last batch from Astoria

The Columbia River Maritime Museum included a large exhibit as a tribute to the US Coast Guard. This is the "44300" a cutter (I think) that served in hundreds of rescues through its many years of service in the USCG. Retired in 1998, she now serves as a monument to the Coast Guard and is immortalized in the midst of a rescue, tossing a buoy out to a stranded swimmer. Click on the picture for more detail.






The 44300's bow. You can't tell in this picture, but the boat is actually mounted on a tilted platform at a 45 degree angle and this end is around 15 feet from the floor of the room. The 44300 later served as a prototype for future rescue vessels in both the USCG and the British Navy after many years of sucessful service.




While touring the museum, Neal got really, really hungry. We left the museum and drove a few minutes down the street to downtown Astoria where we discovered the weekly farmer's market, held every Sunday for six months of the year. We followed our noses to an open barbeque in a parking lot and then discovered that there was more than just barbeque: there were several stalls selling fresh lemonade, ice cream, sausages, hot dogs and other typical festival-type fare. But we also discovered a stall serving fresh enchiladas and tamales where the tortillas were made as we watched. Yum!

The Astoria farmer's market is a combination farmer's market where one can buy fresh organic local produce, arts and crafts market (you can buy art, clothing, jewelry and even cat toys made with organic catnip!) and food festival (fresh baked goods, Mexican food, etc.). The atmosphere was very festive, crowded with runners from the HTC relay and it all happened on an unusually sunny day in Astoria.






After wandering the market and picking up some goodies for our friends back home, we returned to the museum to tour the now retired Lightship Columbia, a boat that served in the place of a lighthouse on the Columbia River. At the bow is a mushroom anchor, whose shape is designed so that it does not fill with silt. The lightship was used to help guide boats into the Columbia River, as it was very difficult to build a lighthouse on the point.

Columbia River Maritime Museum

This is from an exhibit in the entry to the Columbia River Maritime Museum. It's a display of the number and locations of ships that wrecked entering or leaving the Columbia River. The Columbia begins far north of Oregon, in the Canadian Rockies, and travels south through Washington and eventually empties off the coast of Oregon into the Pacific ocean.



The water, which has traveled for thousands of miles before it meets the sea, carries the considerable momentum it has gathered when it crashes headfirst into the waves of the ocean. It's this junction of the river and ocean waters that can create the treacherous waves -- some as high as 40 feet -- which have earned the Columbia the nickname of 'Graveyard of the Pacific.'


Any ship crossing the Columbia River bar must take on a bar pilot, a boat pilot who is responsible for bringing the boat across the waters safely so it can continue inland. Bar pilots will pull up to a freighter, for example, climb up a ladder along the side of the ship and replace the ship's pilot for the initial portion of it's voyage inland. The bar pilots are a very small, elite corps of Astoria boat pilots who have intimate knowledge of the tricky waters (and sands!) of the Columbia River; any ship trying to enter without a car pilot will be denied entry.




For decades, Astoria was known as the Salmon Canning Capitol of the world. Millions of pounds of salmon were caught and processed here before being sent on to destinations throughout the US. The men who worked in canneries came from all over the world; the Chinese were here as early as the 1880's and the Scandinavians (mostly Finns, from what I understand) also settled here to fish.


Semper Paratus
The museum also included a tribute to the United States Coast Guard, which has played a key role in Astoria's development as a port and ensuring the safety of ships entering and leaving US waters. The sheer volume of freighter traffic and fishing in the Columbia makes the question of potential disaster not an issue of 'if' but 'when.' The USCG maintains buoys, markers and lighthouses and performs rescues to crews and ships when they are in distress. With waters as busy as the ones off the coast, there aren't very many dull moments for the Coast Guard.

more from Oregon

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Columbia River is very busy. This was taken just outside my balcony sometime in the late afternoon, it's one of the many ships that passes through on it's way inland or out to the Pacific.





Yet another ship from the balcony...
If you listen carefully and the air is just right, you can often hear the PA announcements to the ship's crew over the sound of the waves outside the windows. You might also hear a sea lion exhaling before it dives under water for salmon, or a cormorant beating its wings against the water to clean the tips.





Nike, the sponsor of the Hood to Coast Relay, gave each team these large magnetic posters to put on the team vans. They're for counting your 'roadkill' or the number of runners you pass during each segment. Neal's team passed 111 over the course of 197 miles. Not bad!
Although the roadkill tally counts the number of people passed, it doesn't take into account the number of times the runner himself/herself was passed.


After checking out of the hotel in Astoria, we headed down the road to the Columbia River Maritime Museum, one of the largest museums devoted to maritime history in the United States. As it turns out, the Columbia is pretty significant to American commerce and the early settlement of the western US. The museum is very new and includes many interactive exhibits. Click here for a link to the museum.