Cannon Beach - Bow Picker Fish & Chips

 So the day was absolutely beautiful so we decided to head out to Cannon Beach. As we were crossing the bridge into Astoria there was a car liner boat coming up the river. We figure it was heading up the River to Portland to pick up automobiles to head overseas. When we came back it was no where to be seen so that's why we figured it was further up the river.

This is a picture of a ship that was just coming under the bridge as we were getting ready to go over it. 

So in Astoria across from the Maritime Museum there is a fish and chips place that cooks Albacore Tuna Fish and Chips. They are only open from Wednesday to Sunday and if the weather is bad they don't open up. We have tried a few times to go but never made it. So today was the day. Len and decided to split an order which was just the perfect amount for us. Tuna is very different from cod or halibut, it has a very meaty texture. It is not really flaky, it is more like eating a piece of meat. If you every get the chance to try tuna in your fish and chips I highly recommend it.

From here we headed to Cannon Beach. This is the location of haystack rock, probably one of the most photographed rocks on the Oregon Coast. We were hoping to find some rocks but all the beaches in the area were short on gravel, the sand has taken over, however there were lots of people around flying kites, building sand castles and just generally enjoying the day.

This was the sand dune we found just as we were walking up to the beach

This is the Tillamook Lighthouse called Terrible Tilly, it is not used as a lighthouse anymore but was used as a columbarium for awhile.

This is haystack rock.

This is haystack rock looking at it from the South. 

Ilwalco Museum

Spent the day in Ilwalco which is just down the road from Long Beach. Cape Disappointment is actually right beside Ilwalco.  There really isn't much of a downtown or actually much going on. It looks like it is still recovering after Covid. However they have a very nice little museum. 

This is a cranberry sorter for sorting the berries after they have been picked.

This is a set of boots with wooden spokes so that pickers could walk through the Cranberry bogs and not damage the vines.

This is a picture of a Clam festival held in Long Beach in May of 1947. The world's largest frying pan was made for the festival. It was  10ft by 20ft and weighed 1,300 pounds. They created a clam fritter out of 200 pounds of clams, 20 doz eggs, 20 lbs of flour and cracker meal, 10 gallons of milk and 13 gallons of oil.  They no longer use the pan but it is on display in Long Beach.

Here is a picture of the pan with Len standing beside it.

The US Lifesaving Service organized two lifesaving stations on the North Beach Peninsula. One in Ilwalco and Cape Disappointment. The Lifesaving crews used a rowing lifeboat in the early days. The boat was pushed out into the breakers, rowed by six surfmen to the ship in distress. The boat was transported to the scene of a shipwreck by wagon. After the railway was built they sometimes used the train. The lifesaving crews would hold practice drills on the beaches drawing huge groups of spectators coming to watch.  This displays also shows the evolution of lifejackets over the years.  

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

So as I posted before we visited the Northhead Lighthouse but have never walked up to the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse because it has always been raining making the path hard to navigate, however we waited for a nice day and a dry path. We were not disappointed in the views. 

This is a picture of the ships from the coast guard station.

This is a cove that the Chinook Native Americans would paddle their canoes into to visit the area.

Here are a couple of vies of the lighthouse, it definitely could use a new paint job but \i have a feeling you could probably paint every year because the wind and the rain in this area takes a beating on it. This was the first lighthouse built in the Pacific Northwest, In 1852 they built the lighthouse and ordered a lens but when it arrived it was too big for the tower and it took another two years to rebuild it. The lighthouse was electrified in 1937 and was in service until 1973.

 

The cars are from the coast guard base, they can drive up from the base, while the rest of us have to walk.

This is the view of the North Jetty at the mouth of the Columbia

Cranberry Museum

So we have been to the Long Beach Peninsula many times, pretty much any time that we stayed at Seaside.  However every time that we have gone has been in the off season which means that the Cranberry Museum is usually closed. Well not this time. They got enough interest to open up on the Weekends. So we planned accordingly and went to visit. 

You can see the small shed at the back, this holds all the equipment for flooding the bogs.

The Cranberry museum is home to the Pacific Coast Cranberry Research Foundation was formed to purchase the Cranberry Research Station which was operated by Washington State University until  1992. The University still supplies personnel, while growers in the area farm the 40 acers of bogs. 

Cranberries have been grown in this area for over 100 years. They farm over 1600 acres in this area and there are over 235 growers from Vancouver, BC all the way down to Bandon, OR. 99% of the local growers are part of the Ocean Spray cooperative. 

The plant itself is a low-growing long lived evergreen vine producing runners up to 6 feet long. Leaves are dark green while growing and turn reddish brown when dormant. They flower in late May and once pollinated and the berries set, they reach maturity about 80 days after full bloom. Harvest occurs from late September through early November.  

Cranberries were originally hand picked using a stripping process using tines or fingers to comb through the vines, dislodging the berries and lift them up into a collector. Unfortunately this resulted in tearing or pulling the vines and increased the amount of pruning to get rid of the loose vines. There were also a lot of debris that had to be sorted from the berries.

As the commercial prospects increased they came up with flooding the bogs and a motorized beater move across the bog dislodging the ripe berries and they are collected as they float to the top. 

Ocean Spray delivers about 70 percent of its product to retail markets in juice form and 25% in cranberry sauce. The remaining 5% is sold as concentrated juice to other companies to make their own products. Local farmers are allowed to sell fresh fruit from their farms and produce their own lines of cranberry products. 

