Tag Archives: Cape Disappointment State Park

Day 2 at Cape Disappointment State Park, WA

Our first morning (Thursday, 11 Sept) at Cape Disappointment State Park promised to be yet another warm, sunny, and pleasant day.

Hopefully, we were all able to take a moment to remember the victims from the cowardly terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

We took a leisurely morning stroll on the beach at our new campsite.  Here is the path to the beach – the Urban Escape Vehicle is behind the clearing you can see at the end of the path.

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View towards the beach crossing the dunes.

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Low tide.

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Stilla with morning coffee in hand.

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Stilla poses on the beach 😉

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We jumped in the Silverado a little before noon with the intent to do some more exploring today.  And exploring we did!  We started out by visiting the Waikiki Beach area of the park and the long jetty which protects the Northern end of the Columbia River outlet.  The beach was very similar to the one by our site except it seemed to be littered with a lot more giant drift-wood logs.  It was the “day-use” beach for the park and had a giant parking lot for visitors.  We just viewed it from the road, having just been on our beach earlier in the morning.  This super-long jetty was built in the early 1900’s and is called the North Jetty.   You can read more about Cape Disappointment by clicking this Wikipedia link…  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Disappointment_State_Park

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We gave up trying to walk all the way to the end of the jetty.  It got way too rocky towards the end and we had to carry Coach over the larger rocks.

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There were many people fishing from the rocks on the jetty.  This must be a  popular spot, they were lined up all along the shore.  While there, we watched at least two people haul in what looked like large salmon.  Man, I wished I could go get my little trout fishing pole that I still have bungee-corded to the truck cargo rack 🙂

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This view from the jetty shows “our” beach near the campground.  The North Head Lighthouse that we visited yesterday is on the cliffs overlooking the ocean to the left.

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Large waves broke on the rocks next to us.  It can get pretty loud.

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Our next stop at the top of the hill from the jetty was Fort Canby and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center which are combined at one location.

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Fort Canby was established in 1852, the state park came about in the 1950’s.  We toured inside the bunker type buildings (it was free) which housed a display of the stored ammunition for the giant guns that once were emplaced here.

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Amazing what the salty sea air can do to metal over time.  This giant metal door, or what’s left of it, is on one side of the bunker entranceways.  I thought it made for a good picture.

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This is where one of the guns used to be emplaced.  They were originally rigged on pulley and counterweight systems so they could peek out over the ridge and duck back down again for protection.

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This is the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.  It is 1.2 miles from the parking lot of Fort Canby and the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and lookout.  We weren’t up for another hike so soon after walking the beach and the jetty, so we settled on just taking this picture from the neighboring lookout.

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Here’s that long jetty we walked earlier as seen from above.

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The Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center had an entrance fee of $5 and no dogs allowed.  So, Stilla hung around outside with Coach while I breezed through and took lots of pictures… but don’t worry, I only posted a few here 😉

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Inside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park, WA
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Inside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park, WA
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Inside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park, WA
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Inside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park, WA

This is the old North Head Lighthouse light.  These are actually stacked glass prisms that bend light into a concentrated beam so it could be seen for 20 miles offshore.  It was invented by a French guy named Fresnel and it was in service from 1856 to 1898.  These type of lenses were used in more than 250 American lighthouses back in the day.

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Inside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park, WA
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Inside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park, WA
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Inside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park, WA
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Inside the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Cape Disappointment State Park, WA

After finishing up at the Interpretive Center, we jumped back in the SIlverado and headed back into Long Beach.

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We had seen some advertisements for a Cranberry Farm / Museum tour and thought we could maybe pick some cranberries.  It wasn’t all that great… unless you really like cranberries.  And who knew that cranberries grew real low to the ground in a muddy bog?  Needless to say, we didn’t do any picking, but we did buy some Cranberry Wine and Cranberry Jam for my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

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We ended up eating a late lunch at the same place as the day before.  Mainly because it was convenient and dog-friendly.

