<VV> Astoria

[sarahvair at juno.com]

Well, we headed out yesterday morning toward Astoria when I said you know we are not on a time schedule so if you see anything that looks interesting, let's stop.

Sure enough exit 49 off of I5 begged for us to head east.  We decided it was time to hit Mt. Saint Helens.  What a beautiful ride.  The first visitors center had a Nissan club and several Porsches.  We left them in the dust and on upward we went.  We stopped several times to take pictures and get the binoculars out.  We hear a different noise and all the Nissans and the Porches went flying by.  So we left and kept going up.  What a great view and certainly worth the trip.

We got back to I5 and 10 miles later we were headed on Rt. 30 towards Astoria.  Astoria itself is beautiful.  The houses are all up on the hills over looking the river.  It reminds me a lot of Gloucester and Rockport, Massachusetts.  We tried to get into the Fire Fighter Museum, but it was closed.  We headed out to the maritime museum and that was great.  Docked out in front of it was 2 Coast Guard Cutters.  We went over for a closer look and both of them had done several pot and cocaine busts.  One of the cutters had a gold marijuana leaf on it, which symbolized it had gotten over 1 million pounds.  AWESOME.  Leslie walked by the guard booth and of course the "coasties" called her over and she talked with them for awhile.  Being a Florida girl she was wearing some very short shorts and a halter top so they tried to keep her there as long as possible.

We left there and went to a wonderful 4 star restaurant named the Salmon River Grille.  VERY nice and the presentation was great.  Leslie took pictures of the plates.

Deciding we ate to much, we then took a nice long walk along the path the runs beside the river.  The sunset was breathtaking and it was such a great way to end the day.

We got back to the room and Leslie was watching Dante's Peak which was followed by another volcano movie.  She said how strange is this after what we did this morning?

The weather here is heavenly.  We really appreciate it after seeing how hot it is everywhere else.

Talk to you soon,

Sarah