Northwest adventure (day 7)

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Oregon

Our yurt is situated in a dense forest that is absolutely gorgeous and peaceful. We are somewhere between a half and three quarters of a mile from the Pacific Ocean. It is cool, damp, and foggy in the mornings. Although it is cool, it is not as cold as I anticipated it might be, and my new Malad City hooded sweatshirt that Robert and Rachael gave me for my birthday was entirely adequate. We fixed breakfast at the yurt, cold cereal and milk and orange juice for Michael and the children, a hard-boiled egg and protein shake and orange juice for me.

We drove over to the beach where the remains of the shipwrecked Peter Iredale are located. It was the first time that any of the children (except Caleb, who had been to Hawaii with Cade, Rebecca, and Mimi) had seen the ocean. We played on the beach a little, and the kids all got their shoes and socks thoroughly muddy.

The children, with Michael and I accompanying them, participated in a scavenger hunt as a part of the junior ranger program.

Next we drove over to the part of Fort Stevens State Park that included the old military installation (which started during the Civil War and was closed right after World War II) and learned about a guided tour we could take in the afternoon. Fort Stevens is the only military installation in the continental United States that has been shelled by a foreign power since the War of 1812. A Japanese submarine fired nine shots at the fort in April 1942 but caused no significant damage other than psychological among the civilian population along the west coast.

We left the park, driving toward U.S. 101 (the Pacific Coast highway) and found a Dairy Queen, where we ate lunch. We then returned for the 2:30 tour of the military installation. We rode in a 1952 military truck. Caleb and Jacob got to sit up front with the driver and got to honk the horn when we crossed bicycle paths a couple times. The rest of us sat in the covered bed in the back of the truck with the other tour participants. The tour lasted a little over an hour and was most interesting.

We then went exploring throughout the park on our own. We visited a large military bunker, visited a spot along the beach of the Pacific Ocean and a spot along the Columbia River just before it empties into the ocean. The road there took us to the very northwestern-most point of the state of Oregon. We learned that the actual coastline here is about a mile further west than when the Lewis and Clark expedition visited here in 1805-1806. That is because jetties have been constructed to control the changing currents and sandbars at the mouth of the Columbia. The Colombia River bar is particularly treacherous. That and the rocky Oregon coastline have resulted in over 2,000 ship wrecks in this area in the last couple of centuries, earning the mouth of the Columbia the nickname as the graveyard of the Pacific.

In the evening we drove south along U.S. 101 to Seaside to find a place to eat. We ate at a little Italian restaurant.

We returned to the park and were there in time for the nine o'clock campfire program at the amphitheater. Tonight's program, presented again by Ranger Matt, was on Roosevelt Elk, which are common in this corner of Oregon. We all wished we could be here for the program scheduled for tomorrow night entitled the Graveyard of the Pacific, but we will be in Ontario on the opposite side of the state by then.

We returned to the yurt and retired for the night.