Astoria, Oregon

After arriving at the Lewis & Clark Golf & RV Park, we settled in.  This park also got kudos from Kathy,  everything was shiny and meticulously kept up.    I even saw one of the ladies from the office cleaning one of the registration parking signs along their driveway.   I had read they might be the Dog Nazis here and the review was probably correct.   They really take pride in their facility so they have a lot of rules.

Our campsite is a pull-in spot overlooking a river and on the other side the golf course.   There is a wide mowed grass area between us and the river.    Quite a picturesque place to camp, and they clearly understood what RV’s need:  the hookups were correctly placed to point the coach at the pretty view.   Most places we’ve stayed do not appear to understand that concept.

 

 

I checked and our elevation is only 7′ above sea level, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that the Cascadia Fault won’t let go while we are camped here.   I should probably look for the Tsunami evac signs today so I know which way to run if it does!!  🙂

We drove into town the next morning looking for the riverfront trolley, but we passed it and couldn’t go back due to a large traffic jam in that direction.   We decided to head up to the Astoria Column that we could see from the riverfront on a large hilltop.   They have some incredibly steep roads here.  We heard they were the steepest roads in the country except for Lombard Street in SF,  except these roads go straight up the hill and not switch-backs like Lombard is.    I saw one bicyclist going down the hill, and he must have been going 70 mph and wasn’t even close to being half way down yet.   That must have been a wild ride!   Hopefully his bike had the disk brakes some have.    The type on my bike wouldn’t make a dent on that speed when he needs to stop.

 

We arrived at the top of the hill and it was a spectacular view from up there.    You could see down to the town,  across the river and all the way to the ocean.   You could also see a very large river on the south side of the hill that joins the Columbia at the west end of town.   I wanted to climb the tower but thought better of it when I remembered my knee is not fully healed from the MCL sprain last fall, so I just took pictures of it.

There were 164 steps to get to the top!!  I thought it was neat that the little gift shop up there would sell you a balsa wood glider for $1 so you could write your name on it and sail it off the top of the tower.   The kids really seemed to love that.   You could hear them exclaiming from the top of the tower, which was about 160′ above us.

I was thinking that hilltop would be a perfect place to watch the fireworks tomorrow night,  but the last mile or so of the road getting to the top was very narrow and steep.   Probably impossible to get near there to watch the show tomorrow night.

After wandering around and enjoying an ice cream while looking at the view, we headed back down toward the riverfront to find the trolley.  The traffic jam was gone and we drove to what Google Maps told us was the place.   It was not.  It turned out to be where the trolley is stored.  So we headed off alongside the tracks to find a stop.

 

We found the westernmost stop and parked to wait for it.   It eventually got there and it was packed like a sardine can.   No one got off.  The conductor said they were heading back to the barn to change shifts and would be right back and there should be empty seats by then.   That made no sense to me as there wasn’t another stop between here and the barn and there were no cars near that barn.

They came back a few minutes later, and as I suspected, it was still filled to capacity.    The really funny part was the sign that said you should board at the rear.   The trolley was on a single track and they switched directions; so when they originally pulled up, the rear was the eastern end, and when they came back from the barn, the rear was the western end.  Maybe you just had to be there…

We got back into our car and headed eastward toward the center of the town.    As we were attempting to keep near the riverfront tracks, it dawned on me that someone mentioned its eastern terminus was at the Safeway store.   We drove there and parked then walked over to the riverfront.   About 10 minutes later, the trolley arrived and lots of folks got off.  There was now plenty of room to board.   It’s a one-hour round trip ride for a buck.  ($1)  It travels right along the riverfront the whole way.  Some of the time you are actually over the river on the boardwalk.

They provide a bit of history of the area and about all the old buildings you can see from the trolley.  They also give you a bit of trivia, like where lots of movies where shot, pointing out the places and scenes from Goonies,  Kindergarten Cop,  Free Willy, and others I had never heard of.

This trolley is electrically driven and is powered by a large diesel generator mounted on a track dolly and pulled or pushed along.   There was no way to turn the trolley around, so the motorman moved from one end to the other at each terminus.    They said that was much cheaper than building an electrical overhead system that the trolley originally used.      That reminded me that I had thought of building a small trailer with a generator to pull behind my Nissan Leaf to give it long-range capability.  🙂

The seats on the trolley had a unique feature.  Since you would want to face forward, when you got to the end of the line, everybody had to stand up and the back of your bench seat swung front to back to shift the direction you were sitting in.   We have never seen anything like that!!!

It was an enjoyable ride, but at the end you are pretty happy to get off.   It’s  a pretty bumpy, jostling ride on 100-year-old wooden seats that you will remember.   Dogs were allowed on the trolley, but Dusty was pretty scared with all the bells and clanging and air purges when the brakes were applied.  Poor thing hunkered down for most of the ride, but he behaved himself.    🙁