Cranberries have become much more popular over the last few years. Ocean Spray now does approximately $1.5 billion in annual sales. This is a doubling of their sales compared to 10 years ago. In 2022 over 403 thousand tons of Cranberries are harvested in North America in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and British Columbia and Quebec.

Fort Columbia

We visited Fort Columbia in Chinook WA.  When this fort was built between 1896 and 1906 it was in such a remote location they had to build quite an infrastructure to house the military members. They built houses, a hospital, firehouse and power generator.  The men stationed here were not just soldiers but bakers, barbers and gardeners. The fort was the largest community in the area.

This is a picture of the houses and administration buildings. They are available for summer rentals. 

This is the view looking back at Cape Disappointment  on the north side of the river.

They also had batteries here to protect the mouth of the Columbia.  This is the battery Crenshaw, it was built in 1900 and have three rapid fire 3 inch guns mounted. The guns were taken out after World War II because they became obsolete due the increase in aircraft during the war effort.

The guns that were supposed to be placed here never were,  They guns were already obsolete before they put them in. These guns are actually from the US Navel facility in Argenta, Newfoundland. They were installed in 1993 as they were identical of the guns that were supposed to be installed. This is one of only 6 remaining guns of this kind in the world.  Of course they are unusable.

We did find a little patch down to the ocean and managed to find a few rocks. I tried to convince Len that we need to take home this tree root for garden art but it wouldn't fit in the truck.

Peter Iredale Shipwreck

Today we headed across the river to Warrenton-Hammond and Fort Stevens State Park. We headed to the South Jetty Road  all the way to the end. Unfortunately they go out on it. We did walk around a bit and this is looking east at the bridge to Astoria.

This view is looking over at Washington State and Cape Disappointment

Some cool sand designs, Len had to do quite a bit of searching to get a picture with no footsteps.

Looking west down jetty, it goes out at least a mile past here.  It definitely was a beautiful day.

Looking South towards Seaside OR

From the jetty we headed South to Fort Stevens State Park.  Fort Stevens was a military installation that once guarded the mouth of the Columbia River. The fort was in service for 84 years from the Civil War to World War II. It is home to a number of batteries that we have toured on different visits.  What we decided to visit to day is the Wreck of the Peter Iredale Shipwreck.   It was a beautiful day and this area was packed with families playing in the water and on the beach. This is obviously the place to be on a sunny day. 

When they tried to salvage the wreck it got stuck in the sand and has been there since. It was fired upon during World War II in 1942, when a Japanese submarine fired several shells but it was not harmed. 

This is a picture of it when we were here in 2016, you can see how much the waves have taken down the sand. The metal is covered in barnacles and much more is showing.

Just a few of the people on the beach that day.

 

Oysterville

Oysterville is located on Willapa Bay and was established in 1841. The entire town was registered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.  Most of the houses have been lost to the sea and the elements and there are some new ones, but there are over 15 buildings that still exist.  The trees on the main street are huge and it fives a very old feel to the location.

Looking down the street, check out the trees.

This is appropriately called the Red Cottage. It is the oldest surviving structure and was built by Captain J W Munson and served as the first Pacific County Courthouse.

Not sure if this was an old house or a newer one but they did a good job of making it blend. I really liked the hitching posts out front.

This is the church

Here is one of the signs that are in front of some of the houses. I thought this story was a little sad and the house really hadn't been kept up.

It is also the location of the Willapa Wild Oyster Farm.  They farm over 300 acres on Willapa Bay by hand picking all their oysters. Willapa Bay is the cleanest bay in the Continental  US. It is also the only bay with no pollution in either the water or the sediment. Oysters are a critical part of the ecosystem. A medium sized oyster will filter 50 gallons of water per day and every shell is 12% of pure carbon pulled from the atmosphere. This company only harvests their oysters by hand to ensure that only the oysters get picked and it leaves vegetation intact. The girl at the market told us that this area provides 10% of all the oysters in the world.

The market and restaurant are in the building on the left.

It was low tide so you don't see much water

They let us take a few oysters shells home with us. 

Neither Len and I are oyster eaters but we did find some nice seafood spices that I used in some crab chowder. 

North Head Lighthouse

Today we decided to take a trip to Cape Disappointment which has the oldest lighthouse on the Northwest coast and located right at the entrance to the Columbia River. and the North Head Lighthouse which is just 3 km away, it provides light to the northern approach to the Columbia. It was a bit drizzly today we decided to visit the North Head as it has a paved path so no mud. We will try the Cape Disappointment one when the weather is nicer.

You can see the lighthouse up on the cliff.

Here is the other lighthouse. 

The North Head Lighthouse went into service on May 16, 1898. There was three keepers, they worked 8 hour shifts to provide 24 hr coverage, year round. The tower is 65 feet tall and the keepers had to carry 30 lbs of kerosene up it to light the lens. Typically one or more of the keepers were married as the wives looked after the family and the home, here at North Head, Mabel  Breterton, the only female keeper did both jobs singlehandedly. A mother of thre and widow to another keeper from 1905 to 1907.

Walking up to the North Head Lighthouse we lucked out as the Coast Guard was doing rope rescues from the helicopter to the bank down below.  

The largest Coast Guard station on the northwest coast is located right at the mouth of the Columbia where it meets the Pacific Ocean.  This area is called "Graveyard of the Pacific. It is regarded as one of the most treacherous river bars in the world. During Winter storms, wind driven ocean swells often reach heights of 30 feet at the entrance to the bar. They respond to an average of 200 calls for assistance every year. They also do onsite training for other coast guards from all over the world.

Here is the rope rescue