Astoria

Earlier in October, GF and I decided to take a Sunday trip to Astoria. See, I've been hyping the crap out of that place for as long as I can remember. I've wanted to visit there ever since seeing Kindergarten Cop back in the early 90's (it might have had something to do with hoping that Penelope Ann Miller lived there, I don't know). And then after seeing The Ring 2 I knew I just had to go.


I had a chance to go there around the year 2000 when I was living in Portland, but it was one of those whirlwind trips where we went for a few hours with my sister and her husband, so we didn't really spend a whole lot of time in one place and never really felt like I was able to soak up anything for long enough to make any kind of impression. Seriously, the main thing I remember was stopping at a Walmart or some similar kind of place on our way back home. See, that's where we actually spent the longest amount of time, while buying snacks and using the restrooms.


I wanted to take GF there to show her how awesome it might be as a potential place to live one day. I mean come on, The Ring 2 was filmed and took place there. Couldn't be more perfect to me.


We roll into town at about 10:30am or something, and after stopping in at a McDonald's for a much needed pee break and purchasing of coffee-like beverages, we headed straight for the Astoria Column.

Astoria Column

Last time I was there, you couldn't have paid me enough to climb up that thing. But this time, GF and I went straight up to check out the views.

Downtown Astoria. Yeah, that's all of it.

The weather, by the way, was freaking perfect. It rained a little on the drive up, but by the time we got there it was a perfect shade of overcast. The Column is perched on top of a hill and you can pretty much see forever in all directions. When we first got there, there was a guy up on top talking to his daughter on the ground who was apparently too skittish to make the trek to the top. We went on about how he was pretty sure he could see Japan from his vantage point and that she was going to regret not being able to see Japan for herself. I don't know, it struck me as infinitely funny. But while he was up there I was amazed at how well I could hear him, even when he was obviously speaking in a relatively normal voice.

Facing west. Weird huge island thing in the distance.

The overcastness and foggness that was happening all over the place was pretty awesome. It made everything seem kind of spooky in a bad-ass kind of way. I love spooky. This was like a down-home spookiness.

Close up of huge island/peninsula. I like thinking it was biological in origin.

Oh and by the way, there were more trees visible from the top of this column thing than I have ever seen anywhere ever. Brazilian rain forest? You can have it. I'll take Northwest Ball Rocking Awesomeness any day of the week.

From the top, people looked like human-sized bipedal well-accessorized ants.

I really thought I'd be freaking out more up there, but it was relatively calm. I didn't really have any problems up there. Getting up there on the other hand was a bit of a workout for my old, tired legs and gasping, wheezing lungs. And don't even get me started on the trek down the steps. There were something like 700,000 stairs or some crap. Ridiculous. And uncalled for. If you're going to make something retardedly tall, try not to be such a douche and at least put an elevator in it or something. Rude.

GF is mighty.

I don't know why I didn't upload any pictures facing in other directions, since looking east was pretty cool too. Lots of trees and stuff. And clouds. They were being all epic and bad ass too. Oh wait...

Fifty thousand shades of grey in one sky. Thanks, nature!

This is a shot facing kind of southeast. See? Trees, right? Buttlodes of them. And sky as far as the eye could see. And I'm guessing even further than that, since there was a pretty thick cloud cover and all. Yup.

Our next stop was backtracking a bit to some beach where there was a shipwreck or something. On our way there we saw a sign for a military cemetary and just had to find out what that was all about. We ended up driving through some backwoods military housing dump with lots of houses with car parts in their yards and such crap. When we finally got to the "cemetary, it was at the end of a cul de sac (if you can actually have a cul de sac on a dirt road) and locked up. It looked like it had about 20 graves in it, none of them particularly interesting at all. I couldn't get over why they would even advertise it around town if a) you had to drive through a horror movie neighborhood to get to it, and b) you couldn't get into it at all anyway. Oh well, whatever.

So we bailed that failure and headed for the beach. It was GF's first time back to the ocean since March, and after living right up the street from it for forever back in San Diego, she kinda missed it a smidge.

