Kelly and I spent this past weekend in Astoria, Oregon. Our aunt recently bought a vacation home there and let us stay a few nights. The weather was absolutely fantastic (I have the sunburn to prove it too).
We arrived in the evening on Friday, had enough daylight to pick up groceries, unpack, and start walking into town for dinner. We quickly discovered that things shut down pretty early in town and there’s nowhere to get a meal past about 10pm. So we sat at a local brewpub called Wet Dog Cafe (part of Astoria Brewing) and had chips and salsa and tried a couple of their brews. The only really bad part was that the place had what they called ‘club night’, so it cost us $3 to get in and hear really terrible music from a cd changer. Oh well.
Saturday we drove to Fort Stevens State Park where my parents happened to be camping the same weekend, so we visited with them for a while before heading to the Buoy 10 Brewfest in Hammond, which was a pretty fun time. There weren’t too many different beers there (32 total, most of which I’d had) but there were a few really excellent ones that I’d never had before such as Pike’s Naughty Nelly’s Ale and Racoon Lodge’s Ring Tail Pale Ale. And both the weather and view were great, there was a tent and outdoor area with a great view of the Columbia River (and Astoria in the distance).
That evening Kelly and I had a very nice meal at Baked Alaska, which sits on the pier. Kelly and I sat outside on the deck and watched a magnificant sunset (seen in the photo above) and shared three crab dishes; crab cakes, dungeness crab fettucini, and Alaskan king crab legs with butter. Yum!
On Sunday we walked back down to town for the craft fair before driving up to (and then climbing the 164 steps) of the Astor Column. The photo to the left, taken from the top of the column, is of Astoria, showing the mouth of the Columbia River looking out towards the Pacific Ocean, and Washington (the dark land mass you see to the upper right). Another spectacular day, and a great weekend.