Oregon Trail
We left Washington today. Just for a few hours, though. We crossed the river into Oregon and journeyed to Astoria. Our last time here was in late August of 2012. You can read about that visit on my other blog at https://woodstofood.blogspot.com/2012/08/.
Astoria is a magical place. I give it a “Highly recommend, would visit again.” It’s where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. There’s a big old bay there, and today there were several freighters, very nicely aligned, in the bay. There’s a big antique store district if you’re into that kind of thing, and some waterfront restaurants. On my previous trip, I visited the Rogue Pier 39 Public House, where I met and became enamored with Dead Guy Ale. I thought I would stop back in today, but found the taproom had abruptly and permanently closed last November. So abruptly, in fact, that their website is still up and says they are open. Apparently, there was bankruptcy involved, and employees weren’t informed of the closure until the day that it closed. I guess Astoria didn’t drink enough Dead Guys.
The highlight of Astoria is the tower on top of the hill, which they call a column. It is very ornate on the
outside. The inside is just a big concrete tube with an iron spiral staircase to the top. It’s about 150 stairs up, which sounds like a lot, but it’s more than 60 stairs shy of the staircase between my front door and where I park my truck every day.
When we were here 13+ years ago, we went up the tower with
the boys, and they launched off a balsa wood glider we purchased at the gift
shop. They then went down to retrieve it and found an entire airbase of balsa
wood gliders scattered in the woods. A family pic of the four of us with these gliders
made the cover shot of our photo album that year.
Ann and I didn’t launch any gliders this time, but we did
both summit the column while we took turns walking Mary around the base. It’s a
perfect park. They charge $5 for parking, which I think is very fair, and they
don’t charge for anything else, including going up the column. I’d paid $6.60
to park in downtown Tacoma the previous night to go out to dinner, so $5 for a
world-class view seemed like a deal.
After Astoria, we found ourselves near Cape Disappointment. I’m no historian, but we’re pretty sure the cape was named by British fur trader John Meares, after he went into a local pub and ordered the chicken pot pie. Ann made the same mistake tonight, only to find the dish void of chicken, pie crust, or pot for that matter. Although neither Ann nor I partake of pot, it is pretty hard to avoid in the Pacific Northwest, and it wouldn’t have been too surprising to find it in this pie. But there was virtually nothing in it besides some gravy, trace amounts of chicken, and a few peas. Ann ate everything she was given and left the restaurant so hungry that we immediately drove a couple of miles to the next town over to a different restaurant, where she ordered a couple of excellent Ahi tacos at Castaways and left much happier.
We returned to Ilwaco to stay at Hedi’s Inn. You probably
won’t see pictures of Heidi’s trending on Instagram, but it’s a warm, clean,
dry room, and I really appreciate that you can still grab a hotel room near the
ocean for $80 a night rather than spending $240 at Astoria or Long Beach.
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