Thursday - I finally gave in to the cool temperatures here and put an extra blanket on the bed last night. It must have worked because both of us slept in a little this morning, which made a late start for our full day of exploring Astoria and Fort Stevens. We dressed appropriately in jeans and long sleeve t-shirts, it was 58 when I got up, heading toward a high of 66.
We headed toward Astoria but on the way drove down to the port in Chinook. Like Ilwaco, it was a busy port, fishermen coming in and going out.
As we crossed the bridge back to Oregon, we saw lots of fishing boats hard at it. Some seemed to be lined up in a row.
After a nice breakfast, our first stop was at the post office, and Joe found this awesome log across the street at the Courthouse. It was 624 years old, a Douglas fir.
Our next stop was the Maritime Museum, which was quite impressive. The Columbia River has quite a history, with its famous bar and all the shipwrecks here.
The Lightship Columbia is also part of this exhibit, so we toured it. A lightship is actually a floating lighthouse, this one had a crew of 18 when it was in service. At that time, it was anchored in 200 feet of water, too deep to establish a lighthouse.
Next, we drove up the hill to Astoria's Column, a 125-foot Column built in 1925 to commemorate the westward sweep of discovery and migration. It has 14 murals made in Italian sgraffito technique (etched concerte). It has 164 steps to the top, but we decided not to do that. But you can see this Column from all over this area.
Next on the list was the Heritage Museum. It was mostly about the Indians who first inhabited this area. It was mostly pictures and reading, and we didn't spend too much time here.
Continuing on our list, we found the Bumble Bee Cannery Museum, out on a pier. Took us a while to figure out exactly where the museum was, but we did and walked through it. It had some of the old equipment, old boats, a short film.
When we got out of the car on the pier, we could hear the seals barking but couldn't see them. So when we left here, we set off to find the seals. They were down on the docks by the boats. We think they were harbor seals, some of them were huge, and they were all noisy.
Finally, we drove out to Ft. Stevens, which actually is in Warrenton, I think. We had to cross the Youngs-Bay Bridge, a 4,200 foot, lift-span bridge on Hwy 101. We will cross this again when we leave tomorrow. We took the turn-off to the Old Fort and explored it first.
As we drove out of this fort, we came upon some elk, 8 in all. They were not afraid of us, so we got to watch them a little.
Then we drove on to Ft. Stevens State Park, a 4,200 acre park right on at the mouth of the Columbia River. We had tried to get reservations here but the campground was full. But Joe thought he had to drive every road in the park, so we were here a while. Our first stop was to the Wildlife Viewing Bunker, which led to the beach. The bunker itself was not too great, and they needed to mow some of the seagrass in order to see any wildlife (birds).
So we made our way through the grass and dunes to the beach, and found our own wildlife.
Continuing on around the corner, Joe found what he thinks is the most northern point in Oregon.
And I found a couple of pieces of driftwood I need.
We found our car and continued on around the park, next to the South Jetty. We had great views here, waves crashing into the rocks, a kite, fishing boats, the sun, the beach.
He pulled into the next area, and it had an overlook platform. Here we had a couple of surfers, but they quit right after we got there.
The next stop had a fairly steep dune to climb, so I let Joe take the camera and I sat this one out. He saw the kite buggy but only caught the edge of it.
Our last stop here was at the Peter Iredale Shipwreck. The kite/dune buggy showed up here too, but he took his kite down before I could get a picture. The remains of the this ship are here on the beach, but not much is left. This was a really nice beach, would be a good place to bring the lawn chairs and spend a good part of the day. We saw fishermen at most of the other beaches along our stops here, but I didn't see any here. The beach seemed to really go out gradually, so it's probably not deep enough to fish. We didn't see anyone catch anything, but they were sure trying.
Finally, we headed back to Astoria, got some dinner, and made it back to the RV a little after 8:00. I had 9,734 steps, and Joe did one more beach than I did (I'm sure I made up those steps sometime during the day). We were pretty tired when we got in, but felt like we had seen a lot today. We've certainly seen a lot of the Columbia River, and it is awesome.
Tomorrow we say goodbye to Washington again and head back into Oregon to begin our trek down the Oregon coast on Highway 101. We are looking forward to that.
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