Astoria Adventures

We have been doing so much this summer. Usually I feel that summer just kinda slips away and we don't get time to do much, so I made a plan this year. I stuck some goal-- some random adventure into every weekend. And we have been so busy doing, that we have hardly had time to do anything. We work all week, get everything put away from the weekends adventure, squeeze in reading and schooling with the boys, catching up on last weeks laundry, then packing again for this weekends trip. Exhausting. As we packed up for our camping trip to Astoria, Oregon, Kobe folded his arms and said "No more camping!" I don't blame him. We have already went camping once as a family and he had only just gotten back from a 5 day long trip with a friend. But the trip was planned and so we went.

I was a little late on the reserving, so everything on the north Oregon coast was booked up. I did a little bit of googling and found out about a tiny primitive campground just 17 miles out of Astoria. They don't take reservations, so we decided to try our luck. I had no idea what we would do if we couldn't get in here. Luckily it's only about a 2 hour drive from home, so I suppose we could have just come back home if worse came to worse. But as luck would have it, there was a spot! Even after not getting on the road as early as I had hoped, and this campground only had 3 sites! And it was only $5 per night. We arrived just after noon, pulled in, drove right past the campground down the logging road (there has to be more, right?) turned around and stopped at the one empty site. We snatched it up and began to erect our tents and cook lunch. It wasn't long before another family showed up, drove down that logging road, turned around. And another, and another. One couple in a small trailer chatted with us for a bit, decided to try their luck at another campground, but ended up back in the evening. They parked their trailer in the parking lot (which was a decent size considering the size of the campground) they said they were bummed about not having a fire pit to sit around, so they shared ours one night.

just behind our campsite

our weekend home

After setting up and lunch, we headed into Astoria to see what we could see. It was a beautiful day, a tad chilly (as it always is on the Oregon coast), and our first stop was to see the "Goonies house". This is the house they used in the movie. It's just a regular house and actually doesn't look much like it did in the movie. There are actually people living there, so all you can do is walk up the drive and take pictures of it. So we did.

View of the columbia fro Goonies driveway.

My little Goonies. 

Next we drove into Astoria to have a look. We stopped at the aquatic center which I had read about before we came. The person who had reviewed it online said it was pretty impressive and that it had waterslides and a "wave pool". It was only $15 for the whole family to have a swim so we couldn't pass it up. It did not end up having a wave pool. :( And it did have 2 waterslides, one large and one mini. The kids could use the mini slide but they didn't have the large one in operation because they said it wasn't busy enough to have the staff on duty needed to run it. This was a bummer for my boys. But they swam in the kid pool which was about 3 feet deep all over so Asher had no problems touching, there was also a lap pool which I and the older boys utilized, and a hot tub strategically placed where parents could sit in it and see the entire kids pool quite easily. There was also a small toddler pool, which we did not use.

After we had had enough of swimming for the day, we were headed back to camp, but Brandon decided he wanted to drive across the long bridge that went over the Columbia River into Washington. On the other side we saw signs for "Fort Columbia" so we went to check it out. It was an old military fort and it was nice that there was no one else around so my kids could explore the whole thing, running up and down the stairs and hollering to their hearts content without bothering anyone. Kobe was in heaven and asked if there were costumes somewhere so he could put them on to get the full effect. :)

 We were pretty exhausted after our long day so we headed back to camp.

We had a lovely time at the little campground that night. Marshmallows over the campfire, potato and ground beef foil dinners. It was so nice to not be packed into a huge campground (parkinglot?). We couldn't even see our closest camping neighbors.

Morning came and it was off again to more adventures. First stop was the Astoria Column. $1 annual parking pass. 164 step climb to the top. Gorgeous views. We really couldn't have gotten any luckier with the weather, I think Astoria gets about 4 sunny days a year and we were there for 3 of them. Asher was so proud of himself for making it all the way to the top!

Boat dedicated to an indian chief who was a friend to the lewis & Clark expedition.

View from the top.

Next was Fort Stevens State Park. We ate lunch next to a cute little lake, played on the windy beach, explored a 100 year old ship wreck that still sits on the beach and checked out 2 more military forts. 

After another exhausting day we rested at camp. Explored some trails and the Creek. Next morning it was time to pack up and be on our way. But this was not the end of the adventure. Instead of heading east (straight home) we went west to drive south on 101 for a bit before going home. We saw a little kite shop near cannon beach and nearly screeched our tires to stop and check it out. The owner was a very friendly old hippy who gave us some info on the local beaches (as we were looking for someplace to check out tide pools and climb on rocks). He told us about hug point which has some sea caves only accessible at low tide. He gave us a free tide table booklet and as it turned out we had perfect timing, low tide was about an hour away. We thanked him by purchasing 2 pirate flags, one for the garage or "man cave" and one for the boys' bedroom. 

Hug point at low tide was lovely. We explored the caves, the boys picked up about a dozen whole sand dollars. And we walked on an old wagon road that was carved out of the edge of the cliff. You can actually see the ruts from the wagons who made their way around the mountain to this otherwise inaccessible beach 100 years ago. 

This old wagon route was one of the last things we checked out while we were at Hug Point. The tide was starting to come in by then and we had to make a run for it as the waves were coming in, to get back to the beach and our van. 

Whew!! So that was our weekend, how was yours??