The day started stuck in a whole lotta traffic. Apparently, they closed one of the only on-ramps to the freeway in downtown Seattle. Either everyone were tourists or even the locals didn’t know how to get around it! Anyway, before getting caught up in all that, we took a better type of detour into the Fremont area of Seattle also referred to as the “Center of the Universe” (I'm not quite sure why). We found the troll under the bridge (www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2236) and also the largest statue of Lenin in the U.S. (www.roadsideamerica.com/story/9056).
A little behind schedule, we started our trek to the coast. Dave had picked up a brochure about a cell phone walking tour of Tacoma’s Dale Chihuly’s works (www.tacomaartmuseum.org/page.aspx?hid=231). I really enjoy his pieces and since his place by the Space Needle wasn’t open, I had to stop. Tacoma is a delightful little town, not even in my guidebook! We walked to the Art Museum, the Union Station (closed on Saturdays since it’s now a Federal Courthouse) across the Bridge of Glass to the Museum of Glass. The funnest installation was at a pub & grub called The Swiss (www.theswisspub.com) where Dale and his gang had lunches during their work in Union Station. Guess he called up the owner one day and offered eight “Venetians” for over the bar. Quite a coup! On the cell phone recording, they had the owner of The Swiss saying how he thought they might get a signed sketch or something like that, but how blessed they were to get a collection! He also said every couple months, they call them and get them cleaned :) After lunch, we headed back to the car and drove around town. Again, really a cute town. Wouldn’t mind going back there.
But, onward! We continued to the coast and even with all our powers got lost in the most hideous oceanside town ever - Aberdeen. What a hole. We couldn’t wait to find our way out of there.
It got better, though we still didn’t really get to see the ocean like I wanted except for a glimpse here and there on our way to Astoria, OR. We did see a lot of crazy cyclists though! I can’t imagine biking on the 2-lane curvy up-hill-both-ways road we were driving on. Quite impressive...or stupid...
Anyway, we finally got to our destination via the Astoria-Megler bridge over the mouth of the Columbia River (the longest continuous truss bridge in North America). We went directly up the hill to the Astoria Column. Dave went on up, but there isn’t enough beer in Oregon (or any other state for that matter) to get me to climb up that tiny thing - round and round you go. But it is a spectacular view from up there. There was a large prom group taking photos and even though there wasn’t but one sparkly sensation that I thought was beautiful, at least they weren’t dressed and made up like tramps like you see sometimes. I feel like an old curmudgeon but they looked like a very nice group of young ladies and gentlemen :)
I had a sampler of Rogue beers at their restaurant (www.rogue.com) which we had to drive Sparky over a seemingly rickety wood bridge to get to. Dave was just a little nervous, I think. As the sunset was just a few minutes away, we decided to investigate one pier over where a lot of noise was coming from - we hit the sea lion jackpot! They are so damn cute! The picture I posted of the sunset was off this pier as well.
Even though it was pretty early, our hotel was more of a walk to downtown Astoria than I wanted to make. And, with an early start planned, we hit the hay with dreams of The Goonies dancing in our heads.
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