21 in Newport

Peter E.

February 14, 2010 - 9:57 PM

What do you get when you stuff seven people, cases of banquet beer, birthday cake, and leftover Chinese food into a hotel room? Well, other than a lot of gas, an awesome birthday weekend.

My roommates, friends, and I rolled to Newport this weekend to check out the Rogue Brewery and celebrate my birthday. Newport, for those of you not familiar, is about two hours from Eugene, pretty much due west from Corvallis by about an hour.

Once there, we explored the downtown, grabbed dinner at the Rogue alehouse, and walked down to the water. At midnight we hightailed it up from the beach and into Moby Dick's to have my first legal drink. The bar was a local hangout, but we managed to make friends. In fact, I met my new best friend, Wade, who gave us $100 to put towards drinks. We tried to convince him otherwise, but he forced it on us insisting "I made $7,000 crabbing today." So in the event that Wade reads this: thank you.

Yesterday we fought off hangovers by sampling beers at the Rogue Brewery. Rogue is one of my favorite microbreweries in Oregon, and it didn't disappoint. I sampled their Yellow Snow IPA and their Chatoe Dirtoir. They were both pretty decent, but Rogue definitely makes better darker beers than lighter ones.

Following the Brewery, my roommate Aaron and I wandered over to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. With low lighting, ambient music, abundant drinking fountains, and slow moving fish, it's the perfect hangover remedy. The highlights of the aquarium were seeing the sea otters and sea lions getting fed. The sea lions did tricks for their food, and the otters went through an interesting routine balancing their food on their chest, rolling 360 degrees to dip their food in the water, and then eating it.

Finally, we capped the weekend at the Rogue Alehouse in downtown Newport. I am a member of the Rogue Nation, so I was treated to a free beer and t-shirt for my birthday. However, it is quite an understatement to say they treated me to a free beer. It was more like a free vat. They served me a giant Chocolate Stout, and I followed it up with free drinks from from my friends and others in the bar; on top of that, it was trivia night, so I traded answers for drinks. The manager, Rueben, was also extremely generous with free drinks, samples, and laughs (I recommend the Alehouse if you ever find yourself in Newport).

The weekend was quite memorable (from what I'm told), and it was a nice way to celebrate with my best friends. We slowly devolved into sea lions by the end of the weekend: belching, bloated, smelly, and moist, and it was nice to come back to the comforts of home in Eugene. It's exciting to finally be legal, and I look forward to discovering a new side of Eugene that is now open to me.