Road Trip Day 11 - Northern Oregon Coast

Wednesday, July 15, 2009
(Posted August 30, 2009)


Day 11 took us to several points along the northern coast of Oregon. Our first stop was Astoria.



Besides being a beautiful, old-fashioned seaside town, it is also where Goonies was filmed. We wanted to see the Goonies House, so we followed the welcome sign . . .


. . .and snapped a photo in front of the house. Unfortunately, there's that huge bush now that blocks a lot of the view. Just try to imagine Data zipping from his house next door to this one.



Then we marched up 164 steps to get the the top of the Astoria Column. (Kaylynn opted out of this one because she has a mild fear of heights.)


The column has a spiral of scenes on the outside depicting the area's history of exploration and migration, but we were more awed by the views of the Columbia River, and this four mile bridge that we later drove across. (We kind of had a thing about crossing any and all bridges that we could.)


We were amused by this sign on the Washington side of the bridge. It really gets the point across:



After driving back over the bridge and back into Oregon, we just had to check out the shipwreck of the Peter Iredale at Fort Stevens State Park. I mean really, what's cooler than an actual shipwreck? (It ran ashore during bad weather in 1906, and nobody died or anything, but the kids had fun climbing all over it.)




Next stop: Fort Clatsop--where they have built a replica of the fort that the Lewis and Clark Expedition stayed in before returning east. The kids had fun testing out the beds, including the one Sacajawea slept in, and hanging out at the tables wondering what kind of food the members of the expedition ate.





And then, as if we hadn't seen enough that day, we took a tour of the Tillamook Cheese Factory.


We've never seen so much cheese at once in our lives, and never such huge blocks of it. I think it's just the camera and the lighting, but it sure seems like everything was orange like the cheese.



One of the best parts of the factory is the ice-cream counter! Tons of flavors to try. I had a sampler of three different scoops, and Dan had two ice-cream cones just to try another different flavor. It's no wonder I gained ten pounds on this trip! Here's Jeremy enjoying his selection.


All in all, quite a busy day. At this point the sugary, caffeinated beverages I was guzzling had ceased to have any energizing effect on me, and I was ready to crash by the time we got to the hotel.