Astoria, OR, 6-Jul

Melody and I started off on a road trip down to California, which will last three weeks. The first half of the trip will be with the hiking group, spending a couple of nights in Oregon, then going to two National Parks in California: Redwood and Lassen Volcanic. For the first day, we met a few people in Astoria, OR, to explore the city during the afternoon.

The drive down was pretty quick. We got off I-5 at Longview and took the Lewis and Clark Bridge across the Columbia, then followed the river as we drove west to Astoria. We were pretty early, so we grabbed some groceries, filled the car, then wandered around downtown a bit. The other car had driven west on the Washington side and then crossed the Columbia at the Astoria Bridge. We met up for lunch and shared a great meal.

After lunch, we all went to the Astoria Column, climbing the 164 steps on the spiral staircase to the viewing platform on top. It was a great view in all directions, and we even got a peek at Mt. Rainier. While we were up there, we saw several people launching balsa wood airplanes from the viewing platform. Apparently, you could buy them from the gift shop; one family launched several.

After we were done with the Astoria Column, the other car went to Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark overwintered. We had been there a few years ago, so we decided to head back to town to take it easy. We had found an ice cream store, so we went to get some and relaxed while we waited until we could check into our hotel. We also looked for a café where we could do some computing, but all the ones we found were either just about to close or would close not long after that, so we grabbed the Wi-Fi password from the ice cream store and did a bit of computing there.

When it was late enough, we checked into our hotel and took a look at our room. We needed to park on the street since there was no parking lot, but we had scored a spot just around the corner. That made getting our luggage out of the car quite a bit easier than the previous spot, which was further and up a hill.

We were all going to meet up at a brewery, which was a block away from where we were staying. The other people walked from their respective hotels, and we all went in to grab a table. We decided to eat downstairs, which seemed to have more variety of food, but did go up the spiral staircase to take a peek at where you could get pizza. It was a very leisurely dinner, after which we walked around downtown for a bit. Having done a quick spin around, we all went our separate ways. Melody and I walked the couple of blocks back to our room, and we settled in for the night.