LOOK BACK: We were on the road all week last week, and posts were from my phone and not complete. I won't attempt to recount every stop we made or thing we learned, but will try to catch up on some of the highlights. Monday night we spent at Dash Point State Park, in a cute little cabin.
We did a little it of hiking there, in a forest along Puget Sound.
From there, we headed south to Seaside, via Astoria. We just *had* to stop at the lovely Dismal Nitch.
An inhospitable spot on the north side of the Columbia River near its mouth to the Pacific Ocean, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark spent a few miserable days here in 1805. While here, the bedraggled Corps of Discovery had run out of fresh food and their close were literally rotting off their backs. Ugh. Winds here are take-your-breath-away strong.
The park gets its name from Clark's journal entry: "About 3 oClock the wind lulled and the river became calm, I had the canoes loaded in great haste and Set Out, from this dismal nitich where we have been confined for 6 days…"
From there, it was on to Oregon via the Astoria Bridge. The 4.1 mile-long bridge features a main span 1,232 feet in length, the longest "continuous truss" in the world.
Our quick stop in Astoria included a visit to The Arc arcade. What a great place! Dozens of the retro games we love, many of them set to free play!
We spent Tuesday night in Seaside, Ore., at the very-not-plush-but-clean-and-cheap City Center Motel. It was a short block's walk to the beach - and the Seaside Aquarium! - from there.
Imagine our delight when we discovered a swingset right there on the beach!
We didn't enter the Seaside Aquarium, but we did ogle the gray whale skeleton in its window.
I'll let Annabelle tell you a bit more about our Seaside stop ...
Seaside has a beautiful beach. When we visited, the tide was
very low. In the middle of the beach, they had a nice little swing-set that
actually went fairly high. We noticed brown stuff in the water, but the
aquarium next door let us know that this stuff wasn’t oil or sewage- it was
something called a diatom! Diatoms are single cell plants that are related to
plankton. They are a very important food source in the ocean that multiply in
winter and early summer, which is why there was so much brown in the water. We
didn’t go inside the aquarium, but they did have a window displaying multiple
marine life skeletons such as a seal, a
porpoise, and even a young grey whale! It was really pleasant and not windy, which is unusual for the Oregon Coast in April. It was fun being in Seaside.
We continued southbound, and found ourselves in Rockaway Beach eventually. We were cruising along at Highway 101 speed when our heads did a swivel at the sight of a ginormous corn dog atop a roadside restaurant.
Not only that, but I was pretty sure I saw an amusement ride on the north side of the place - a corn dog with a saddle. I ordered Christian to turn the car around!
Sure 'nuff, there was a coin operated corn dog! We scrounged up two quarters and the kids gave it a go.
Dismal Nitch - been in that neighborhood but never knew it was named that. Thanks.
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