My Adventures and Places Life Takes Me: Fort Stevens, Astoria and Heading Back Home

I really didn't get to bed until after the pain in my side went away. I crawled into bed again roughly around 4:30 or so and slept hard. I wanted to sleep longer than 10 but we had stuff to do like make breakfast and head to Fort Stevens for our day adventure before leaving to go home later on. There really isn't enough time in the day to do everything.

When I finally did decide to get up I was sore. Trish was up getting ready to make pancakes and eggs. Amy got up shortly after...she slept on the Murphy bed in the living room. We helped Trish clear of the dining room table so we could eat our meal together. The pancakes and eggs hit the spot. I was starving when I got up.

We put everything away and shoved it into the dishwasher. We all got ready to go and made sure we had everything we needed, like sunscreen. We took Trish's car and drove down to Fort Stevens in Oregon. I can't remember if I've been here before...possibly with my family when we were little. I wanted to go the last time I was in the area for the 2012 Long Beach cache machine. We spent a little bit of time in Astoria but really didn't venture out that way. I looked at the map. The letterbox that was in the park wasn't there anymore. I was pretty disappointed. I had really bad cell service once we got into the park so I didn't get any of the caches that were there.

It was fun driving over the Astoria-Megler bridge again. The 4.1 mile bridge had a lot of work done to it over the years. This time it wasn't being worked on. However, the seagulls got a little too close to some of the vehicles because there were several dead ones along the road as we drove by. We got into Astoria and followed the signs to the park.

This place had tons of trails, bunkers and even a shipwreck to explore. We started with the shipwreck, the Peter Iredale. The Peter Iredale was named after a businessman in England. The ship was built in June of 1890. It was heading from Mexico to Portland, Ore. with 1,000 tons of ballast and a crew of 27 when the ship was driven into the Clatsop Spit due to high seas and wind. There it remained. Very little damage was done to the ship however due to unfavorable conditions it was never repaired and put back into action. It listed port and was embedded into the sand. Salvage rights to the ship were sold in 1917 since it was never broken up. All that is left is the bow, a few ribs and a few masts.

We explored every inch of this ship. Since I've spent a few months reading, watching and studying The Titanic, this was very interesting to me. The history, the story, what happened, why it stayed etc. There were a bunch of people with nice cameras taking pictures of it. We had to wait our turn to get pictures of us inside what was left of the ship.

We spend roughly about an hour here and took many pictures of the shipwreck. We used the restroom and went to the bunkers just down the road. We parked in the lot and walked up the flight of stairs to the bunker. It was so cool! Not as cool as the one in Port Townsend but this was still pretty cool. The fort was constructed in 1863-64 during the Civil War as an earthwork battery on the south shore of the mouth of the Columbia River, and was known as the Fort at Point Adams. It was later Fort Stevens in 1865, in honor of the former territorial governor of Washington, Isaac I. Stevens who had been killed in action. Fort Stevens was the primary military installation in what became the Three Fort Harbor Defense System at the mouth of the Columbia River.

We spent another hour exploring every nook and cranny of this place. Ben wanted to play hide and go seek and I still felt bad from the night before and really didn't want to. So he was lame to me because I was lame to him. We had to constantly remind Amy not to use swear words in public...around children. I was pretty bummed out I couldn't find any caches in this area because of our cell reception. Plus most of them were along the miles of trails in the park.

I needed to find at least one cache while we were here. We left the Fort Stevens and I pulled up the app and found the closest one to us. It was in a park called Carruthers Memorial and it had a small parking lot and only like three cars could park there. We had to create our own spot. I saw the cache, End of the Line (2) (GC13XFT), was near the water hidden somewhere on a platform. We followed the path and watched people play with their dogs at the small dog park to the right of us. We saw the platform and started looking for the lock n' lock. It was hidden in a great spot but we found it.

I finally dropped off some of the trackables I've been carrying around for over a year. It was nice to drop them off for someone else to have an adventure with them. We signed the logbook and put it back exactly how we found it. We returned to the car and we all decided it was time for some food in town. What sounded good? I didn't really want to be in charge of the food that we ate just in case no one liked it. Trish decided and we pulled into Pig n' Pancake. The last time I saw one of these was in Lincoln City the last time I drove through there...which was probably about 6 years ago.

We all ordered our drinks and then our food. For some reason a burger and fries sounded good so I ordered that. Trish got fish and chips, Amy got some sort of a grilled chicken burger and fries and Ben ordered breakfast. We didn't have to wait very long for our food. We ate and visited. I found out after my side pains I tend to pee a lot for a few days afterward. I had to go. We paid and decided to hang out for a little bit longer in Astoria.

We wanted to go to the column but it closed at 5. I told them the last time I was here we hung out at the maritime museum and they said sure so we went there for a bit. I needed another cache so I looked for the closest one. That one turned out to be the iconic one on the Astoria trolley, the cache that sat on the trolley and moved along the waterfront. We really didn't have time for that one but I would like to do that one some day. Instead, we grabbed Mossed In (GC1P60H).

It was getting to be about that time and we didn't want to get home too late mostly because I worked the next day and I needed sleep especially after being gone all weekend. We drove back over the bridge and went back to the resort.

We packed up everything, double checked everywhere, shoved it on the cart and took it down to Ben's car. We thanked Trish for having us come hang out with them and celebrating Amy's birthday at the beach. We would see them again soon. We left around 7 and I knew it would take us roughly two hours to get home. Before we made the drive home I wanted to find a bearsandme cache. We tried looking for one but couldn't find it. I think it was missing. Then the very next one we looked for was also a bearsandme cache, Verla's vulture Violet vomits vegetables (GC461G6) was in great shape next to a tree. The V on the cache wasn't attached anymore but I wanted to find a Freda cache. Freda is a geocacher from Longview who I met back in 2014 at a caching event in Castle Rock. She was a shy quiet geocacher and I've heard a lot about her from other cachers. She enjoyed putting out cute caches. Ones that had a theme or caches she could attach toys or trinkets to. I have gotten to know her over the years and sadly she passed away this past April. It was devastating to hear and I wasn't able to go to her life celebration which disappointed me. I am going to try and put out a cache in the Thurston County area to honor her.