzanita Rental Co., at www.manzanitarentals.com. Another company is Sunset Vacation Rentals, at www.ssvr.com. When comparing prices, remember to include the cleaning fee and other charges that come in addition to the nightly rate. Almost all the homes are within a short walk of the beach and the township — and you can save a lot of money by forgoing ocean views and spa pools.

For higher-end accommodation, the Inn at Manzanita offers ocean-view rooms for around $170 a night in peak season and $130 in the offseason (www.innatmanzanita.com). Coast Cabins (www.coastcabins.com) offers high-end wood cabins complete with spas and a communal fire pit. However, these cabins looked better on the high-quality Web site than up close, where they seemed too far from the beach for the price.

Dining

We ate at the Manzanita Seafood & Chowder House, which began as a fish store and still has the original fish counter inside. It proved to be a family-friendly place, offering standard fish-and-chip fare that would satisfy the largest of appetites. Another option for families is Marzano's Pizza Pie, where they make fresh dough daily for their midrange specialty pizzas.

There is an upscale wine bar, Vino Manzanita, and a weekly farmers market during the summer. The Nehalem Bay Pie Company makes fresh pies from locally picked fruit.

All are easily found on the town's main street, Laneda Avenue, or within a block or so.

Things to do

There is some great hiking and biking. Elk and other wildlife can be spotted in Nehalem Bay State Park. Oswald West State Park is home to trails, a surfing beach and old-growth forest: www.oregonstateparks.org/park_195.php.

Manzanita Bikes & Boards rents out beach bikes and regular bikes as well as surfboards and wetsuits.

Tillamook Cheese factory, located in the city of Tillamook, is about 30 miles south of Manzanita (www.tillamookcheese.com). From Tillamook, you can return to Seattle via Portland — although avoid rush-hour because the traffic can be awful.

More information

See www.neahkahnie.net/manzanita.htm

seattletimes.com: How to score New York City deals

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How to score New York City deals

Affordable New York: Here's how to score deals in the Big Apple

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2009278691_trnewyorkdeals31.html

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Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com: "My frugal travel tips:
1. Figure out where the students/faculty of a local college/university live/eat/drink.

2. Identify a good vegetarian restaurant not because of your dietary needs per se, but because you’ll probably glimpse some local color outside the tourist zone. It’s probably not too far from the University…

3. Find a local independent bookstore. Good for some chill time, people watching, a cup of coffee, and some good local recommendations from the store employees.

4. Look at the website for the local alternative weekly newspaper and read the best-of or the budget-guide issues. Most largish cities in the US have an alternative weekly newspaper."

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com: "The fares found on
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Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com: "Before I leave, I’ll check the latest exchange rates on Oanda.com, tell my credit card provider where I plan to use my no-foreign-exchange-fee Visa card, cruise the Flight 001 travel store in search of sale items, check my flight status with that TripIt app and figure out the fastest, cheapest public transit route to the airport. (Thanks again, Google Maps!)"

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com: "I turn to CouchSurfing.com. Famous for helping travelers score free, comfortable places to sleep, it’s just as good, if not better, for simply making connections between like-minded people. Even if none of my friends know anyone in, say, Bucharest, it’s a good bet CouchSurfing will find me a pal there."

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com: "Once I’ve got all my confirmation e-mails, I forward them over to TripIt.com, which automatically turns them into an easy-to-edit itinerary. It’s a free service, and it helps me keep my plans in some kind of order with — and this is the important part — minimal effort on my part"

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com: "As often as possible, I try to book hotels through their own Web sites — to avoid extra charges and to create a direct relationship between myself and the hotel — but I always check Kayak, Hotels.com and DealBase.com to make sure I’m getting a good rate. Despite its popularity, I don’t often use TripAdvisor.com — it’s centered on user reviews, which are based on specific personal experiences (too personal for my taste) and generally, if it’s on Trip Advisor, it has already been “discovered.” But when I do find myself there, I skip over its hotel listings and change “Property Type” to “Other Lodging,” which turns up pensions, campgrounds, hostels and other accommodations that I often find more intriguing (and usually less expensive) than hotels."

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com: "When it’s time to book a flight, it’s back online I go. Kayak.com, which searches virtually every other booking site, is my first stop: its flexibility, range, speed and ability to filter your results in specific ways are almost unmatched. But I’ve also started to use ITAsoftware.com’s QPX system, which was developed for the airline industry. It’s not exactly user-friendly, but it finds some surprising routes that don’t always show up on Kayak (for example, the system recently listed flights from New York to Berlin via Prague for $599 on Czech Air in June) and even includes heliports in its search results."

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com

Research: The Traveler’s Best Friend - Frugal Traveler Blog - NYTimes.com: "I don’t just surf the Web, however — print still has its uses. My go-to guidebook is the Luxe series. The chic hotels, restaurants and boutiques that these lightweight, accordion-style booklets cheekily review are rarely frugal, but I don’t care. When I travel for work, I want to know what to aspire to, and what’s happening right now, and since Luxe guides are updated at least once a year, the intelligence they provide is always fresh. And occasionally, I even find bargains."

NYTimes.com: Las Vegas, a Best Bet for Bargain Seekers

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