Thursday, September 11, 2008

The final blog of this trip?





Hi there everyone, this may be the last blog of this trip until we get home this weekend. We don't know if we will have any wifi before we get home. I am authoring this blog entry as I have many times while we are sitting at camp. Many times because of the short amount of time Starbucks allows you to access the internet, I find it more efficient to type in camp and then later upload it to the web.

Today, we pretty much laid low at camp. We played a game of Scrabble as we watched the maintenance crews scurry around cleaning up campsites that were vacated early this morning. It amazes me how many folks were here on a Wednesday night and left on a Thursday morning, but I guess that is just the way things worked out.

Yesterday morning we both got an early start. I had a 8:00 appointment to get the window on the truck repaired, during which, Carol was on the internet working on her studies. After the window was fixed we went back to Astoria and checked out the 'Astoria Column'. This is the highest point in Astoria Oregon. You can see everything from there. We then went and had some great Pizza lunch at a little place called 'Fultons'. From the outside it looked kind of dark and dingy, but using the RVer's rule 'that if you see a lot of cars at an establishment, the food must be good' as our guide, we ventured in without fear. The Pizza and salad bar was great. After Lunch, we knocked out three Geocaches in the Astoria area. I was surprised there were so few in the actual 'Downtown' area. I really thought there would be one at the 'Astoria Column' but they must not have gotten approval from the Park management for one. Oh well.

After we finished our third Geocache, we had just enough time to make it to the last tour of 'Fort Stevens' for the day. The folks who conducted the tour were camping in the sight right next to ours at the campground. They were a very nice couple from Billings Montana who come here every year to conduct the tour. The tour it self cost $4 each and lasted about an hour and a half. It was a wonderful tour of the Gun Batteries (or installations) that are here at the fort. There was another tour that was a truck tour that we could have taken, but we'll have to save that for another trip. It was interesting to find out that this is the only military installation on the Continental US that was fired upon by the Japanese back in World War II. The interesting part is that the Base didn't fire back 'cause they wanted to see if there was just one target or multiple targets before engaging. As it turned out, the lone Japanese submarine only fired a half dozen rounds and then left port. The Japenese commander returned after the end of the war and indicated that he was 'Just harassing the locals' the Japanese didn't even know there was a fort here. The base has been here since the Civil war, so I find that amazing to hear.

We are far from ready to head home. It is hard to believe that as of today, we have been on the road two full weeks. We aren't making each other crazy, the dogs aren't crowding us out of our trailer or anything like that. We only wish that we would have had more time in each place and been less rushed. Also, if we could have scored wifi without having to go look for it, that would have been nice too. But, we have found that we weren't really in want of anything in the way of material possessions on this trip, so we were very comfortable in the trailer. All of the little enhancements I have done to the trailer over the previous months have worked out really well and held up really well.

Our trip home will take us down the Oregon coast through Tillamook to Florence Oregon, inland to Eugene Oregon and then south on the I-5 until we get home. We'll probably spend Friday night in Eugene and Saturday night in Redding. If I get a chance to update the blog from the road I will, so check in when you get a chance, but if not, I'll update it again on Sunday when we get home.
P.S. Take a look at the blog from the other day when we headed from Issaquah to Warrenton. I've added a video Carol took of me while we waited in traffic.
Take care! Happy camping! - Eric-

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