Up the Oregon Coast - Last Day

We are looking forward to this, our final full day in OR, not because it’s our last day but because we are looking forward to the stunning views as we drive up the coast. But the coast is covered in fog and is so until past 11 a.m. Quite the bummer.

We stop in a small town around 9 a.m. and walk out on the public dock and see the sea lions waking. Two ambitious sea lions that get moving before their peers each bring something up from the depths and slam it against the water. After their victims are stunned, the sea lions devour them. Honestly, what they brought up looked like crabs or some kind of crustacean, but that seems unlikely. Maybe they were birds. We’ll never know.

On our way back to the car, we stop in a candy store and buy peanut butter fudge, and Mark selects a vast variety of salt water taffy, which we enjoy on our way up the coast.

We next stop at a farmers’ market and walk around though we don’t buy anything as it’s our last day. Mark says he wishes we had a farmers’ market back home. I remind him that, “There is Findlay Market.” He says he doesn’t want to risk his life going to the market, and Findlay Market is in the seediest section of Cincinnati. I make up my mind to search out another one when we get back.

Further north we stop in Tillamook at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and have trouble finding a parking spot, it’s so crowded this Saturday morning. Since it’s a Saturday, there are no cheese-making operations to see. Mark stands in line in the store there and buys some pepper jack cheese and a little beef stick. We both get ice cream cones; I get a scoop of pistachio pecan to complement a scoop of caramel pecan atop a sugar cone. Boring Mark gets one flavor: two scoops of wild mountain raspberry on a sugar cone.

We drive up the coast towards our final destination: Fort Clatsop and the Lewis & Clark National Historic Site. All the while we’re enjoying fudge and salt water taffy and now cheese! Mark eats some of the beef stick too.

At Fort Clatsop, amazingly, we don’t feel sick. We tour the museum at the visitor center and see the informational film. This is the worst introductory film to a National Park/Monument/Historic Site I’ve ever seen. I watch the credits at the end and see that it’s written, produced, and edited by the same fellow. That’s one of the problems. I thought everyone knew that people are not good editors of their own creations. As a write, I am aware of this. Apparently educational film writers/producers/editors are not.

The second problem with the film was that the atrocious acting was all done by employees or volunteers at Fort Clatsop, which is not the original but is a recreation. Fort Clatsop is the western winter encampment of the Corps of Discovery during their final year on their amazing Journey of Discovery.

After the film, Mark and I hike a short trail from the fort to the Columbia River (I think) before aiming east to Portland. We want to get to the Borders Express in a certain mall in Portland so that I can sign copies of my book that had been ordered.

We arrive at the store, and they search, but it turns out that my books have not arrived yet. So Mark and I drive north and stay at a Holiday Inn Express near where we need to return the rental car in the morning. We settle into our separate beds and sleep well.