Cannon Beach is known for a rock. Haystack Rock, a sea stack of basalt, rises 235 feet from the sand just off the shoreline, and at low tide you can walk right up to it and look into the pools at its base, where starfish, anemones and crabs cling to the stone. In spring and summer, tufted puffins nest on the upper ledges, along with gulls and cormorants, and volunteers set up scopes so that visitors can see the birds. The rock is a protected refuge, so climbing is forbidden, and giving the nesting birds a wide berth is part of the rules. It also played a starring role in the 1985 film The Goonies, which brings its own crowd each summer.
The town takes its name from a cannon. In 1846 the USS Shark ran aground on the Columbia bar, and a cannon from the wreck washed ashore near here, and was kept as a curiosity. A little earlier, in January 1806, William Clark and a party from the Lewis and Clark expedition walked down from their winter camp near Astoria to look at a beached whale, guided by local Clatsop people, and he wrote of the huge skeleton. Today the town is a small, tasteful place of cedar-shingled galleries, coffee shops, bakeries and boutique hotels, with a population of only about 1,500, and a wide, flat beach where kites fly. It hosts a sandcastle contest every year.
North of town, Ecola State Park sits on a forested headland with trails and views of sea stacks and the Tillamook Rock lighthouse offshore, an abandoned structure known to sailors as Terrible Tilly. South of town, the highway climbs around the flank of Neahkahnie Mountain, a wonderful winding stretch of road with views from a high cliff over the sea. On a motorcycle, the corners are smooth and open, the surface good, and the drop beside the road considerable, so watch your speed. Summer fog is often thick in the mornings, and the weather can be cool and damp even when the valley inland is warm.
Cannon Beach has a few fuel stops and small stores, but Seaside, about twelve kilometres north, has more services and the bigger supermarkets. Fill up when you can. Evening light on Haystack Rock is stunning, and the smell of woodsmoke and salt is the best end to a long day.