Clara and I took Dad to Ft. Stevens State Park last weekend to show dad a good time. We started the trip by telling him ALL WEEK how excited we were to make s'mores. And kept asking him what else we were going to do on the trip. I still don't remember...
Just Kidding! The first we found when we got there, this being a Fort and all, was some cool machinery outside the Ranger's station. Clara and I drove this thing all over Europe, and North America. It was quite a thrill
Once we found some firewood we started our fire. Because let me tell you, the mosquitos at this place were EVERYWHERE! We looked like a pair of pepperoni pizzas by the time we went home on Sunday. But honestly we didn't mind too much, we were on the move the whole time so they had to try and keep up.
We managed to stop every once in awhile to eat. We cooked up some hotdogs for dinner the first night.
Did I mention we got S'Mores! they were tasty
Then we settled in for an evening of reading and relaxing by the fire.
After a relaxing night sleep in our giant 6 person tent (dad forgot to get a photo), we were ready for action. We took our bikes out on to the paths and ended up on the beach! This ship came in a bit too hot!
I've also recently discovered that in order to be famous on the internet you have to ham it up for the camera! Here I am doing a pretty rocking Tayler Swift impression. Clara is doing an Irish Jig or something.
We got back on the bikes and continued around the path and came across this scary looking thing. I was trying to play hide and seek, but Clara was having none of it. This was called Russell Battery, apparently they had some large guns pointed at the ocean here during WWII.
There were so many good places to hide and ways to look through very thick walls of concrete.
Further up the coast we found the Bar! The Columbia Bar that is, where the Columbia River flows into the Ocean and drops all kinds of gunk. Apparently this is not where you want to be during a storm on a ship. The rocks are the South Jetty where they dumped like 14 miles of rocks to try to control the shifting silt from the ocean currents. I just like the fact that the sun is shining and we got to have a picnic.
After lunch we found another Battery, actually Ft. Stevens, and took a ride on the cool truck. Clara and I loved the ride, but some speaker kept trying to tell me some boring old history stuff. I learned that they had a hospital and the only thing left was the concrete pad under the bathrooms.
View from inside the truck.
We headed into Astoria after that for another ride! This time on a trolley that went up and down the wharf. We learned about Free Willie, and Kindergarten Cop, and Goonies, and some other movies filmed in Astoria. I was hoping to find some Sea Lions, but no luck.
Did I mention I'm good at picture hamming! Notice the rainbow flags? It was pride weekend in Astoria!
We capped the night off with dinner and root beers at Buoy Brewing. We were really roughing it this trip. I think after I got food poisoning last trip, dad felt a little bad.
We capped off the trip with another round of S'mores and a good night sleep. I think I rode my bike for about 8 miles or more. Clara probably put in a sold 4 miles of bike riding. Dad walked a lot, but at least he didn't have to carry us. That's an improvement. I wonder where we'll go next year?
