Yachats River Road is a beautiful drive or bike ride, and includes a quick side trip to one of the Oregon coast’s beautiful restored covered bridges.

With two hybrid concerts under their belts, the team at the Lincoln City Cultural Center is ready and raring for more, with a QuaranTunes Concert Series that will continue through September. These events offer both in-person performances and live streaming services, so that cultural center patrons can safely enjoy the best in live music.

Manzanita’s Hoffman Center Gallery is running a new summer show through Sunday, Aug. 30, featuring the works of Dorothy Holmes Mohler, Lloyd Lindley and Bev Cordova.

Primitive and playful art will fill Lincoln City’s Chessman Gallery for “Bare Bones & Thrown Stone,” a new show opening Friday, Aug. 14, with works by Judy Vogland, Taylor Ryder and Patrick Horsley.

I weave my bike between hanging mini-hammocks and a set of Adirondack chairs circling an infinity fire on a misty morning in early August.

Computers have been a great shopping aid during quarantine times, but you’ll find them quite resistant to your charms if you try to haggle down a price.

Ten miles south of the Tillamook Creamery, just north of Highway 101, flows Munson Falls, the highest waterfall on the Oregon Coast. Only a quarter mile from the dirt parking lot, the 319-foot falls splits the emerald box canyon in two. Though the three-tiered falls headlines the park’s marquee, the forest here also shelters some of Oregon’s oldest and tallest trees.     

You can do culture with a small group or no group at all thanks to a new summer concert series from the Lincoln City Cultural Center. Performed to small, live audiences or live-streamed to homes on the Oregon Coast and beyond, the concerts will continue on Thursday, Aug. 6, with a performance from coastal favorites the Perry Gerber Band.

Is there anything more Oregonian than the rapidly growing sport of ax throwing? Sure, you can try it in hipster bars in Brooklyn, or do it next to sommeliers in San Francisco, but browse a few photos on the websites of those businesses and something will immediately stand out — the decor just screams Pacific Northwest.

One frustrating thing about museums is the lack of price tags. You can’t wander through a colonial history museum, for example, see a cute writing desk from which Martha Washington penned letters and think, “Ah, that’s exactly the piece my office needs to tie the room together.”

You can shop online any day of the week, but how about shopping on lot or on lawn? Ditch the computer and browse IRL at one of two new weekday markets, like the Friday market in the parking lot of the newly revived Salishan Marketplace.

It’s hard to get Oregon naturalists to clam up about all the muscle that’s been put into creating and maintaining our Oregon Marine Reserves: areas in created to protect the incredibly diverse marine ecosystems this area has to offer and to enhance the health of the species that call it home.

You can still be social while maintaining social distance when James Keigher and Donnie Macdonald, AKA Men of Worth, continue their streak of summer performances at the Lincoln City Cultural Center.

Ever since Jack London let White Fang speak for himself, animal characters have made indelible impressions on human readers. And if you’ve ever thought you could represent what animals are thinking beyond “Feed me,” and “I need to pee,” the upcoming one-day online writing workshop “Creating Non-Human Characters,” might be right up your alley (cat).

One mile east of Ona Beach, hidden deep in the tules along the muddy north bank of Beaver Creek, a male marsh wren whistles and buzzes a two-minute-long, 1980s-like arcade tune without ever repeating a note.

Lincoln City’s Bijou Theatre is currently unable to provide the big-screen experience fans of the art house theatre come for. But according to owner Betsy Altomare, a smaller screen doesn’t have to limit your entertainment experience. Now more than ever, actually, the small screen can open the world to you.

If you are one of the millions of people who helped Pluto the dog “Break the Internets” while she explained COVID-19 to the two-leggeds, the next members’ show at the Lincoln City Cultural Center’s Chessman Gallery, “Animal Influence in the time of COVID,” opening Friday, July 10, is for you.

I have tried many things over the years for stories in the Oregon Coast TODAY, including strapping on a pair of roller skates and practicing for a few months with a roller derby team, getting into a tiny plane and looking down on our beautiful coastline from miles above, and even trying a pole dancing workout when that was the next big thing. But in general, once the ink is dry on the story, I move on.

If you are looking for something positive to take away from the months of COVID-19 quarantine, it’s that while most humans were stuck indoors, nature was thriving.

The Oregon Coast TODAY is under new ownership, as of July 1.

Patrick Alexander, who has headed up the TODAY as editor and publisher since 2012, has purchased the TODAY from EO Media Group.