Tuna
Monday 11 March 2024
With daylight savings kicking in yesterday morning, it is still, at least for now, dark at 7am. That’s my excuse for us not waking up until nearly 8am. I don’t think I am a morning person any more.
We had four tasks we wanted to accomplish today.
First was to top up my pre-paid US phone number. I tried online last night, but it didn’t like my Australian credit card and kept saying it couldn’t do it. According to their website there was an outlet in town and another one 15 mins up the road. Should have been easy, but no. We couldn’t find the outlet in town, we were definitely in the right place but it wasn’t there, despite walking around and looking at the same four shops for 5 mins. No problem, we will go to the other one which is on the way to Astoria, which was where we were heading today. Positive – the shop existed. Negative – it didn’t open until 11am. As it was 10.33am, and it was too long to hang about so decided to come back later.
First task was put on hold.
Second task was to go to the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria. The ranger at the State Park we chatted to the other day highly recommended it. It was fantastic. It wasn’t huge, but had a good range of exhibits that looked all up todate (and not fading) and was focussed on the Columbia River and Astoria. They covered the local Coast Guard, involvement in WWII, local river-based industries, shipwrecks and tragedies (there are a vast number of them over the years), maps from the early explorers and what is referred to as Crossing the Bar. As the Columbia River mouth is very wide, they have a lot of sand movement and have to regularly dredge to keep a open and safe shipping channel. However, the currents are very strong and at high tide there is the added challenge of the inflowing seawater against the outflowing freshwater. Now days, all of the container ships are required to have a pilot drive the boats in and out of the river. Previously many captains thought they could do it themselves and hence there are way too many shipwrecks in and around the mouth of the river. It seems modern day shipping accidents are a result, not of incompetent navigation, but rather something stops working properly such as engines and turning. It was a really great museum, if you happen to be in Astoria, OR then I’d recommend you stop by.
Museum entry also got us access to the Columbia Lightship, which was docked right behind the museum and beside a current Coast Guard boat. By this time, it has started raining again and was cold, again. It was the last of the Lightships and decommissioned in 1979. Think of it as a floating lighthouse that sat about 5 mile out to sea. There were about 17 crew on board at a time and were out to sea in roughly 3-week rotation. Their only job was to act as a lighthouse so it was a very, very boring job with the only excitement being any storms that would toss the boat around for a bit.
Second task accomplished.
Third task was to find a brewery that over looked the river so we could watch the containerships float by as we had some ales and lunch. After driving in circles for 20 mins we still hadn’t managed to find any of the three breweries we were looking for. It was still raining. We gave up.
Third task, fail.
Fourth task was to put more petrol in the car. Tick, no problems.
Fourth task accomplished.
Now back to your first task. On the way back home, we stopped back at the mobile phone outlet to top up my US phone. Tick, no problems, have now topped it up for the next three months.
First task accomplished.
As we had failed at our third task, we were quite hungry, but got home about 2.30pm and had a late lunch of leftovers. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the rain go sideways for the warmth and comfort of our apartment.