Escaping the Heat in Astoria

It's only been a few weeks, but it seems like forever ago when we decided to escape the (then) unusually hot weather for a few days. We booked a room at the Commodore Hotel in Astoria. We've been to Astoria a bunch of times but never stayed there, so we were excited to get a chance. The Commodore Hotel is a nice hotel in a really old building that was recently renovated to be super modern but cozy.

Our room was inexpensive for how nice it was because there were shared bathrooms at the end of the hall - but the shared bathrooms were so clean (and nicer than most in-room bathrooms I've had!) that it was definitely worth it. Plus, they give you nice robes and there's a sink in each room. And - best of all - it was about 20 degrees cooler in Astoria than in Portland! We spent our three days walking around Astoria, popping into little shops, and out at a nearby state park.

Fort Stevens is a big state park with lots of historical buildings - it was originally a fort built during the Civil War (way older than we expected). It's located on the very northwest tip of Oregon, where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. We saw the jetty that divides the two bodies of water, lots of pelicans, a shipwreck from 1906, and lots of creepy old military buildings!

On our last day in Astoria, we ate in the coffee shop in the hotel lobby and headed back to Portland - but not before stopping at the Astoria column! It's an old column up on a hill in Astoria that has a wide view of the town and the river - it was cloudy when we went but was still pretty...even after walking up what seemed like a million steps to the top! Only a short drive home to Portland followed - but unfortunately, the hot weather didn't disappear that week (or the next or the next)...it's been a hot summer.

Cape Lookout : Day Three

On our third and final day at Cape Lookout, it finally felt a little bit like February - it was cloudy and actually rainy instead of just drizzling. We said our goodbyes to the ocean and headed south to a different cape, Cape Kiwanda, and a delicious brewery there, Pelican Pub. After eating a yummy fishy lunch, we decided to finally, after having visited more than a few times, climb the sand dune at the end of the beach. We've always seen people climbing it and thought it looked a bit pointless, like climbing any other sand dune. But! It was in our hiking book, and our hiking book rarely leads us astray, so we thought we'd give it a try.

We were actually really surprised at what we found! It felt like we'd suddenly gone somewhere else entirely - all we could see in any direction was red sand. There was a trail along the top, with overlooks out onto sandstone (?) cliffs. It felt a little bit like that part at the beginning of Star Wars. We decided that next time we bring someone to eat at the Pelican Pub, we definitely have to climb the dune afterwards. 

We climbed back down, looked at the tide pools at the base of the cliffs, said goodbye to the ocean again, and started off back to Portland. In retrospect, the only thing wrong with our stay was that it wasn't longer! I guess we got a little lucky with the warm, mostly dry weather, but it was the farthest thing from "winter at the coast" that I imagined. 

A few foggy images from the drive home (winter fog is another of my favorite things about this place) - 

Cape Lookout : Day Two

We already posted a bit about the hike we did on the second day of our stay, but after we got back to the cabin it was still early and we couldn't stay cooped up indoors when we had 50 degree temperatures outside! So we went for a long walk down the beach. I discovered that my digital camera actually does black and white fairly decently, so even though the film camera that I brought along turned out to have a dead battery (rookie mistake!), I'm pretty happy with how the digital black and white turned out. Here are a few from the hike that I took in black and white - - 

It's funny, because I wouldn't think that black and white would be ideal for taking photos of a super green forest, but some of these photos actually capture the atmosphere better than the color photographs I took. Sometimes, color is overwhelming! I guess that's why you start out taking black and white photography classes and drawing and painting in black and white. It's easier to see the details of the forest when you aren't distracted by all of its colors. Anyway, on to the beach photos (color and b&w) - -

The beach stretches almost as far as you can see - the park has a long spit that shelters a bay - it's in our hiking book, but it was marked as "difficult", and since we'd just done a hike we figured we'd just walk down it until we got tired and then head back. We were lucky with the tides, and there was a lot of flat, hard sand to walk on. 

We returned on what we thought was the campground trail but what turned out to be a service road (oops). We did get a nice view of the campgrounds, though, and even picked out the spots we think might be best when we come back in the summer! The tent sites are even closer to the beach than our cabin was. 

Another fire to end another lovely day - a tiring day, but a good kind of tired! 
One last picture, one that shows something I didn't even know happened until we moved here - - 

In Oregon (and all over the PNW), trees grow out of other trees!

Hike : Cape Lookout

On day two of our Cape Lookout stay, we decided to do the aptly named Cape Lookout trail - a trail that goes all the way to the end of the cape in the picture above. Although you can begin this hike from our cabin, walking all the way up to the top of the cape, we didn't - the trail was closed for some reason. Instead, we drove two miles to the trailhead and started out from the top.

The trail was really nice - it ran along the edge of the cape for a while, then curved into the forested interior, then came out near the other side for a while, went back into the woods, came out again. Even though the trail was pretty muddy, it was obviously well-used - there were lots of footprints (human and dog!) even though we only passed a few hikers on the way in. 

The views from the hike were beautiful - we were a few hundred feet in the air and could see familiar landmarks far to the north and south.  The halfway point of our hike was the tip of the cape, where there was a bench set up with a view out to sea. We had a snack, took a few pictures, and left when it started to drizzle.

All the way back, it was slightly drizzling but we saw a lot more hikers going out to stake claim on the lone bench. According to our hiking book, this trail is really popular in the summer. Personally, I think we picked a perfect day!

It was extra special because we saw a bunch of trillium flowers, a wildflower that grows all over Oregon and blooms in spring. They're so pretty in their simplicity - and it's illegal to pick them because they take seven years to bloom again after being cut! We were happy to see that spring was on its way in late February. Here's our hike, plotted on a map: