Oregon Coast

Mount Hood
Bonneville Fish Ladder and Spillway
The Columbia meets the Pacific
Sea lions vying for a spot
Astoria
Fort Clatsop
The salt works where Lewis and Clark boiled sea water to get salt to preserve their food.
Haystack rock with a marine garden in front

We have now travelled coast to coast and are staying at Fort Stevens State Park near Dave (I mean) Hammond, Washington. It has been one year since we retired and in that time we have been on the shores of Lake Ontario, the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and now the Pacific Ocean. The drive here was through the beautiful Columbia River Gorge with snow covered Mt. Hood in the distance and then over the forest covered coastal range to the ocean. We stopped at the Bonneville Lock and Dam the first of a series of dams that have turned the upper Columbia and Snake Rivers into large lakes. We watched the fish swim through the fish ladder that enables them to bypass the dam to get upstream to spawn and for the young fry to return to the sea. The land has changed so much in the last two week from the dry desert of southern Utah to the 150' pines in the forest at the campground. Fort Stevens was the only mainland US military post to come under fire during WWII when on June 21, 1942 a Japanese submarine fired 17 rounds at its Columbia River coastal defenses. In nearby Astoria, the oldest US settlement west of the Rockies, we enjoyed the picturesque hillside town and harbor and watched the sea lions on the docks. We toured the replica of Fort Clatsop and the salt works, two of the many places in the area visited by Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1805 - 1806. We went to Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach to look for puffins but did not see any. Our time here has been much to short and it is a place we will return to even though the weather was typical for Oregon where you can tell it is spring because the rain is warm:)