The Oregon Coast

On our trip to Oregon and Washington we only had one day to visit the Oregon coast.  We left Portland early and headed to Cannon Beach.  We got there early and it was still cool enough to need to wear jackets as we walked down the beach toward Haystack Rock.  We found out that this was the day of the 50th Annual Sandcastle Contest and were there early enough to see the trucks drive down the beach loaded with buckets and shovels.
 

Knowing it would take several hours to build the huge sand sculptures we drove into town to shop at some really nice shops and galleries mixed in with cute cafes and beautiful bright flowers.


I can see how people could enjoy a stay of several days in the Cannon Beach area!

 
We continued north on the Oregon coast to the town of Seaside to visit the spot of the end of the trail for Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition.






We reached our destination of Astoria and had a busy afternoon seeing the sights of this interesting town at the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. 

The view was beautiful from the Astoria Column on the top hill in Astoria whose streets reminded me of a small version of San Fransisco.

The Columbia River Maritime Museum was a very informative and a well put together museum that explained the importance of this area and its dangerous waters 

After learning about the numerous shipwrecks that had happened around the Astoria area we went to visit the Peter Iredale's remains from its shipwreck in 1906 on the beach at Fort Stevens Park on the Oregon Coast.

 After a really busy day we treated ourselves to a very nice dinner at the Silver Salmon Grille in downtown Astoria.  Then we returned to our super nice Hampton Inn with its spectacular view from our balcony of ships going up and down the Columbia River.

It had a pretty awsome view of the sunset too!