Day 71 – May 20 – Aberdeen, Washington

We set a goal of completing our visits to the Oregon coast and to move into Washington today.  We departed the Big Spruce campground about 9:30 and worked our way up the coast to Cannon Beach.  While we were still in Tillamook, Rick got a call back from a campground we were trying to get into near Seattle for the Memorial Day weekend.  He pulled over on the side of the road – but still in the bike lane and part of the traffic lane.  I pulled in behind him and turned on my flashers.  We were there about 5 minutes and a police car pull into a lot beside Rick and with some not so friendly hand jesters made it clear we were to move on.  We moved into traffic and our Tillamook policeman made sure we exited his town before he turned around.

Cannon Beach is home to the famous Haystack sea stack rock.  We found the town without any problems and then tried to find a place to park the campers.  Because Rick has the car behind his camper, he is not able to back up.  Therefore we went looking for a place to park while he waited on the highway.  We drove back and forth along the beachfront two or three times and finally found a RV parking lot some distance from the rock.  I call him on the CB and told him where we were parked.  He made it to the lot and unhooked the car so we could try to park closer to the beach.  After a couple or more short passes up and down the beachfront we parked on a side street near the walkway to the beach.  The rock was still some distance away, out on the edge of the water.

We walked out on the sand and started taking pictures.  The rock is a bird sanctuary and you are only allowed so close to it because of the nesting birds.  Here are some pictures we took by the Haystack rock.

Not sure what these are, anyone know?

Sea anemones

Starfish

Common Murres

Haystack Rock do you see the puppy?

Sea anemones

This might be a picture of some Puffins, it is hard to tell for sure

We headed on up the coast northward towards Astoria, Oregon – the last city before entering Washington.  There were a couple of things to see in the Astoria area – Mary wanted to see a ship wreck at the Fort Stevens State Park, and we wanted to see the Astoria column.

Rick made a wrong turn on a side road and ended up at a military base entrance.  I was able to turn around on a side street and told him I would go on and get gas while he got back on the road.  Before we got to the gas station we saw the sign for Fort Stevens and I called him on the CB to let him know about his turn.  So while we filled up with gas they went to see the ship wreck. 

As I was pulling out of the station, we saw a sign for Lewis and Clark National Park.  We went to the park to see where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1805 -1806 at Fort Clapsop.  The fort was named for the Clapsop Indians who lived at the mouth of the Columbia River.  We watched an interesting film telling of their time near the Indians from the Indian point of view.  The film spoke about how the “cloth men”, as the non-Indians were called because they wore cloth instead of skins or cedar clothes, built on the Clapsop land without asking permission, killed the animals on the Indian’s land and otherwise did as they wanted.

One of the rooms in the fort, fire pit

How the fort would have looked - this was built in 2006 for the 200th anniversary 

We returned to our camper and had some messages from Rick.  He didn’t hear me tell him we would meet at the column and they went on to Washington.  We drove to the Astoria Column, high on a hill.  The views were outstanding and we recorded them in pictures. 

We drove across the Columbia River Bridge and Dorrie talked to Rick.  Turns out the two lighthouses we planned to see just inside Washington required a ten-dollar fee just to view the lighthouses for a few minutes.  We wrote off those from our list and moved on to the Grays Harbor lighthouse in Westport.  We found the lighthouse easily and took our pictures.

Our goal for the day was to make it to Aberdeen and we were about 20 miles from it when we left the lighthouse in Westport.

We are going to try to rest tonight on the Aberdeen Wal-Mart parking lot.  There is a train track about 75 feet from our camper and a train just made its way past a few minutes ago.  I hope that was the last one of the night.