Your first day will be a long one. Lunch around McMinnville is a great idea as there are some fantastic places! You could stop a bit earlier in Dundee, as Red Hills Market is our favorite. Woodfired sandwiches and pizza, and all sorts of local wine and beer, and you can purchase those as well a excellent deli items to take with you for wine tasting or the rest of your trip. Red Hills gets crowded but is well worth any wait! If you decide to stick to McMinnville itself, a few great places there for lunch include Bistro Maison, The Barberry, Gem, La Rambla and Wildwood Cafe. Gem and La Rambla are next door to each other and are sister restaurants. My favorite of all of these is the Barberry and next is Bistro Maison. Both of them have outdoor seating and in the summer they are ideal. You will not regret having a cabin in Ashford. Thats the way to go, IME.

I don't remember if we know where you're from? How long is the flight to get you to Seattle? What time of day do you land? I ask only because it's a 5 hour drive to Lincoln City (direct with nothing getting in the way like traffic or weather) so between securing a rental car, getting on the road, and with a planned stop for lunch and checking out McMinnville, then continuing on... a long day even after arriving Seattle.

We are flying into Seattle from Chicago,arriving at 10:00 picking up the car at the airport at 10:30. I wasn’t planning on spending too much time in McMinnville. Just a late lunch and a little wine tasting in the area.

The best thing in the McMinnville area IMO is the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. Among the very large collection (two buildings) is the "Spruce Goose" which had 1 flight piloted by Howard Hughes.

My point was only... on that same day... you have a 4 hour flight w/ a 2 hour time change. Then getting out of SeaTac, picking up a rental car, and driving 5+ hours more with lunch/wine stops in McMinnville and getting all the way to Astoria that same day. Certain it can be done, it's just one very long day is all.

Tom, thanks for the information about the Aviation and Space Museums. We will considered these two places on our trip.
Suze, thank you for your thoughts on the long drive for the first day. We will have to reconsider the distance we are planning on driving that day. We did a similar drive last year in Alaska and didn’t mind driving a little farther on some days but it might be different on the first day considering all factors.

Is it really that much cheaper to fly to SEA than PDX? Consider the difference in rental car costs and when the flight lands as well. Do you have any interest in seeing the Columbia Gorge and Mt. Hood?

We want to see Seattle. Originally we were going to drive from San Francisco to Seattle but cut it short so we wouldn’t have the extra drop off cost for the rental. We are planning on 3 days in the Mt Hood and Columbia Gorge area. We als have 2 days at Mt Rainer.

My long drive objection is that you just got off a long cross-country flight (obviously leaving home very early that morning). Not so much that it's a 5+ hour drive in and of itself :-)

You didn't answer the question about PDX vs. SEA (including rental car costs). Even if the flight to PDX lands an hour later, you would get to McMinnville a little earlier.
Last year I dropped DW off at the PDX airport for a trip and I drove to a motel near SEA for the night. The next morning I went to an event at the geocaching HQ in the Fremont section of Seattle.
One of the lesser known sights in Seattle is the troll under the north end of the Fremont bridge.

Uh, Tom, the troll is very well known here.

Just looked up the troll under the bridge. Pretty funny! Good photo op moment.
if we fly into Portland instead of Seattle it would cost us about $100 more and we wanted to see Seattle too.