Luxury on the Oregon Coast

For a number of years, we've considered adding a sojourn to the Tu-Tu-Tun Lodge on the Oregon coast to our (mostly) annual trips to Ashland. This year, we finally made a reservation for a two night stay, and arrived here late Monday afternoon (after a slight delay while Dick got a scolding from the CHP for passing a slow poke at a speed far in excess of the posted speed limit).

Tu-Tun-Tun sits on the north bank of the Rogue River about 6 miles upstream from Gold Beach (and the coast). It looks like a simple 2 story motel, but it ain't that at all. The rooms (ours anyway) are trimmed in redwood and cedar, have fireplaces, and decks with soaking tubs overlooking the river. Guests from the 20 rooms congregate befoe dinner for drinks and hors d'ouvres out on the patio. As on a cruise ship, seating at a round tables for 8 is by assignment (to insure conviviality or "social mixing"). A four course set menu (five including the pre-dinner "treats") is served mainly family-style, and for those hardy-partiers, post-prandial drinks around a wood-fire on the patio are available.

This is definitely not a place for those parsimonious with the pocketbook, and Conde Nast's "Travel & Leisure" recently named Tu-Tu-Tun as the #1 hotel (of some sort) in the USA. Getting reservations here in the summer is always a challenge, but it looks to us like it is probably well worth it.