Now when I hear the word "shipwreck," I'm expecting something the size of the Empire State Building laying on the beach. I had no idea what to expect. Apparently this thing has been sitting on the beach for literally over a hundred years. Seriously. Like I'm not even being funny. It's been there for over a hundred years. Let's just say that there's not a whole crap of a lot left of it anymore. But we saw pictures of it just after it happened, and it was pretty impressive and intimidating. I love history.

GF is a giant.

I love that picture more than most things ever. I have no idea where that little man came from, or what he wanted from us Earthlings at the beach. Maybe it was a midget Bigfoot. Midgetfoot.

Spies.

These two people were apparently hovering around us at the Column. GF noticed them atop a sand dune not far from us at the beach, and when I grabbed my camera and pointed it at them, the acted like they were paying attention to something else. I think they wanted my awesome hoodie. No, spies!! My hoodie!!

Sky being awesome.

The whole trip, the sky was rocking all kinds of sky balls.

The Pacific Ocean. The bully of the large bodies of water.

For the most part, the water was well-behaved. But every once in a while it would get a big kick out of chasing us up the beach because it thought it was funny. Very Jr High School there, sir. Not funny.

Weird Monkey-People Rock/Wood.

I was following behind GF (she liked to take off up the beach without warning, which I'm sure was fun for her) when I noticed a weird thing sitting on the beach in front of her. I waited to see what her reaction would be, but she never had one, so I decided to snap a pic just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.

Monkey People Wood Rock (highlighted)

Seriously, click on the picture so it blows up to the size of New Hampshire and tell me what the freak I'm looking at!

Saving Private Crabby

There were all kinds of animal casualties on the beach. There were even multiple dead birds. I took pics, but GF thought they were "gross" so I'm trying to show good judgement and not put them here. You're welcome.

More crab carnage: Crabby head-head.

As I mentioned before, one of GF's favorite past times is to take off while I'm staring at something. Case in point: As I was taking a fantastic picture of the above crabby head, I had no idea where she was, other than the fact that before I looked down to take said pic, she was standing  right beside me. I snap 2 pictures, look up to say "Hey, got another pic of another crabby head," (there had been several at this point) and she was nowhere to be seen. I look waaay up the beach and see this...

She's actually about a half mile away.

Another thing we've started to notice along the beach are these weird small jelly balls. They totally didn't look bilogical, but I had no idea. I figured that all the fake whores with implants somehow knew when their implants were going to spit the implants out, so they instinctively headed for the sea to expel their fakeness only to have them all wash up here on this one beach just outside of Astoria. Oceans currents are weird, as we all well know. My other hypothesis, while far less logical, was just as entertaining to me in my own mind. It takes the form of a conversation between two of the jelly balls out at sea (in this scenario, they actually are biological creatures, and as a point of reference, really freaking dumb)...

jelly1 - Hey, I got an idea. Let's go to the beach!

jelly2 - Hey, yeah! Sounds awesome! Where should we go?

jelly1 - I hear Astoria is pretty awesome. Let's go check it out!

jelly2 -Yeah, let's go check it out! Come on everyone!

jellys3-infinity - Okay! Let's go!

After which they all wind up stuck on the beach...

jelly2 - Um, now what?

jelly1 - I don't know. I forgot that we're aquatic.

At which point, they all died. Sad, I know.

Baby jelly ball. About the size of my pinkie-nail. Dead.

Seriously, these things were everywhere. Some really freaking small, some not so small. I think the biggest one we noticed was about the size of a baby. Just kidding. It was a baby. Just kidding. It was about the size of a baby's hand.

Not the big one the size of a baby or it's hand.

GF did some research as to what the crap they were, and it turns out they actually were creatures. But they were clear. Those of you who know me know that I have this weird thing about clear stuff. But this stuff was completely clear and it was creatures. Not just kind of clear like a jellyfish, but completely clear, like bags of water. Weird. Here's a link to what they actually were:

http://www.oceanlight.com/cyclosalpa_affinis_photo.html

And no, I have no idea why they light up at sea and not on beaches. Modesty, I'm guessing.

GF also provided me with another link about them:

http://www.msc.ucla.edu/oceanglobe/pdf/beach_debris_guide.pdf

... and then followed it with the info that Salps is at the end.

Next stop, the Flavel house. People seem to love this place because it was in the Goonies or something (I still haven't seen it). It was built by George Flavel, a bar pilot, who became the first millionaire in the region or something. Nice house. Lots of history. Read more about him online somewhere, and definitely go to this house if you're ever in Astoria.

The back of the Flavel House/Museum.

My favorite part of the house/museum was the lady in the gift shop, which used to be the stables on the southwest corner of the property. She was full of all kinds of trivia, and posed it all in the form of a quiz. "Which member of the Flavel family was on the Titanic?" How the crap should I know? I wasn't even sure of George's first name until a few days later when I was reading through the brochure. She was funny though. And helpful.

Facing northeast, with boats in the background.

The only thing I didn't like about this house were the spiders. Seriously, they were freaking everywhere!! You couldn't turn around without coming face to... when we walked back to the car we had to walk in the middle of the street because they were all over all the bushes. And they weren't the easily ignorable kind, either. Oh no, they had to be the weird, tiger-striped kind that were all twitchy and freaking gross. Good gog, why, lord, why?

After the Flavel house (which, by the way, is pronounced "fluh-VELL" - being a tard, I was pronouncing it "FLA-vl" where the FLA kind of rhymed with the "a" sound in "slap". And by the way, Astoria is pronounced "A-storia" where the "A" rhymes with, well, "ass". It's like "ASS-toria", not like "uh-STOR-ia" which is what I've been doing. Anyway...) we wandered over to the Maritime Museum. I was expecting all kinds of kick ass stuff about the Cloumbia river like all the creatures that lived there and junk, but the whole thing was about boats. I'm not that into boats and neither is GF, so we bailed after about 30 minutes. It was cool, but just not our thing. If you're into boats, go. You'll dig it.

After that we decided to grub it up a bit. We had decided to go to this place called Baked Alaska, so we go there and park. The menu seemed promising. We weren't really all that hungry yet, so we walked around for a bit. The people there are a hoot. OH! And we heard sea lions under the pier so we went to investigate. We were standing there trying to peer under the pier, when all of a sudden, one of them popped his head up right in front of us. Cute as balls, fo sho.

So we go back to the restaurant and are seated with a nice view of the river. GF immediately gets the impression that our waitress doesn't like her. I try to reassure her that the waitress probably has no opinions of us one way or another, as we are merely there to eat. But over the course of the meal GF keeps assuring me that there is indeed weirdness. At one point after we were finished with our entrees, the waitress comes out and says to GF, "are you finished there, because we were back there watching you and didn't think you'd finish your pasta." Weird, right? They were watching her? Weird. The food wasn't good enough for that kind of weirdness. But we decided that since we were in a place called Baked Alaska that we would be remiss of didn't have the baked alaska they had named themselves after. The chef himself brings this thing out, was very kind and cheerful and lays this thing down between us, and holy frog water, this thing was amazing. I need to have it at least once a year. More. MORE.

Our weird dining experience behind us and the sun setting further and further, we decide to take one last trek back up to the Column to see it all lit up and night and junk.

Lit up at night and junk.

There was no way I was going to climb that thing at night, so we walked around and took pics from the hill. Really, we just needed a bathroom before the 2 hour drive home.

Astoria at night. Quaint!!

The later it got, the more things lit up and became more awesome. Because it gets darker when it gets later, or so I'm told. Plus when it gets darker they light things up to make them noticeable and awesome.

Noticeable and awesome.

We never found the Kindergarten Cop school or the Ring 2 locations, but it's not like we're not going back. I want to live in Naomi Watt's house from the Ring. It's not a great house, but it's the Ring 2 house. I think I need to watch the Ring 2 again. Not even because of the Astoria trip, I just love that movie.

Yay, Astoria!