Thursday, August 20, 2009

August 20, 2009 - Astoria, Oregon

We arrived in Astoria after lunch and moored at West Marina at a beautiful new dock. Earl opted to stay at the boat and Mousie and I went off to explore the town. There is a 100 year old trolley which runs along the Columbia River from our marina all the way through the town. It only comes once an hour or so and there did not appear to be any schedule, but it was adorable and well worth the wait. For $2 you can ride all day, or actually all week if you don’t wash off the stamp on your hand. We got off at the Maritime Museum which was quite wonderful. We were treated to a movie on the terrors of the Columbia River Bar - the graveyard of ships. Mousie was not sure she wanted to go back out over the bar having seen the movie and the 2,000+ shipwrecks plotted on the map. We were very impressed by the now retired Coast Guard 43 foot boat that could roll and very glad to not ever be on it. We found little on the Astor Fur Expedition at the Maritime Museum so we tried the Heritage Museum across the way. Their exhibits mentioned the expedition, but very briefly. Apparently Ramsay Crooks is not immortalized here. Mousie treated us to a lovely dinner and Earl introduced her to seared Ahi tuna which she liked.
We tried to leave at 8 am to catch some of the outgoing tide down the river this morning. Small problem - when Earl tried to leave the slip he discovered we had no water under us. So we had to wait a couple of hours which allowed us to take Daisy for a tour of Uniontown, the old Finish part of Astoria. She found it very exciting and left multiple calling cards.

No comments: