Day Tripping

Okay, so this is the deal. I went with my former Sister-in-Law (Chris) and my aunt on a little day trip to Astoria, Oregon.( I didn't have a lot of input on where we were going or what we were doing. Just going along for the ride. We never saw the ocean. ) After collecting my auntie, they picked me up in her Ford pickup and I sat in the rear seat, being the nice niece and letting auntie have the more comfortable front seat. We went up to Longview, WA and down the Washington side of the Columbia river. She wanted to visit a country cemetery where some relatives are laid to rest. The only problem is that they are poorly marked and she couldn't find their graves. We walked around, I took a few pictures, noticed all the creepy black spiders on the ground and then left. She wanted to show us a covered bridge, which was only a short few miles off of the main highway. It was covered because the cattle had a hard time getting across the bridge when it was wet. This is about the homeliest covered bridge I have ever seen. Utilitarian only, not for beauty. We left there and we finally got out of the hills and hugged the Columbia River getting closer to the nearly 3 mile long bridge that connects Washington and Oregon. We went into town and went to the place for lunch. We all had fish and chips, my SiL's treat! Wow, how nice of her. She was disappointed as the fish wasn't the same...so she is crossing that place off of her list. Then we went into the main part of Astoria and went to a couple of antique stores. This is a shot from inside of one looking up at a shelf with old pottery ware and the old glass block windows.

Astoria, the oldest city in the Oregon Territory, established 1811 (those in Europe, don't laugh, please..)

In 1810, John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company sent the Astor Expedition that founded Fort Astoria as its primary fur-trading post in the Northwest, and in fact the first permanent U.S. settlement on the Pacific coast. It was an extremely important post for American exploration of the continent and was influential in establishing American claims to the land. Fort Astoria was constructed in 1811.

There are so many interesting old houses in Astoria. This is the Capt. George Flavel HouseMuseum, a beautiful 1885 Queen Anne Style home. Sadly, I didn't have a good view of it when I took this photo.

The image you are seeing is the John Jacob Astor school which was the school that played a big part in Arnold Schwartzenegger's Kindergarten Cop movie. Wikipedia has this list of films that some or all of it was filmed in Astoria.

Astoria was the setting of the 1985 movie The Goonies, which was filmed on location. Other movies filmed in Astoria include Short Circuit, The Black Stallion, Kindergarten Cop, Free Willy, Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, Benji the Hunted, The Ring Two, Into the Wild, The Guardian and Cthulhu. The early 1960s television series Route 66 filmed the episode entitled "One Tiger to a Hill"[12] in Astoria; it was broadcast on September 21, 1962. The fourth full-length album by the pop punk band The Ataris was named So Long, Astoria as an allusion to The Goonies. "So Long, Astoria" is also the first track on the album.
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PS I traded seats with auntie in Astoria, so I could snap photos. I didn't add much more than what you see here. We came back on the Oregon side of the Columbia and I had a glorious view of Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens at one point, but it came and went quickly...no time to use the camera. Sigh Wasn't a particularly good trip, photo wise. But we had fun, I think, and got to catch up with Chris, who was my husband's brother's first wife. We haven't seen much of each other, so it was nice to see her again.