A coincidental journey comes to an end

September 30, 2010
Long Beach, WA/Astoria, OR

56 days and 2,769 coach miles ago, we left Père Marquette State Park near Grafton, Illinois. What we didn't realize until later and certainly didn't plan in advance was that our route was coincidentally similar to the Lewis and Clark "Corps of Discovery " expedition of 1804-1806 (well, at least the May, 1804 - November, 1805 part). Sure, we saw the "Lewis and Clark Trail" signs along the way, stayed at one of the many "Lewis and Clark State Parks" (Iowa) we passed, and even visited one of the various National Park Service exhibits (Great Falls, Montana) along the route. It wasn't until we got to our current location along the Columbia River that I started thinking, "Hey, we started near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, followed (roughly) the Missouri to Montana, then the Snake to the Columbia and now we're near the Pacific". So, it became a no-brainer to make a day trip out to Astoria and touch the end of the journey that took the Corps some 18 months.

We packed a lunch and the pups and headed out early on another fine weather day. Since we're on the Washington side of the Columbia, we drove North on I-5 to Longview, then West on WA-4. We made a small detour to Long Beach for lunch, remembering that we'd stopped there during a Seattle-to-San Francisco coastal drive vacation that we took in the Fall of 1993. I commented that it was the "car vacation" (it took us 6 days to drive that portion of the Pacific Coast, primarily on US-101) that convinced me to try RV rentals. And, look at us now...

Long Beach ("World's Longest Beach" - another disputed claim for sure since it's only 40km long) has several entry points where vehicular traffic is allowed, so we parked 25 yards from the surf and had our lunch. The pups had a chance to run the beach and check out the water and all the different smells. We walked a bit along the beach, drove south a few miles then back, and generally enjoyed the sea air and sunny skies.

Leaving Long Beach, we were once again on US-101, retracing our steps from both the 1993 vacation and 2009's journey south (not wanting to think about the dreaded "Hebo Incident"). After crossing the 4.2 mile long bridge into Astoria and Oregon, we made our first stop at Fort Clatsop, where the Lewis and Clark expedition built shelter and wintered in 1805-1806. The facility is nicely done, with relatively accurate (they say) recreations of the shelter and the canoes used in their journey down the Snake and Columbia Rivers to the sea. Since it was getting toward mid-afternoon, and Geri and the pups were getting "car fatigue", we pointed the Rover toward home. I'll save Fort Stevens and Cape Disappointment (the points in Oregon and Washington that define the mouth of the Columbia) for our next visit to the area.



Looping back to Astoria, an older city that will be celebrating its bicentennial in 2011, we noticed the "Astoria Column" monument high up on a hill. At first, I thought it was a totem pole of some sort and, in a way, it is, as it's covered with a Sgraffito (similar to Bas Relief) mural depicting the basic history of the region and city. Founded by and named for John Jacob Astor as a fur trading post (and only beating the explorer David Thompson to the area by two months), Astoria was the first US settlement on the Pacific Coast in 1811. The area was under joint US-British control until 1846 when the Oregon Treaty established the 49th parallel as an international boundary.

The Astoria Column was built in 1926, funded partly by the Astor family (one of my grandfather's first employers after he - illegally - emigrated from Sweden in 1905). It was the site of the first "Community Antenna Television" (now known as CATV or "Cable TV") system in the US. Since it was a beautiful day, I made the trek up the 164 steps (puff, puff) for some additional photos. What a view!

Click here for pictures from today's adventure (use the navigation arrows to change pictures...

Heading home, we stayed on the Oregon side of the river, following US-30 east until we crossed back into Washington at Longview, since there are no other crossings until Portland to our south. Dinner was simple and delicious: a pre-packaged half of a rotisserie chicken, a split baked potato, a nice corn sauté and Geri's Killer Chicken Gravy with Mushrooms. Paired with one of our recent Walla Walla Syrah acquisitions, it was a fine way to end a great day.

Trying a new thing with an embedded slide show: