Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Washington and Oregon Coast
We left Vancouver on Monday morning and drove to Seattle to meet my old high school friend, Daryl. The last time we saw one another was at graduation, 46 years ago. Daryl came to Seattle in the 70's driving an old VW bus and decided to stay. We met he and his wife De De at their office and they treated Mary & I to lunch at a great neighborhood Asian restaurant. We left with enough food in doggie bags to last us until we get to Oklahoma. It was so fun meeting them, Mary & I were smiling about it all day.
After lunch we drove southeast, hoping to get a look at Mts Rainier and St Helens. There were low clouds covering both mountain tops even though we drove closeby, so we continued back to I-5 and spent the night in Longview, near the Oregon border.
Tuesday we started out heading west along the Columbia River on the Washington side. We took a backroads bridge and ferry across into Oregon and wound up on Rt 30 which took us west until it ended in Astoria, Oregon. On a hunch later that night I checked in my road atlas and it turned out to be the same Rt 30 that becomes Lancaster Pike near Philly and ends at the ocean in Atlantic City, NJ.
At Astoria we turned south on Oregon's coastal road Rt 101, a scenic road for its entire length in the state. In the town of Tillamook we stopped at an air museum housed in an old WW2 blimp hangar. The hangar is over 200 ft high and big enough to have housed 8 blimps at the same time; the framing was made of only local lunber and it still looks great and works. There are wonderfully restored WW2 era planes kept there in flying condition.
We continued south down through the ocean mist stopping at a giant sea cave that's been turned into a sea lion watching tourist attraction. Finally we stopped for the night in the town of Florence, more than half way down the state. On the recommendation of the guy behind the counter at our hotel, we got off the main road and went into the riverside old part of town. We had a great seafood dinner at a pub named Waterfront Depot; there was also a really good local Porter on draft.
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