Day 15 – North to Washington Coast

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

We left Tillamook today heading north on Hwy 101. It passes thru many sea side towns that were all busy with tourists. We did stop at Seaside, Oregon to see the Salt Works where the Corps of Discovery processed salt. They needed to get far enough away from the Columbia River so that the sea water had plenty of salt. They put buckets over fire to evaporate the water down to give them the salt. They processed 28 pounds of salt which they used to cure their meat, plus add to their diet. (sorry no pictures)

Since we were right at the beach, we decided to walk across the dunes to the water. It was low tide, so the beach was really long. We were surprised to see all sorts of broken up crab parts, along with broken sand dollars and lots of kelp and other sea plants. We did find two perfect sand dollars, the rest were broken, but we picked them up anyway.

Continued to drive north and reached the town of Astoria. We drove over the bridge spanning the Columbia River. We knew it was long and when we checked found out it spans 4 miles. Just to compare, the Mackinac bridge is 5 miles long.

Once we crossed the bridge we were again in Washington. We followed the coast to Cape Disappointment. This was actually the first place that Lewis & Clark saw the Pacific Ocean. As the name states, they were not happy with this location. Instead they chose to cross the river and spend the river on the Oregon side. We stopped at the Intrepretive Center and enjoyed the review of Lewis and Clark’s journey from Ft Dubois in Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. The views from this hill top are stunning.