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We then stopped at the World Kite Museum.  Why you ask?  Well, it’s just what us retired folks do 😉  It turned out to be pretty lame… it’s hard for me to get excited about kites.  Maybe we should have spent more time there and took them up on their free kite building session.  Anyway, I took lots of pictures again, but won’t post them here.  I did learn that kites played a large part during WWII for training the troops on aircraft identification.

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We then drove around on the beach because we could.  Here’s a couple pics:

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Here’s a couple complementary pics of a horse we saw on Long Beach while we were driving around trying not to get stuck.  I put these in the blog for Cheryl Mikel, because she’s nuts about horses…

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Since we still had lots of nice sunny day left, we decided to head on into Astoria again.  It was only about 30 minutes away from Long Beach.  We visited Astoria back on the 24th of August when we were first on our way up North.  We did a couple day-trips while staying at the Elks Lodge in Longview-Kelso.  That’s the same place we were at when we visited Mt St Helens.  This was all before I started this blog and haven’t found the time yet to go back and post anything on those trips… maybe soon.  Anyway, we didn’t have the chance when we were there earlier to go over the giant bridge and we also missed a couple sights there in Astoria, so off we went.

The bridge is called the Astoria-Megler Bridge.  According to my friend Wikipedia, It is a steel cantilever through truss bridge that spans the Columbia River between Astoria, Oregon and Point Ellice near Megler, Washington. It is 4.1 miles long and was the last completed segment of U.S. Route 101 between Olympia, Washington and Los Angeles, California.  It is the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.

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Once across the bride, we went to the Oregon Film Museum to see more about movies that were filmed in the area, such as; “The Goonies” and “Kindergarten Cop”.  Unfortunately, we got there at 5 PM just as they were closing.

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They did have a replica of the SUV from “The Goonies” parked out front.  This is the car that the bad folks “The Fratellis” ran away from the cops in… complete with bullet holes.

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Here’s a mansion across the street from the Film Museum.  For the lovers of Queen Anne architecture, this is the Captain George Flavel House Museum.  For more information, you can link here…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_George_Flavel_House_Museum

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We then did an internet search on our iPhones and found the location of “The Goonies” house.  We didn’t get a good picture because it’s a private residence and there are signs posted all around about not stopping… so we did a U-turn on the dead-end street as Stilla tried to get a picture.   Funny what people make a destination of just because of a movie… oh well, I guess we did too.

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Then we did a drive-by of the “Kindergarten Cop” school that Arnold Schwarzenegger had a scene in front of.

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Finally, we stopped in the Maritime Museum parking lot to let Coach do his business.  We visited this museum the last time we were here, but this time they had a paddlewheel boat anchored.  So, I had to get a picture.

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The Astoria trolley rolled by just as I was taking pictures.

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We then headed back over the Astoria-Megler bridge and this time we stopped at Middle Village which Lewis and Clark named Station Camp. It’s just a small turn-out on the highway after you get off the bridge.   For more information you can link to this website here:  http://www.nps.gov/lewi/planyourvisit/stationcamp.htm

Interesting place, but it was starting to get late so I didn’t take the time to do the complete tour of the Chinook Village.  I only remember reading the the Lewis & Clark expedition arrived at this place in November 1805, calling it the end of their voyage by water, and spent 10 days or so here while searching out a better place to “Winter Quarter” which ended up being on the other side of the Columbia River.

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There was one more state park that we had bypassed earlier, so we took the time to do a quick drive-thru at the Fort Columbia State Park since it was on our route back to Cape Disappointment.  We also still had our “Discovery Pass” we purchased as part of our campsite, so we figured we might as well make use of it.  This old fort has renovated the old officer’s quarters and turned them into vacation rentals.  Sorry, no additional pics… I know you were expecting them right?  If you really want more information, here’s a link:  http://www.parks.wa.gov/506/Fort-Columbia

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We closed out the evening with a nice campfire and the Cranberry Wine we bought at the farm earlier.  Sorry, no pictures again.   At least, we were finally able to use some of the firewood we’ve been carrying around in the back of the pickup since Lake Tahoe.  The firewood was courtesy of cousin’s Phil and Beth, thanks guys!  There was a lot of wood left over after our week long stay with their group at Tahoe back in July.

