Location: Gold Beach, Oregon is on the Southern Oregon Pacific Coastline.

Length: We did four miles on our recent trip. You can make it however long or short you’d like.

Foot Traffic

Gold Beach sponsors a treasure hunt from February thru April, a time that isn’t very well known to head to the beach. So most of the other people you’ll see are probably also there to find the coveted glass floats, but there are still fewer people overall than you’d find on a summer vacation day.

I participated in the Gold Beach Treasure Hunt for glass floats last year for the first time. I took a friend with me. This year, she and I continued the tradition, and we brought another friend along for her first time.

Foot Feelings

I have to start out by saying I was disappointed in not finding a glass float on this trip. Both my friend and I each managed to get one last year, and we passed by plenty of others in order to honor the “one float per person per month” rule. We searched even harder this year, yet not one of us found a float. We didn’t come across anyone who found a float, either.

At the same time, this only makes me more motivated to make a second trip back to Gold Beach soon. If I don’t find a float a second time, I may then get frustrated, but part of this activity is remembering that the joy is in the journey. We didn’t find what we came for, but we found so much more. We reunited as friends after a long time of not seeing each other, and we had adventures along the coast.

We did decide to walk back to the car by going through the downtown street instead of going down the beach again, which allowed us to participate in one of the shop’s tourist activities. But wherever you are glass floats, we’re coming for you!

Trail Tips

-Stop at the Visitor Center before you start looking. They’ll let you know where to look, which includes looking in the grass instead of the sand.

-I’ve forgotten this the past two trips, but I want to be intentional in the future: bring a bag that you can put trash in! I’d especially like to see an incentive from the Visitor Center that if you don’t find a float, they’ll still give you one if you pick up a grocery sack’s worth of trash. Hopefully they or other beaches will consider something like this in the future.

-Play by the rules. I think one of the reasons none of us could find a treasure was due to foul play by visitors before us.

-The treasure hunt is on every day in February, March, and April each year. Of course, you can always walk this beach any day of the year.

-Be prepared to get a little wet. There are some streams on the beach that don’t have an easy way to cross.

-Check out my more successful treasure hunt last year!