Newport

Photo Credit: ArtTower

About halfway down the Oregon coast, the picturesque Yaquina Head Lighthouse welcomes you to Newport, a town known for its Dungeness crab and glorious harbor under the graceful Yaquina Bay Bridge. The historic Bayfront offers a mixture of shops, galleries, canneries and restaurants that serve fresh clam chowder, shrimp, oysters, crab and salmon. Outdoors, seals, sea lions and otters play in rocky pools, while birds soar and dive in North America's largest walk-through sea bird aviary.

Newport also serves up a long list of other attractions:

Yaquina Bay State Park, site of the Old Yaquina Bay Lighthouse, a museum that some say is haunted

Undersea Gardens, The Wax Works and Ripley's Believe It Or Not!

Year-round whale-watching, marine discovery and sportfishing tours

The Lincoln County Historical Society

The Newport Performing Arts Center and Visual Arts Center

The Mark O. Hatfield Marine Science Center