Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Quick escape to Long Beach, WA

We made a spontaneous quick overnight trip to Long Beach, WA on Sunday. It's probably 2-1/2 hours from home, and we hadn't been there for a long time. Other ocean beaches are closer, so we had stayed south of the border. We had such a nice time. We were disappointed when we went through Astoria though, that our favorite little fresh tuna fish and chips shop was closed. 

The first picture is taken when we were walking along the beach, and the second is from the balcony of our room.  The day was just beautiful!

We took a drive and saw this inlet with the tide out and a gaggle of geese working on getting their dinner.
We loved this picture taken along the Bear River.  We wondered what those pilings had supported in days past.
This bridge crosses the very, very wide Columbia River from Astoria, Oregon to Washington.  It is a pretty spectacular bridge.  Toward the Oregon side, the bridge rises high above the water so that ships can go under, and then drops down again.  At this particular point, I think the river is approximately 3 miles wide.  It is a very treacherous area for ship navigation, and tugboats are hired to guide ships through what they call the Columbia Bar.  There are many large sandbars, and they have to really know the deep channels of the river to keep from going aground on the sandbars.  The tug operators are experts on the river navigation.  The Columbia rolls on out a ways from Astoria to meet the Pacific Ocean.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Donna, it's been a long time since I've been to your blog. You always post such a beautiful photos from your outings. And you've been so productive this summer. I liked all of the quilts you've been making, but the quilt for your granddaughter is gorgeous and by the look on her face, greatly appreciated.

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  2. Hi, I came across your blog while searching Google for the Bear River. Thought you might want to know what those pilings were for since you were wondering about them. I own the property right next door to where you took that picture. My friends own the lot where you're standing. The pilings were put there in the late 1920's and early 1930's when the area was last commercially logged by the Niagara timber company. The ones in the middle of the river there to prevent log jams as rafts of timber were floated downstream. There's the remnants of an unloading dock right near where that picture was taken. The log trucks would come down what is now Jeldness Lane, dump the logs into the river to be floated out into Wilapa Bay where they were rafted together and towed up the Naselle River to the lumber mills in South Bend, Raymond etc.

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