Yaquina Bay looks like a cozy little cottage with sand colored shutters on all the windows. Inside, it's filled with period furnishings from its too brief past life. The light is perched atop the house and you can climb to the top as part of a tour. There is a 20 minute video presentation, an interpretive center and a gift shop downstairs.

It's located just off Hwy. 101, near the Yaquina Bridge. The lighthouse is open from noon to 4:00 p.m., Monday to Thursday. It is also available for private functions such as weddings.

The "newer" lighthouse, Yaquina Head, stands at the tip of a rocky cliff and looks more like what you'd expect a lighthouse to be. At 93 feet, it's the tallest lighthouse on the coast. It is located in a park like setting and there is a $3.00 day use fee.

It's an easy walk from the parking lot to the lighthouse and when we were there, the area was partly shrouded in mist which added to the atmosphere. Bring a sweater because even on a sunny August day, the strong winds from the ocean really cool things down.

Yaquina Head is now automated and it's also open for tours daily. Nearby the parking lot, is a large area full of man-made tidal pools that are accessible by walking downhill on a paved path. Try and get here when the tide is out and you can spot small crabs and other sealife in the pools.

The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse is no exception. Indeed, it is one of the oldest on the coast, dating back to the 1870's, and it is perhaps the most literal -- it is a normal house with a warning light stuck on top. Not what you usually think off (I usually think of a tall, silo-like structure with distinctive striping). Go inside and you can walk around. There are nice folks from a nonprofit organization who know all about the lighthouse and who will answer all your questions and maybe or maybe not ask you for a donation towards preservation. This lighthouse is interesting because it's one of a handful ever built in which the light keeper’s family all lived with him in the lighthouse. My favorite part of the house was walking up to the top, all the way up through two floors of regular living quarters to the small room in the attic where the light keeper would stay to make sure the light was lit and the lense shiny clean. I also proceeded up to see the lense, which employed new lense-brilliancy technology for the time.

This lighthouse is a great place to visit with kids, history buffs, or folks like me, who have a romantic notion of lighthouses and are interested in the reality.