Astoria – Oysters, Coast Guard and a lot of rain

Astoria is a little harbor town of about 10.000 population near the mouth of the Columbia River. The city was named after the American investor John Jacob Astor who founded the American Fur Company and then Fort Astoria at the site in 1811. The city has a deep-water port, where many cruise ships anchor, and is sometimes compared to San Francisco in regard to it's setting on hills.

The weather was horrible: rain, hail, storm, but good thing was, that both days, when we went on excursions, we had no showers and even partly blue skies and some sun!

After a late Sunday brunch (the clock was set forward because of the change to DST - daylight saving time - Sommerzeit) –, we drove up north, into Washington. Astoria/Oregon is just separated by a a steel bridge that spans the Columbia River. The bridge is 4.1 miles (6.6 km) long and was the last segment of U.S. Hwy. 101 between Olympia, Washington, and Los Angeles, California. We drove along the coast on Hwy. 101 to Long Beach Peninsula and up to the little town of Oysterville.

This area first of all known is for its cranberry fields (they apparently mostly produce for the company "Ocean Spray") and for its oyster farms (see pic with heaps of oyster shells piling up - wished we could bring home some for the garden!). Historic Oysterville, founded in 1854, is nestled into the Willapa Bay on the Long Beach Peninsula. Thanks to the oyster population it was once a boomtown and is now on the National Register of Historic places. Besides a cozy little old church (pic) there are many well preserved historic homes.

In the evening we were invited at friends of Elfi and Erhard (see pic), Kay and Art, and had a seafood feast there: Dungeness crabs with salad and cornbread and a huckleberry icecream tart as dessert. It was a litle work to crack them, but it was delicious!

Monday morning we drove again north to Ilwaco and Cape Disappointment, where the Coast Guard Station is stationed. "Cape D"
is situated at the mouth of the Columbia River and is the largest Coast Guard search and rescue station on the Northwest Coast. At the same time it is the site for the National Motor Lifeboat School, the only school of that kind in the U.S.


Thanks to Erhard, who knows all the important people in town, we had a tour with the lieutenant of the Coast Guard. He explained this branch of the U.S. military to us, showed us their five search and rescue boats (different in size) and we even got a chance to crawl into the interior of some boats. The boats are designed for operations in heavy surf conditions and are capable of being rolled over.


Also, nearby is the oldest lighthouse on the Northwest Coast of the United States, Cape Disappointment Light. This area is regarded as one of the most treacherous river bars in the world. Because of the large number of shipwrecks near the river entrance it is often called "The Graveyard of the Pacific." The old lighthouse is not accessible, but we were able to visit the current watch station of the Coast Guard (pic).

In the evening we had some more culinary delicacies at our friends' house: baked oysters, smoked oysters & shrimps as appetizers followed by clam chowder. Me, being not too eager to eat oysters, tried hard to be polite and tried them, but liked the clam chowder much better!