Is The Oregon Coast The Best Part Of The Pacific Coast Highway?

Are you the type of rider who also enjoys spending time in nature? Do you find it most enjoyable when you can combine your love of riding with your love of the great outdoors with seeing some of the glorious natural vistas that you’ve never seen before? If that’s you, then chances are excellent that you’re already familiar with moto traveler and vlogger Amanda Zito, and her YouTube channel, As the Magpie Flies. 

In June 2023, she’s been posting videos from a trip she took earlier this year along an incredibly scenic route that’s on many a rider’s bucket list: the Pacific Coast Highway. Her plan was to ride the PCH starting in San Diego, California, and keep going all the way until she reached Seattle, Washington. Sounds like a good plan, right? 

Remember the seemingly never-ending atmospheric rivers, flooding, landslides, and otherwise terrible weather that much of California experienced in March 2023? As luck would have it, that’s when Zito was traveling—so in the first couple of videos in the series, her plans (and everyone else’s) had to adapt.  

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In this video, she’s wrapping up the end of her trip, riding along the Oregon coast and taking in some much-needed calm and crashing waves along the coastline. The moody atmosphere and greenery almost take on a mystical quality in some of her footage, and it’s not at all difficult to see why she thinks that this might be the best (and perhaps most overlooked) part of the Pacific Coast Highway. 

Near Cape Perpetua, there’s a popular natural phenomenon and tourist destination called Thor’s Well, which is also referred to as the drainpipe of the Pacific. As its nickname implies, it very much appears to be draining the sea, although of course it’s not doing any such thing. Still, the effect is undeniably mesmerizing, and Zito shows us both Thor’s Well and a group of tourists admiring it in this video. (The people-watching opportunities are likely almost as endless as the drainage appears!) 

In any case, if you’re the type of rider who seeks to calm your inner turmoil on your bike, it’s rides like this that are sometimes the most restorative of all. Although Zito didn’t get quite as far as she wanted on this journey, she looks forward to doing more in the future—and of course, to her next ride in general.