August 30, Astoria, OR

Yesterday we went downtown Portland to Powell's "City of Books" store. It encompasses an entire city block and is 3 stories tall. Do they ever have books!

As we left our motel this morning, I noticed a brochure for a fabric shop. Since it was almost on our way out of town we stopped. I think I died and went to Heaven! The name is Fabric Depot and they advertise over 1 1/2 acres of fabric. It has 11,000 bolts of quilt fabric, 2,000 home decorator fabrics, plus fashion & bridal fabrics, notions, craft and yarn. They also carry speaker cloth, billiard cloth, sliver cloth, and on and on. It is also online at www.fabricdepot.com. They say they have more than 175 colors of Kona cotton solids and 800 Bali batik cottons. What a place! Yes, I just had to buy something. I got 6 different 30s and 40s replica fabric for my Cathedral Window quilt.

We saw 2 different bridges that were being painted. They have a metal flooring between the workers and the traffic on the bridge. Above is how they encase the entire thing so no scraping of old paint or new paint will get onto traffic. It also protects the workers from the strong winds.

This shows how large the spruce trees are in Astoria, OR. They said that they make excellent boats and the Indians used them for everything from clothing to boats to ropes.

This is a reconstruction of Fort Clatsop near Astoria, OR where the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter of 1805-1806. It was very small but it was dry!

This ocean going ship is being pushed by a tiny tugboat. Does anyone remember the book, "Scuffy, the Tug Boat?"

 Here the ship goes under the bridge out into the Pacific Ocean.

The Astoria Column stands on a hill and has 164 steps to the observation deck at the top. We  climbed them and they were a piece of cake compared to the mile and a quarter hike to the top of the falls. All the pictures taken from a high point were taken from here.










This is the Astoria-Megler Bridge across the Columbia River. It is 4/1 miles long and contains the longest continuous three-span through-truss in the world.It opened in August 1966. Money was given for the bridge but the Oregon/Washington agreement stipulated it would be a toll bridge with the toll being eliminated if it ever paid for itself. The "Bridge to Nowhere" did pay for itself, 2 years early and the toll was eliminated. What an unbelievable story.