OK, that wraps up this post… stay tuned for our Moving Day to Tillamook, OR post.  I’m almost caught up now 🙂

 

Day 1 at Cape Disappointment State Park, WA

Wednesday morning, (10 Sept), we jumped into the Silverado to check out some more of the local attractions.  One place I had in mind to check out was Cape Disappointment State Park which encompasses the whole southern tip of the Long Beach peninsula.  As with most state parks, it is often difficult to get information on-line to determine if our big rig will fit.  So, with that in mind we headed South to the state park.

By the way, in my post for Tuesday, I forgot to mention that before we called it an evening, we took the Silverado all the way up to the North end of the peninsula along the Western-most road and came back down the Eastern-most road… just to see what was there.  Which wasn’t much, probably why I forgot to mention it.  Just more pricey RV parks (that weren’t on the beach) and lots of older run-down houses and trailer parks.

Before the entrance to the state park, there were a couple attractions along the narrow windy road.  The first was Beards Hollow and the second was the North Head Lighthouse.

Here’s a couple of those informational placards that tell a better story than I ever could:

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We posed for a selfie:

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The Lighthouse informational placard shows the trails with a satellite view:

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The inside of the lighthouse was closed for tours so we just wandered around and enjoyed the views.

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Here’s one of the fantastic views from the lighthouse.

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I read somewhere that Cape Disappointment gets about 106 days of fog per year on average – making it one of the foggiest places in the US.  Fortunately for us, we had mostly-clear beautiful skies.

While we were there, the Coast Guard put on a show for us.  It appeared that they were practicing cliffside recovery.  They lowered a guy down from the helicopter to the cliffside a couple times and then it appeared to me, that the pilot messed with him by seeing how close they could get him to the waves below.  I took some interesting video of that.

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These next pics are a couple neat views of the lighthouse and the pathway leading up to the lighthouse keepers residence.

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Another informational placard that describes what the life of a Lighthouse Keeper is like.

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After those first couple stops, we finally arrived at the State Park.

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I checked in at the office which was actually a guard shack in the middle of the road to ask if we could take a tour of the park to see if we would fit.  Since we had already purchased a $10 Discovery Pass for the day when we stopped at the Lighthouse parking lot, they let us through.  We were pleasantly surprised at the number of RV spots they had.. and more importantly, some where actually unoccupied.  So we went back to the office/guard shack to get more detail on pricing and availability on a couple sites we made a note of. Of course, the couple spots we asked about were either reserved or for “admin use” whatever that is.  The nice lady gave us some possibilities and marked them on our map, so we went back to check them out.  We decided on site 162 at a cost of $27 per night which includes the $10 Discovery Pass that unfortunately we had already wasted $10 on.  Oh well – this place was really nice and the majority of the sites near the beach were set up in wagon wheel type circles that gave everyone nice space and access to the beach.  We booked two nights and high-tailed it back to the Sandcastle RV Park to get the Coach before it got any later… it was already noon.

Here’s our awesome new spot:

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I had to be careful with the low hanging branches, but the Urban Escape Vehicle slipped in unscathed.

Once we got settled in, we hit the beach right away.  It was just a short walk across from our site and over the grass and tree covered dune.  Here’s a view of our beach with the lighthouse we visited earlier on the cliff above.

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Stilla spent the afternoon combing the beach for shells.

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The beach was dog-friendly.  We were able to let Coach off the leash… and he made the most of it.  Good thing he always seems to listen and returns when called.

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Proof that Stilla was here 🙂  She took a footprint “selfie” with her iPhone.

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We set up our chairs to enjoy the sunset.  Coach stayed in the shade when he wasn’t chasing sea gulls.  Our RV site is just behind the grass-covered, drift-log-littered dune.

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We sat and watched the sunset before going back to the coach to run the generator so we could charge the batteries for the night.  Did I mention that we don’t have hook-ups?  Also, no internet or satellite.  Life is good!

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End of day 1.  Day 2 episode begins shortly…