Adler's Fall 2013 Northwest: Oct.25, 2013 Cape Disappointment/Astoria OR

Oct. 25, 2013 Cape Disappointment/Astoria OR

We were advised by some locals to go to Astoria and visit the Fort Clatsop National Park there, so we did that today. It is our nation’s newest national park (2005), and it was wonderful. This is the wintering place for Lewis and Clark, as they had to stay in the area until spring before they could start back east after their expedition to the ocean. We saw both videos the park had to offer, and walked through the fort that was a replica of what was built back in 1805. From there we went to Fort Stevens, and did some hiking and geo-caching there This particular fort didn’t seem to be as well kept up, as the others. We did stop at Fort Columbia in Chinook, WA on our way to Astoria, and we were impressed with that. They still had the guns in tact there, where all the other forts, they were taken out. We picked up an Oregon milepost book for the coastline and Hwy. 101 and I noticed that Astoria had a microbrewery. We drove downtown Astoria after our fort tours, and found the Wet Dog Café and Astoria Brewing Company on the wharf. What a neat area! It was on the port of the Columbia River and all the big ships were in the harbor. There was a lot of activity on the wharf, and this was the place to be! We met ‘John Foyston’, and his wife, Kathy, who lived in Portland, OR. John had lived in Janesville and Madison in his early years, so he was familiar with WI. He was at the brew pub to ‘talk about beer’. We didn’t stick around long enough for that, but we enjoyed talking with them. I forgot to mention that we had SUN today! We are to have sunny days tomorrow and Sunday, so we hope to hike the trails in our park before we leave on Monday. We bought our park pass for the Oregon state parks, so we’re covered there.