I will try and keep the "words" to a minimum with descriptions at the photos where needed and let the pictures do the talking; any artsy pictures were taken by Chelsey! For those who don't know we took a week off and booked the time at a KOA in Warrenton Oregon; this is just outside Astoria, Oregon at the mouth of the Columbia River.
This was my first time pulling a trailer of any size so I had to learn pretty quick what to do as we rented a 32 foot travel trailer for this trip (based on the fun level we will be buying one next spring!). As much as I tried to convince Chelsey that I needed a diesel for these hauls ( a Dodge Ram 3500 with the Cummins Turbo Diesel to be exact) I will be the first to admit my truck did fine.
We got here Saturday night and have taken a couple excursions. To sum everything up this trip is awesome, trailers are awesome, and this KOA rocks!
We stopped in some random town to get gas and eat some snacks and Cohen took the opportunity to look at stuff! This was also my first experience realizing that you should not pull up to the gas pump next to the store when pulling a big trailer.
The bridge from Washington state to Astoria, Oregon is 4.1 miles long and is the longest trestle supported bridge in the world.
The KOA we are staying at is right across the street from Fort Stevens State Park so we have spent some time in this park. On Sunday before we went to visit Chelsey's Auntie Jan and Uncle Lou we cruised through the park to see if we can find the beach. Little did we know we can actually drive right on to the beach. This photo set also include a sequence shot of Kyah doing a cart wheel on the beach.
On the way back from visiting in Woodburn we swung by Seaside, which is an awesome little town, and we caught the sunset. It was pretty damn cool! Seaside reminded us a lot of Mission Beach in San Diego, now if only we can find a place that will let the kids in for happy hour it will be perfect.
We took a guided tour of Fort Stevens in a 1951 6x6 army truck, also known as a deuce and a half as it is a two and a half tonne. Did you know that the mouth of the Colombia River was 8.1 miles wide and during the civil war time they made two sand jettys to narrow it so they can guard it better. Also, during world war 2 a Japanese submarine fired 17 rockets/torpedos onto Fort Stevens but for still unknown reasons the commander in charge of Fort Stevens at the time wouldn't fire back.
This is actually a gun from a Navy ship.
All the guns at Fort Stevens were below ground level to keep them hidden and most of the goods were held in these buildings called Batteries, not sure why they called them a Battery.
This is a model of what Fort Stevens looked like when it was actually in use
On Monday night we went back down to the beach and grilled some hot dogs for dinner and checked out the wreck of the Peter Iredale. The Peter Iredale ran aground in 1906 and the Astoria Steel Co. was able to salvage much of the wreck for scrap but they left the front of the boat on the beach which is still there today. They call this area "The Grave Yard of the Pacific" as more than 2000 boats have run ashore here over the past 200 or so years.
Oddly enough when you can rip Cohen away from the iPad or Xbox he really likes to be outside and explore stuff, so far this trip has been pretty successful in that respect!
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