Road Trip! Oregon! Astoria! Flavel House! Oregon Film Museum! Astoria Column! Astoria Bridge! Columbia River!

CARPE DIEM!Yesterday I had the kidlets and we went out for about a 14 hour excursion and we had a BLAST!   Partially because I needed time to not worry about when I was coming back for anything for a change.  Also because we just plain had fun.

It started with a trip to McDonalds and then on up to the Astoria Column eventually. I took a  few pan shots from up on the hill overlooking the Columbia - it's winter and they aren't the best shots in the world but....well....this is where I'm from.  In the distance you can see the Pacific breaking at the Columbia Bar in the far left.  It's the most dangerous bar in the world. Here's a couple vids of the Coast Guard training out here. If I haven't mentioned it before or you're new here, navies come from all over the world to this river to do drills & get trained here on search & rescue in rough waters - not to mention there's several hundred shipwrecks here.



I believe you can click on these and they will come out to original size.  I only took these with my cell phone cam though.

Ships at anchor

Young's Bay and Young's River headed off into the Coast Range

Here is the Astoria Column - a monument to the pioneering of the west with a timeline of western discovery running from the bottom in a spiral fashion up to the top  Christmas lights decorate it at night and hang off it in the day time.

The top of the Astoria Column Looking Up

Looking up inside the Astoria Column - my legs were jelly after coming back down with the kids

But - I didn't get a picture of it but did find a picture on the web of it: 8th street, Astoria Oregon.  The street is so steep, going up it, my acura's front tires actually came off the ground a bit because the angle is getting to 'that point' where you are well over 45 degrees and you start to wonder what's going to happen to you as you go up.  You can see where the street disappears in this photo past the vehicle on the right - that's where it drops and it's pretty scary to go up.  We went up and down that about a good three or four times just for fun but it wasn't snowing.

Next was the Captain Flavel Mansion Museum - a mansion built by one of the area's first Millionaires, Captain George Flavel - a sailor who came around Cape Good Hope.  I hadn't been in it before and took a lot of pictures inside but flash photography isn't allowed so many pictures are dark which I didn't post - but I posted some of the exterior.

The Music Room with Original Furniture & Instruments

Porch view of downtown

The full length of the porch

original Stained Glass Over the Entryway

Some of the exterior

More of the Exterior

The Library

I wasn't able to get many other pictures to come out very well from the inside.  At any rate, it was impressive!  

If you didn't know, the movie "Goonies" (1985) was filmed in Astoria Oregon and largely on the Oregon Coast. 

I don't know that it was that great a film but - hey - it was filmed here!  Part of it was at the Flavel House and another part at the county jail, now the Oregon Film Museum. We didn't pay to go in but decided to come back sometime in the future.  Apparently it's the 25th anniversary of the Goonies filming this year.

A view of downtown Astoria with Christmas lights up - looked better in person

We did make it to long beach but not before it got dark.  We ran up to Jake's Country Store in Ocean Park about 10 miles up the Long Beach Peninsula and did some "country shopping." I can't say what I got thought because there were christmas presents in the shopping and since Jen reads this I won't post it here.  But country shopping..... In other words, the store has about everything you need to survive on a deserted peninsula with a sea storm and no power or food - so they got some pretty sweet amenable comforts from the olden days before electricity.  But then we picked up some glow sticks since it was storming by that time (sort of) and we went out on the beach in the dark.  Gave the kidlets instructions after I attached the glowsticks to them that if ANYTHING happened they were to grab the glowstick and hold on to it with all their might - ie we get hit with a sneaker wave or something - though it didn't look too bad.  Matthew did get lost in the tall dune grass in the dark while we were playing around on the dunes and it was a good thing he had it on him!  

Finally we were totally freezing and we stopped at the hotel on the right and warmed our hands by the fire - hit McDonalds a last time and then drove up and down the 8th street one last time and then watched the eclipse on the way home through the sunroof of the acura.  Rachel got so upset that she couldn't see it at one point - four years old and missing the event of her lifetime (so far) and started shouting "I'M MISSING IT!!!! I CANT SEE IT!!!"    It wasn't "I can't see" it was "I'M MISSING IT!!!"  as in something huge was happening and she couldn't see it - I dunno - my dad-ears picked up on the difference and it was very touching.  Ended up at home with the telescope in the front yard watching the last of the eclipse - it was a great day!

CARPE DIEM!