Since the hosting company lost my data I decided to just repost the photos for now. We will try to reconstruct as we can and make notes about the photos.  For now the photos are here by date and we’ll add text as we can.

Sept 6th

On September 6th, we left Aberdeen, Washington and drove to Astoria, Oregon.  We stayed at Fort Stevens, another military base  like Fort Worden in Washington, that’s been turned into a public park with tent and RV camp sites.  Here are a couple photos of the beautiful bridge in Astoria.

Sept 7th

We spent two nights at Fort Stevens.  It’s a great place with clean, spacious sites and over 9 miles of bike paths.  We biked over to the ocean and then did some local sight seeing.  One of the fun sights was the Astoria Column which was built in 1926 with financing by the Great Northern Railway and Vincent Astor, the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor, in commemoration of the city’s role in the family’s business history. The 125-foot tall column stands atop 600-foot tall Coxcomb Hill and includes an interior spiral staircase that leads to an observation deck at the top.  We didn’t make the climb but the view was still great.

We also went to Fort Clatsop, which was the fort where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1805.  They named the fort for the friendly local Indian tribe, the Clatsops.  There is a full replica of the fort and it’s in a quiet, beautiful wooded area on the Columbia river.

We drove to Cannon Beach for exploring and, even though it was foggy, saw a lot of beautiful coast line.  The little town of Cannon Beach is charming, kind of like Carmel, and we had a nice cup of coffee and some chocolate at the Chocolate Cafe.

The picture of the big buck was taken on our second try to find some elk – the ranger told us she had seen them recently in a certain area.  We drove out there twice but didn’t see anything but fog, ocean, fields, and one lone buck.

Sept 8th

Today we traveled to Lincoln City and camped at Devil’s Lake State Park.  The drive was a foggy one (big surprise) but included a stop at the Tillamook cheese factory (where we ate ice cream for lunch) and the Air Museum.  Armand visited the museum and thought it was pretty interesting (and Carol was glad she skipped it).

We realized we might have trouble getting into State Parks on the weekend so were lucky enough to get to spend the weekend at Devil’s Lake – thanks to someone else who canceled Saturday morning.  We took advantage of our time there to drive to some of the scenic places in the area.  Also tried some local fish and chips  at “J’s” but still nothing can compare to our favorite place in Pismo Beach – which we plan to visit soon.

Sept 9th

Sept 10th

Sept 11th

Sept 12th

Sept 13th

Sept 14th

Sept 16th

Sept 17th

Sept 18th

Sept 21st

Sept 22nd

Sept 23rd

Sept 24th

Sept 25th