At the end of 1805, in the vicious teeth of an early winter, Lewis and Clark, America’s foremost frontier explorers, stumbled exhausted on to this biting Pacific coast.

It marked the end of their epic trek from the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Two hundred years later, I get here much faster – flying across the Rocky Mountains, touching down, then renting a Buick to drive to the coast of Washington State from downtown Seattle. Lewis and Clark are in my sights.

My wife shakes the map. She recites the names that fall out: Cape Flattery, Shi Shi Beach, Big Rock Candy Mountain (it really exists), Quillayute River, Ocean City. The flotsam and jetsam of native history seep through the labels here. The World Kite Museum, by existing, is a weather vane, a giveaway.

Just picture it: a stream of white-whipped waves. Think perfect sand that stretches forever with Springsteen blasting from the hi-fi. The road empty. The bonnet gleaming. We cut the air-con and roll down the windows to savour the tumble-dry from the slipstream. We holler along.

And there, excited, we breeze at speed, approaching Long Beach with its dunes and tall grasses, a half-mile boardwalk along the Pacific, its markers pointing to the roll-call of infamous shipwrecks.

We stop at the Shelburne Inn on Pacific Way, an American 19th-century classic, a listed building. David Campiche, owner, chef, poet, sculptor, who runs the retreat at China Beach where we’re due to sleep over, greets us warmly. These very co-ordinates mark the spot where Lewis and Clark broke through the mountains, linking together America’s coasts.

I fall asleep early, enjoying a view of the Oregon hills, waking suddenly. The time is 3.20am and the only sound is that of the sea. Outside, feeling shivery, I tip-toe through the darkness. Lewis and Clark, I think, would have camped nearby. Just after dawn, I meet up with David to follow their footsteps through the soft aquatic light.

This is a beautiful part of America – the yawning Columbia River mouth, with its sandbanks, inlets and headlands. We visit the lighthouse at Cape Disappointment. David knows every sitka spruce; we spy on bald eagles. “Their feathers are lucky,” he says, finding two at the forest’s edge. I stow them carefully in my kit.

All day long we chart the stations of Lewis and Clark’s triumphant last weeks. That night I doze in the south-facing cottage by the water, and, after sun-up, we drive reluctantly into Oregon, towards the zig-zag Saddleback mountain, a blue-lit sky and a three-day stretch of unbarbered coast.

Our silver Buick zips through Astoria, the oldest US settlement west of the Rockies, spears a seaside town called Seaside, and skids on gravel at Cannon Beach where we come to rest at the Stephanie Inn, an ocean-front haven.

The little sprawling town of Seaside possesses the clapboard charm of a pristine New England port – a well-heeled hideaway, pouring treats, antiques and gifts from its countless galleries. And the beach – designed by the tourist board, I’m sure – is perfect gold, while the cries of children staring off in proper amazement at Haystack Rock, completes the elation.

The Stephanie Inn sets the standard high. We dine in style and are wowed on our balcony by a sunset broken by scraps of wheeling seabirds and by the pop of a bottle of celebratory fizz. It is someone’s birthday.

My mood of elation continues next day as we cruise to Newport. “I think it’s the magic of Oregon’s landscape,” my wife conjectures. “We’re high on surprise. I think we’re smitten.” I know she is right.

The weather, too, is perfectly pitched. The radio weatherman is bordering on manic. “Dress like dudes, wear something skimpy, shades to the fore!” I change the station. But all of his colleagues are crowing in chorus. I dip my shades the better to see.

All along the shoreline, the rocks beguile. They litter the coast for a hundred miles. A necklace of lighthouses studs Cape Blanco, Hecta Head, Tillamook Rock. The headlands themselves resemble reptiles biding their time, ancient and barnacled, one eye trained on migrating whales, while the sough of the sea in the dark of night is amniotic, a rhythmic hush.

Our topmost room in Newport’s clapboard Grand Victorian B&B overlooks Nye Beach. We feel like eagles perched in our eerie, watching the curtains waft with ozone, feeling the ocean on our faces. Eileen, our hostess, and Terry, her husband (whose folk back home all “hail from Londonshire”, he tells us), could not be kinder, and Eileen’s baked ham, plus the best hash browns we’ve ever tasted, make us feel warm towards this coastal nook.

Our leave-taking stalls, dampened by sea mist. Around us is seafood country – blessed by a burgeoning hinterland of vineyards producing the finest crisp Oregon whites. At the town of Florence, we hit a road block. What’s the problem? The rhododendron parade! I look baffled. “It’s Rhododendron Week,” I’m told. There are 20 floats and 11 marching bands. They prance, while the townsfolk cheer and wave their parasols. It’s infectious.

We eat and sleep grandly all down the dune-humped,

undulant coastline, past Humbug Mountain, with some of the finest ocean vistas, all the way to pebbly Rogue River, searching for elk too late in the day.

At Tu’ Tu’ Tun Lodge, on the river’s edge, we sense California like a promise beyond the ridge of moonlit firs. The lodge is a lure, a balm for the senses, serving belly pork, duck, great wines, Californian labels among the Oregonian gold – -the kind of place where you’d like to stowaway for a week – and then make it a month, or maybe a lifetime.

That night, after dinner, my wife declares with her sphinx-like smile: “Being on the Oregon trail is a wow.” Lewis and Clark would I’m sure agree.