Oregon

The weekend before my birthday was a public holiday, so after work on the Friday we drove across the border and towards Oregon. We were going to stay in Astoria, with my Mum's penfriend of 50 years, LaRee. My sister also lived with her for 6 months when she was 17, so there has been a family connection there for a while! We had a beautiful sunset on the way down - the summer sunsets in this part of the world are beautiful. Astoria is just on the border of Washington and Oregon, on the Oregon side, at the mouth of the Columbia river. It's about a 6 hours drive from Vancouver, plus border crossing time.

Saturday morning we went for a drive up to the Astoria column, which has a great lookout over the area. We had a great view of the bridge spanning the river between the two states - all 6.5km of it! Breakfast was at a great little cafe which reminded me a lot of home - very "Wholemeal"ish for those of you that know it. This is the kind of cafe that is missing in Vancouver and makes me drink Starbucks. Amazing cardamom buns and cardamom coffee - Mmmmm cardamom is highly underutilised in everyday life. Astoria has a lot of great Victorian architecture as well - some great buildings.

Andrew and I then went down the coastline - when we visited LaRee when Sheryn was living with her, I was only 7 - and hadn't been back since. I remembered bits and pieces but was really looking forward to seeing places I'd remembered. The big one was Cannon Beach, as that's where LaRee used to live, so we'd stayed there for a couple of weeks. The weather wasn't the greatest (but we're used to that by now!), but part of what makes the coastline so beautiful is the weather and the moodiness the clouds lend to it. We stopped for a look around Cannon Beach, lots of quaint little shops, arts/crafts stuff, and salt-water-taffy a-plenty. 25 years later I still have nightmares about the stuff! We went down as far as Tillamook, and went to the French cheese factory - lots of tastings - cheese, wine, dips, preserves, mmmm....... That evening we went for dinner at the Supper Club in Astoria. I had the most amazing cajun prawn linguine - I have since tried to recreate it at home, and it came close - but this stuff was amazing. I'd drive 6 hours just for some more of that!

Sunday morning and LaRee and her husband Andy took us sightseeing - first to the markets, which were great - there was a lot of willpower needed not to buy anything, and now there has been a bit of regret at not buying anything! Oh well, you can't have it all. It was raining on and off, but luckily by the time we got out to the coast again it had eased for a bit. We went to where there was an old shipwreck on the beach - very cool. It's the "Peter Iredale" and was wrecked in 1906 - so over 100 years old.


We drove over the aforementioned bridge to Washington state, and up to Cape Disappointment. There is a lighthouse there, and more rugged coastline. Lovely. It was so nice to be out of the cities, as even when we drive down to Washington state we stick around the cities as we're normally there to shop! We stopped at a small town called Ilwaco, where we went to a couple of art galleries, and one couple who have a gallery there actually spend 6 months of every year living in New Zealand! A lot of their paintings had NZ influences - pohutakawa etc.

In the evening as dinner was cooking, LaRee took us down to see the sea lions. Just down by the docks there are masses of them - as soon as you get out of the car you can hear them, it's amazing!
They're barking like mad - most of them are pretty sleepy, but there were a few that were perky enough. Apparently they cause quite a bit of havoc with the boats and fisherman, but they were really entertaining for us! So much so that the next morning we went back for more on the way home!