Astoria, OR

Columbia River Maritime Museum

On Wednesday morning it was raining pretty good, so it's a good thing we went to the beach the day before. Instead of any outdoor activities, we opted to go to the museum. It was much bigger inside than we realized and actually kept us busy for several hours.

 

 

After visiting all the indoor exhibits we headed outside to go aboard the Lightship Columbia, which is a floating lighthouse that was decommissioned in 1979 and has ever since been on display at the museum.

For lunch we went across the street to a tiny food truck/boat called The Bowpicker, which is actually the most highly reviewed "restaurant" in all of Astoria, at least on Yelp anyway. They serve one thing and one thing only...fish (albacore tuna) and chips.

We stood in line for a good 30 minutes, but it was SO worth it. The best fish and chips I've ever tasted!

 Astoria Column

After lunch we went to the Astoria Column, which is a tower overlooking the Columbia River. The Column itself is 125 feet tall with a 164 step spiral staircase inside that leads to the observation deck at the top. The staircase inside is somewhat narrow, so it's close quarters when you have people going down and up at the same time. Also there isn't a railing or much to hold onto when you're on the inner side of the stairs climbing up. We only got a few flights up before it became too overwhelming for Tyler and we had to take him back down. He chose to wait on the benches outside while the rest of us went up to the top.

 

The view from the observation deck.

We bought a small plane in the gift shop for $1 that you can launch from the top. It was super windy up there and Kyle's plane caught a good gust of wind and flew right up and over the trees towards the ocean.

After we were done it was late afternoon and time to leave Astoria and check in at the Great Wolf Lodge.

Northern Oregon Coast

This year we wanted to take Kyle to the Great Wolf Lodge for his birthday so we decided to make it an extended vacation and also visit some of the beaches along the northern coast of Oregon and then travel north to the Centralia/Grand Mound area to stay at the lodge and then go even farther north to visit Olympia.

 

We arrived in Astoria, OR late last Monday night to discover that the hotel we booked through Groupon had never received our reservation and were completely sold out with even their emergency rooms gone. So the manager of the hotel called around and found us a place to stay at Comfort Suites. Whew! It would have been bad if weren't able to find a place to stay for the night!

 

With a day of beaches planned for Tuesday, our first stop was at Seaside Beach, OR.

Seaside Beach

It was fairly cool in the morning with temperatures in the high 60's, low 70's so we kept our sweaters on for quite a while and stayed out of the water for the most part. We brought plenty of sand toys for the boys to build castles or dig around with and also a kite to fly if it was windy enough.

 

We stayed at the Seaside Beach for the entire morning until finally we took a break for lunch. Afterwards we headed south a little bit with the intention of going to Cannon Beach, but stopped just shy at Indian Beach at Ecola State Park where we spent the rest of the day.

 Indian Beach at Ecola State Park

We had to drive for several miles through narrow, windy, forested roads until we finally got to a lookout point and the view was gorgeous!

 

That speck out there on the water is the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse. Kind of hard to capture the image without my long lens.

That was just a lookout point however, so we still had to get back in the car and drive farther to get access to the beach. By that point in the day it was warm enough for everyone to leave their jackets behind, but the water was still too cold to do anything other than dip your feet in, so we just went for a walk and explored the beach.

Where's Waldo: Part 4

This week we visited the last 4 shops on our Waldo passport, which were all up in the Northeast side of town.

 

First we stopped at Barrett Orchards, also known as Washington Fruit Place and The Big Red Barn. Tyler easily spotted Waldo hidden among the Liberty water bottles.

Next we went to Revolution Cycles.

Tyler found Waldo before anyone else, who was smartly standing near the air conditioning unit.

At Sharky's Pizza Waldo was well hidden. It wasn't until we were sitting down eating our lunch that Tyler happened to glance up and notice him in the mouth of a shark.

And lastly, at the Kid's Castle Waldo was hiding at the snack counter.

 

Now that our passport is complete we'll have to head over to Inklings and turn it in for some coupons, an "I found Waldo" pin, and enter into the prize drawing.

I thought it'd be fun to dress in costume for the party/prize drawing at the end of the month, so I bought red and white striped shirts for all three of us and made Waldo hats by recycling a few old t-shirts I never wear anymore. I used some red yarn to make pom-pom balls for the top of the hats. Both Tyler and Rick were amazed by the pom-poms, but really for someone who made countless yarn dolls in Girl Scouts...it was no big deal.

I think we can all agree: Tyler makes the perfect Waldo!

Pool Time

The temperature around here has been around 100 degrees for a week straight and from the looks of the forecast, it's only going to get hotter. It supposed to be 108 degrees by next Wednesday. Yikes!

 

So in an effort to keep the boys cool, I went to a couple of stores looking for sprinkler toys. I just wanted something that I could attach to the hose, that would spray water around and the boys could run through, but everything seems to be sold out for the season. The next best option was to fill up Tyler's old kiddie pool for a few days, but that's not something I can leave out long term on the grass. Next week we'll probably have to break out the water balloons.

 

I left the kiddie pool out for about 3 days and Kyle had a great time...in fact he kept going outside and getting in the pool all dressed in his regular clothes. Since he was being a renegade and not listening to the rules, which were that he needed to be wearing swim clothes and that he needed me or brother outside with him, I just had to empty the pool.

In the evenings on Tuesdays and Thursdays Tyler has swim lessons, which is nice for him to cool off, but meanwhile Kyle and I roast over on the side of the pool. So hot! They need to set up some misters for all the parents that are sitting around.

And that's when I had the idea (blistering away at Tyler's swim lesson) to go to the public pool afterwards for the open night session. It seems kind of silly to go from one pool directly to another, but the plain fact of the matter is that we're not members of the gym and can't use the pool except for Tyler's swim lessons. So off we went to the public pool.

Ahhhh, sweet relief!

Where's Waldo: Part 3

On our ongoing quest to find Waldo in Yakima, we were able to visit six more stores this week. This time we hit the stores along Summitview, then Ron's Coin and Book downtown which was closed last time we tried, and then the museum on Tieton on our way home.

 

Our first stop was at Johnson's Orchard. Once again Tyler found Waldo before me, but he totally gave it away when he went into this trancelike stare.

Next on our list was Black Bear Frozen Yogurt where Waldo was easily spotted in the corner of the store.

The idea of going into an ice cream store and not buying any ice cream is out of the realm of understanding for the boys so we filled up some cups and enjoyed an after-lunch treat. In the past Kyle has always had to share with Rick or I, but this day Kyle claimed the cup all for himself.

Next up: The Pet Pantry.

Tyler found Waldo hidden in the soda machine before I could even get through the front door. More time to browse the store I guess. I ended up getting a few gigantic sprays of millet for Max.

Then we went to Off The Record, a music store with a real hipster vibe. Thankfully Tyler has finally learned to whisper otherwise offensive comments, as he informed me of how smelly the place was. Much to everyone's relief we quickly found Waldo in the window of the front door, but he was disguised with a beard and mustache and black stripe shirt, almost like Odlaw with no yellow.

At Ron's Coin and Book we found Waldo up high.

Our last stop of the day was at Yakima Valley Museum and since we knew that Waldo would be hidden in the gift shop we skipped buying admission to the museum since neither of the boys are into that sort of thing. We just went right into the gift shop and found Waldo without too much trouble.

Now our total is up to 21 out of 25 stores. Almost done!