Astoria
I am sitting on our balcony overlooking
the East basin and the Columbia River at our lovely hotel in Astoria.
It is early Sunday morning. My partner has gone off for her final set
of softball games and left me to enjoy the morning. A raft of sea
lions on the other side of the basin are putting up their loud
morning squak and I am watching the 4 anchored large cargo vessels as
they start to slowly swing at their anchors through the tide change.
It is low tide right now. The mud flats are readily visible just past
the little coastal trolley tracks at the river's edge. All of the
cargo ships have their bow anchors out and their sterns are pointed
at the ocean on the out going tide. The tide started turning 15
minutes ago and I am going to sit here on the edge of sunlight and
blog while I watch the vessels slowly rotate 180 degress and point
into the incoming flow. The people on the balcony next to me are
hidden but I know they are enjoying a similar pleasure as I can smell
their cigarette smoke wafting between our private spaces. The smell
is light and not unpleasant. I can well remember when I was a smoker
and the odd destructive pleasure of a cigarette in your hands while
you have that first smoke of the day. A funny thing. Like any other
admitted addict, I have to fess up that I have a permenant problem with
cigarettes. I haven't had one in 4 years (and 3 years good before
that) but I know that if I just smoke one cigarette I will be
addicted again and have to go through all of the cravings for weeks
before I feel normal again. So I will just smile at the smoky smell
and watch my ships drift.
And what, you may ask, brings me to
this little balcony of self reflection on this glorious morning? As
with most things these days, it is my lovely kayaking partner. Her
softball team had signed up for the yearly tournament in Astoria and
she has been bugging me to come with her this weekend for pretty
much the entire summer. “Spend a weekend watching you and a bunch
of other athletic women play Softball?” I ask. “Sure!!”.
It is actually enjoyable on a couple of
levels. I get to sit in the sun. I get to watch my partner out doing
her thing. And it turns out that I really enjoy watching softball. I
know how to play. I know what is going on. And I get pleasure from a good play, by either team. Just a joy to watch. And you know something?
None of the women in this tournament throws like a girl. When I was
young, almost all of the women I knew threw like a girl, but at 57,
all of the women I see throw like a man; a man with a good arm. (i.e.
better than me). Now what is up with that? Am I less sexist, or are
girls less girly? (My partner is indicating that there could be a
third alternative. I wish she would put that baseball bat away).
For this particular weekend, my partner
and I had decided to come to Astoria on Friday night and just stay
the entire weekend. We got a room in the same hotel that her team was
staying in and I sort of figured we would be doing a lot of team
socializing. Didn't quite work out that way. We had some extra time so we
enjoyed the drive over. We took the “short cut” through Mist and
Jewel. This is a long windy road that goes between 26 (the main route
to the coast from Portland) and Astoria and avoids the congestion
(and highway) that is Seaside. It also takes you through the Elk
sanctuary and we stopped for a bit to enjoy the look of the
creatures.
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| Heard of Elk? |
But, because of this we arrived late at our hotel “The Astoria Dunes”. It was a old cheap little beach
place under the Oregon Washington Bridge. From the outside, it looked
pretty much like I expected; a 2 story strip motel built in the 50s.
The parking lot was full (we got the last place) and the NO VACANCY
sign was lit. But we had one of the “Good” rooms reserved. A
King, No Smoking, River view room. Wow. (Hint: you should expect a
little trouble these days if having a No Smoking room is not the
requirement for the entire establishment. Smoking on the balcony and
such aside). The check-in girl had a couple of people that she had to
turn away before she could get us our key. But we had a corner room
on the second floor and it looked like it was going to be pretty
nice. It looked that way. But it didn't smell that way. It smelled
like someone had spilled a bucket of bleach in the bathroom and
entry. Now, bleach is not a horrible smell. It is like being in the
pool area. But this was pretty damn strong. We opened the windows and
door and the sea breeze pretty quickly blew out the air in the little
room. But as soon as we closed the door the fumes reassserted
themselves. It was bad. I was going to ignore it, but then I started
coughing and I realized the chlorine gas fumes were burning my eyes
and my throat. It just wasn't tenable. My partner agreed. We grabbed
our stuff and went out in search of other digs.
And now for the fun news. Do you know
what the 2nd weekend in August is in Astoria? Well, it
turns out it is the Astoria Regatta, but never mind that. Because every weekend in August is Something in every little
town on the beach. This weekend was the Regatta in Astoria, but it
was beach volleyball in Seaside and the Fraking Summer everywhere
else. No rooms. Not just no rooms but “laugh in your face at the
suggestion “ No rooms. So, it is 11:00 on a Friday night and we are
on the coast and we don't have a place to sleep. We decide to go
back to Portland for the night and try again tomorrow.
Which is what we did. Turns out we
could get a room for Saturday night in a really nice place (Hampton
Inn and Suites) in Astoria. More money. Less noxious gasses. And I
get to blog to the lovely barking of the sea lions.
From experimental evidence I now know
that the “lovely barking” of the stellar sea lions is not
confined to any special time of the day or night. They are perfectly
happy to put up one hullabaloo 24 hours a day. It is sort of a
reassuring and natural sound, though. Certainly didn't have any
trouble getting to sleep last night, even with balcony door open to
let in the night and the barking.
So. A weekend watching women's
softball. My kayak partner and I figured I could only do so much of
that and so we put my Journey up on top of her new little Subaru and
brought all of my adventure gear to the beach. Had to bring more gear
than I usually do because I was going out alone. Had to bring my solo
adventure gear. That mainly means bringing a good paddle float (to
assist in getting back into the boat I just flipped over) and my
pump to clear the cockpit of water after re-entry. I also brought my
dry suit, but it turned out to be just too nice a day to wear it.
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| One side of the road is Softball |
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| The other Side of the Road is the river. |
I watched the first half of the first
game. My partners team was doing OK. Down a couple of runs but plenty
of time to catch up. My partner was playing second and I got to see
her make a couple of good plays. But then it was time to go. We have
this “places to Kayak in the North West” book and it said that a
place to paddle was on Young's River, which just happens to be that
water right beside the softball field. There is a public ramp at the
Astoria Yacht club that is just 100 yards down the road. So I took
the car and the boat and went on over there.
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| Astoria Yacht Club |
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| Cool Old Gill Net Boats. Note all of the little tubes sticking up |
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| Hey, that is Saddle Mountain !! |
A guess that the Astoria Yacht Club
must have been something 50 or 100 years ago, but today it is just
the name of the road that leads on down to a small senior center and
a pier with an ancient fleet of gill net boats moored. And a ramp. I
loaded up my kayak and set off up river. The tide was in it's last
hour of ebb so the current was going up river and I just sort of
coasted inland with it. As with most places that people have been on
the Columbia, there are a lot of pilings in the water. (Previous to
this writing I would have called a Piling a Pilon. But I now know
that a pilon is not a telephone pole driven into the mud to build a
pier or other structure but rather a canonical loaf of sugar). They
gave me something to judge the water current. Perhaps a knot? Pretty
fast at any rate. I also had the wind starting to pick up a bit and
blow on my back. Sending me faster and faster away from the landing.
At one point I found a rather cool ship wreck. A wooden hull. Perhaps
a barge. Wood planks tied together with iron rods. I also found a
few strange moored rafts. They had all of these weird plastic pipe
parts that stuck straight up in the air. I realized that the mooring
at the ramp (where all of those gill net boats were) had the same
kind of structure. What is going on with that. I think they are some
sort of device to assist in commercial oyster farming. But why would
they be built into the commercial fleet dock? Need to do some
research and report back here.
Report back: I could find NOTHING.
Nothing that looked like these things in the pictures.
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| Oysters? Clams? Alien Breeding Grounds? |
All of this is vaguely interesting but
more and more I began to realize that I just wasn't having very much
fun. I was out kayaking and doing what I love to do, but I was
lonely. It seems that in the last year and a half I have grown out of
the habit of solitude. I wanted my partner along. I wanted someone
to talk to. Someone to share with. Someone to pull my ass out of the
water should I do something silly and capsize my boat. I just wasn't
comfortable with myself out there on the large water. I should note
that I am Ok sitting here right now alone on the balcony. But then
and there I just wasn't that happy.
And I wasn't sure when high tide was.
Was I going to be working against wind and tide to get myself back to
the car? I am thinking I was. So I turned around.
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| This is my ship wreck. |
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| Astoria Column. About as close as I got this weekend. |
I don't think I ever got to the river
proper. I was still out in the larger and pretty much exclusively
tidal part of the bay. Strangely Empty of people out there. I saw one
little motor boat and a cormorant. Strange. I did get a pretty good
workout on the way back to the ramp. Wind in my face and the tide
just coming to a turn. I arrived back at the yacht club right at
slack high.
Turned out to be good timing. My
partner had just finished her second game and the team was heading
over to the pizza place that was right across the street from the
landing.
She had a good story. A little after I
left they had a couple of deer come down out of the woods and wander
over onto the playing field. The players had to actively chase the
deer off the field before they could continue play. Pretty funny. In
Portland it often happens that a dog will wander out on the field (I
mean, there is a BALL out there) but in Astoria, it is deer. And
overhead, a bald eagle.
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| Softball Deer Hunting |
And now we are in Astoria.
Astoria is a historic and quaint little
community that is still trying to figure out if it wants to be a
commercial port or an artist colony. Perhaps commercial port is
putting it a big strongly. This town has guarded the entrance to the
Columbia for a couple of hundred years and the pilots that bring all
of the Portland shipping cross the infamous Columbia Bar come out of
here. There is a rather nice merchant marine museum downtown that
talks about this activity. Right now, out my window, I can see 4
large Grain or other bulk cargo vessels (not car carriers or
container ships). I don't know why they are sitting at anchor. More
research to do.
Astoria was founded as a fur trading
town by John Astor. I found this one site that goes into great detail
about the city in highly suspicious grammar. I suspect it was a site
built for a high school project or some such as the prose tends to
wander around the topic something like a flow of consciousness. You
know, when your teacher asked you to write 200 words about the
history of Astoria and you wrote: “Astoria has a rich and varied
history. Rich because of the rich things that happened there and
varied because of the various things that happened there in their
rich and varied history”.
Regardless of all that it seems to be a
general theme that Astoria is the oldest permanent (white) settlement
west of the Rockies and was indeed established by John Astor as a
center for the then thriving fur trade. In it's heyday it seems to
have been something of a North West Monterey with it's own cannery
row and fishing business. I don't understand where all of the fishing
and canning for the Pacific ocean went. It seems that there are a lot
of old towns that used to be canning towns and are now places with
decaying wharves. Where is all the canning? I seem to still be able to
get cans of tuna and salmon at the grocery. (Answer: Alaska) Now a
days the waterfront of Astoria is taken up by a burgeoning tourist
trade. There is an entire historic hotel built out over the water on
old wharves and further up-river Rogue Brewery has taken up residence
on a different historic wharf. There are also several new chain
hotels (one of which we were staying in) and the
maritime
museum.
We took a little nap before dinner. We
were wakened by a little rumble and a lot of bell ringing as the
Astoria Street Car came rattling down the tracks below our balcony.
There is an old rail line (and walking trail) that runs along the
entire riverfront of Astoria. The natives have a single car electric
trolley running on it. The eastern most stop is right by our hotel.
The tracks go on, but they are blocked and the trolley stops here and
lets people off to walk out on the pier to the Rogue pub and meeting
house. It is a historic trolley that looks a lot like the old
electric trolleys they have running in San Francisco. They don't have
the overhead wires up here so they have a little auxiliary car in the
front (back?) that has a quiet and clean generator of some sort
(perhaps Natural Gas?) that supplies the power for the electric
train.
A cute little thing. $1 a
ride ($2 for the entire Day !!). I want to ride.
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| Astoria Street Car (evidently not named "Desire") |
We walked out the pier to the Rogue
public house. Rogue is a well established micro brewery in Oregon.
They have won many awards for their beer (I like “Dead Guy IPA”)
and their meeting houses are fun and rustic burger and brew joints.
My partner had a house made Root Beer and I enjoyed one of the afore
mentioned Dead Guys.
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| Rogue |
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| View From Rogue |
As we were walking to our car we had a
treat, out on the river was a stern paddle wheeler making its way up
the Columbia. I had seen that boat when we were driving through town.
I remember thinking, “where did that guy come from”. A stern
wheeler is a flat bottomed river boat. It sure didn't come up the
coast from California. That would be a recipe for disaster. So I
looked it up. The
American
Empress is a paddle wheel cruise ship that plies back and forth
up the Columbia (and Snake) river. Starts in Portland, goes down to
Astoria, then upriver to the Dales and Tri-city area. A one week trip
each way. $4K. Could be fun but seems a bit pricey.
Then we drove into town for dinner.
Did I mention that Astoria is Old?
Perhaps not European Old. Perhaps not even east coast old. But there
are a number of buildings with 1800's in the dates and the general
feel of downtown is one of that old american downtown that I like so
much. Like walking down main-street at Disney land.
Lots of art stores. And tonight was the
Art Walk. So we went to look at a number of little artist shows while
listening to live music and having people offer us free wine and
cheese. The art was pretty amazing. I saw a number of reasonably
priced works that I was tempted to pick up for myself or gifts. Then
I remembered my closet full unhung art. Still haven't quite finished
the two single household blending..... Need to come back here sometime
earlier in the day because a lot of the interesting nick nack shops
(the ones that didn't have “art” per se) were not open this late
in the evening. We also found ourselves a very fine restaurant. One
of many to choose from. I had salmon.
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| Salmon Art. On the wall in the restaurant. |
Want to talk a bit about something I
saw on the sidewalk downtown. There were a lot of metal plates and
such on the sidewalk that I associate with having something under the
city. Like basements for delivery of goods and such. And next to the
plates would be 4x8 foot concrete slabs with thick pieces of exotic
glass embedded in them. The glass was green or purple or blue, though
most were purple. I wanted to think that they were some sort of old
functional lighting for basement scheme, but the purple glass was
just too dang pretty for that. Damn, yet more research.
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| Purple Glass Vault Lights. |
I found a few
sites
that talk about these lovely “vault lights”. They are indeed a
feature to provide natural light to a basement. They used to be very
common and are now more of a historic feature. I find the science of
the glass pretty interesting. It used to be common practice to add
manganese to the glass to counteract other impurities and make the
“green” glass more clear. But over time and exposure to UV this
will cause the glass to turn the wonderful purple color that I saw on
the streets of Astoria. I love it when I find some little thing
whilst out exploring and when I do a little research I find that the
little thing has a long involved explanation in history and science. (Editor's note: He also loves it when he finds a way to use the word 'whilst')
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| And it was a patriotic Full Moon, to boot. |
We got back to our room and we were
just starting to wind down for the night (and watch an episode of
“True Blood” on Amazon) when someone starting shooting a shot gun
out our window. WTF? That was quickly answered by the distinctive
report of several rounds fired from a lighter caliber pistol. At
first I was very concerned (jumping out of bed type of concerned) and
then I figured it out. Fire Works !! We hurried outside. Sure enough,
Regatta weekend comes complete with some very nice fire works. They
were going off just a few hundred yards away on a rock jetty that
extended out into the river. We had a wonderful view from our
Balcony. Boom Boom Boom. It even shut the sea lions up (for about
half an hour).
Which brings us up to the time I am writing the main part of this blog while I sit on our Balcony and watch the tide change. The tide change in a big river is pretty impressive. Think about it. There are two big forces of nature, Tide and River, meeting out there and for a while one is going to overcome the other. So I sat and watched the large moored ships swing at anchor. It looked like this:
After my partner's game, we did walk out on the
huge river breakwater, that creates the protected mooring areas, to
see the Sea Lions. They have their own little floating dock and just
lay out there barking at each other. It was a waterfront area that
caused me some consternation. It was large protected area with a
very overdone and expensive breakwater (you could drive a semi
tractor trailer out there, for gosh sakes) but all of the boats
moored were ancient hulks. Where do the rich guys park their yachts?
Not here. Not at the Astoria Yacht Club. Must be a place I haven't
found yet.
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| So what is going on here? Several of the Sea Lions had clear Numbers burned or cut into their backs. Why would this be? Who is doing this? (ah: That explains the trap too) |
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| That cage back there is a trap for branding. |
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| Interesting Boat. No Idea what it carries. (evidently lumber) |
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| This is the break water. |
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| Some of the old boats out there in the anchorage. |
As a closing note, I will say that we
drove back on Highway 30 which sort of goes along the Columbia back
to the Portland area. On the way there we passed through half a dozen
little communities that were set up on little tributaries to the
mighty river. Tributaries that sure looked like they would be great
for starting places for future adventures. Some islands out there in
the Columbia that may need camping and exploring by the Action Adventure Team.
