Astoria

Astoria lies just inside the mouth of the Columbia River, about two hours of winding road from Portland's airport. My initial research led me to expect a tourist town, probably because one of its claims to fame is the location of the Goonies house. And they're very proud of the Goonies. And who wouldn't be? Goonies never say die!

Astoria has a lot more going on, though. For instance, they're also the locations of Kindergarten Cop, Short Circuit, and Free Willy! I am only half joking. However, Astoria does have a surprising number of museums for such a small town. They have a small but amusing film museum located in the former county jail. They have a local history museum and an absolutely incredible maritime museum, which you could spend hours in. There's at least one other museum which I didn't have time to explore.

It's also near the terminus of the Lewis and Clark expedition. It's really near a lot of interesting things. There are the remains of a steel-hulled square rigger shipwreck. It's been sitting there since 1906. There's a stretch of coastline that apparently represents the only part of the continental United States to be shelled by the Japanese during World War II. There's a Coast Guard training station and an old Military battery. You'll find several lighthouses in different states of repair.

And if you find none of that interesting, well, there's a good tiki bar called Dead Man's Isle. Several brew pubs. A trolley. And there is a constant stream of cargo ships being guided past the bar by the pilot.

The Pacific coast, of course, looks absolutely stunning.

Everywhere you look, you see a mix of bright green vegetation, the changing ocean, and distant mountains.

Of course, many of these mountains are actually volcanoes. And the ocean wind and rain slowly erode away these rocks. Everything is changing very slowly. Unless it changes quite quickly and violently.

Not all the change is natural, however. The jetties at the mouth of the Columbia River represent an immense engineering project that has changed the flow of the water and also the shape of the land.

The parks around Cape Disappointment are a great place to see how the land has changed and also how our engineering projects are slowly being destroyed by nature.

You can see a lot of evidence of that decay of human work along the shoreline. Many piers have been reduced to rotting stumps.