Rockaway Retreat

Easy walk to the beach. Cozy home with lots of room for the kids.

We had a great time at this property. We loved the fire pit in the backyard, and the kids loved the fort. The sun deck was great. The house was a perfect size, very clean, and had a warm feeling. We look forward to many more stays.

Here's our review of Rockaway Retreat listing the positives and negatives from our perspective. POSITIVES: nice newer home, everything as advertised, nice quiet neighborhood, lots of activities in or near the home for a family to do (games, movies, fire pit, beach), front patio nice, beautiful beach, small quiet town, close to Portland, kitchen adequately equipped, loft area for kids to have their own space, NEGATIVES: home sleeps 8 but is a bit small for a group of 8, not enough furniture for 8 people to sit (except around dining table), two main bedrooms are very small with no dressers to unpack luggage, house cleaning did an ok job (tidy and surface clean, but remnant pet hair and crumbs found around house), not enough paper products when we arrived but they did bring extra when we asked, there were double size flat sheets on a queen bed, home was closer to a 10 minute walk to the beach, the house has one main living area facing West with lots of windows - there are no blinds on the windows so we were hot and blinded by the sun in the evening (we went in July), loft area is great for kids but main TV room is open to loft and can disturb sleeping children. OVERALL: despite the fact that the list of negatives above is longer than the positives our overall experience was positive. For the right size and mix of people, this place is very nice and fairly priced. We have small children who were sleeping in the loft area (and go to bed before the adults) so the openness of the loft and the proximity of the TV and living room made evening TV/movie watching for the adults a bit more challenging. This is just something you need to keep in mind if you also have small children. The west facing windows without blinds were quite a pain in the afternoon when the sun was out. It made sitting on the couch unbearably bright and made the house (especially the loft) quite warm in the afternoons/evenings. This could easily be remedied if the owners added some blinds.

This definitely is a nice property but not without some faults. The loft space gets very warm during the day and barely cools down at night. Although the highs were in the low 70's with lows in the 50's the coolest the loft got was 67 and tended to stay in the low 70's, even with four fans going. Also the TV location above the fireplace projects it's sound nicely into the loft and bedrooms. Dialog was crystal clear in the bedrooms, but hard to hear in the living room with the fans going in the loft. The ping pong and air hockey tables are in some need of repair and equipment replacement (paddle, pucks, etc.). We did enjoy the fire pit in the back, but the small timber fort was filled with plants so our kids stayed out of it. We really enjoyed the deck on the very quiet street. The beach though is a good 6 block walk to a drift wood filled beach. We mostly drove down to Manhattan Beach park which doesn't require you to even get on 101 and could easily had been biked had we brought them. I think this would be a better fit once our kids (5 and 7) are older and maybe want to bring friends to share the loft space with.