Manzanita and Cannon Beach

Ecola State Park Bird Rocks

Queen Anne's Lace

Cannon Beach, Oregon is a tourist town. It's very pleasing to the eye- incredible views atop the hill at Ecola State Park, lovely wooden hotels with superfluous paint jobs and ornate signs, and lots of ice cream. For people like me, this is the most boring place to stay. It looks good in pictures, but I'd rather be in the forest that is being photographed. Next year, instead of mulling about the town, I'll be hiking the 1.5 miles to the top of Ecola State Park with my backpack and some water to camp for a few days. I truly enjoyed scoping out the strange vegetation (manroot or wild cucumber was neat!) and searching through all my NW nature books in order to identify the plants. The most abundant thing was Queen Anne's Lace- also known as wild carrot, and a very useful plant for medicine, food, and birth control. Unfortunately, it grows alongside other members of the carrot family that can be dangerous, such as water hemlock-parsley, poison hemlock, and cow parsnip.

twinberry- edible but insipid

There was one thing, though, that I particularly loved about Cannon beach, and that was the farmer's market. Less crowded than the ones in East Van, and with fewer vendors, it felt to me like I had discovered the heart of the food scene. Our favourite folks to talk with (and therefore buy from) were the ladies from Olympic Provisions. We had been searching for some burger meat but there were no vendors selling prepped ground  red meat. So these charismatic women convinced us to cook up their frankfurters as 'wienie burgers'. They suggested some sauerkraut, but I had a better idea: my purple cabbage slaw which is easy, fresh, and infinitely more crunchy than traditional sauerkraut.

They also sold us a cacciatore salami, which is so convenient when camping because it doesn't really require refrigeration (check it out by clicking on the Olympic Provisions link). Then we started talking breakfast, which was when they pointed us toward the duck eggs...

We found the frankfurters incredibly moist and delicious, but extensively fatty (which probably lent to their deliciousness). They are in a lamb casing, which means that when you bite into these lovelies, they have an fabulous snap-texture to them- almost like a crunch, which is my favourite thing about summer sausages.

We bought the burger buns along with a delicious carrot cake muffin from a bakery that hails from Astoria. I couldn't find anything online about them, probably because I don't remember their name, but if you have any suggestions let me know and I'll try to hook up a link.

wienie burger with walla walla onions, purple slaw,
brown mustard, and OP Frankfurters

After Cannon Beach, we stopped in Manzanita to enjoy a magnificent view, then made our way to the Barview Jetty, which was a whole culinary experience in itself.