Travels in Our Airstream: Tuesday, November 24, 2009

It was nice and sunny this morning with a temperature of about 12C (55F) when we headed out. We had decided to go north to Warrenton and visit Fort Clatsop Within about 4 miles of leaving the park it clouded over and by the time we got to the Visitor’s Centre at Fort Clatsop the temperature had dropped to 9C (48F) and it was foggy and very damp.

Fort Clatsop is where Lewis and Merriweather had spent the winter of 1805-1806 in their quest to find the Pacific Ocean. They built a fort there for the winter and during that time the Chinook and Clatsop Indians came to the fort almost daily to trade and visit. The National Park Service has built a replica of the fort that we walked through, and I think it would have been a very cold winter there, but better than being out in the open!

Fort Clatsop and an Officer's Quarters

There is also a replica of the dugout canoes they made down by the Netul River (now the Lewis & Clark River). The canoe looked like it would be very heavy, I wouldn’t want to have to do any portaging with one of them!! It was a nice walk through the woods to the river with lots of very large trees and there were a lot of trees that had fallen down and a couple like this that have broken off.

Dugout Canoe

Netul River

After touring the fort and walking down to the river we spent some time in the Visitor’s Centre watching a couple of films and looking at the displays.

When we left there we went to Fred Meyer to get some groceries before the huge crowds hit the stores tomorrow to stock up for Thanksgiving. Fred Meyer is like a Super Wal Mart, they have everything from A to Z and also sell fuel. I had read about them on the internet and when we were checking out we got one of their cards, which are like our Sobey’s cards, you don’t need them to get the specials but you collect points with them – 1 point for every dollar spent. After 100 points you can get $0.10/gallon off on the price of fuel and seeing how we spent over $100 when we went to fuel up we got our $0.10/gallon off so it cost us $2.699/gallon for diesel. That was a really good deal as their fuel was already at least $0.10/gallon less than any other gas station we have seen so far in Oregon.

If you don’t have the points for the $0.10/gallon discount you get $0.03/gallon by swiping their card so can’t lose on buying fuel there.

By the time we came out of the grocery store the sun was trying to come out but it was quite foggy. As we got back to Cannon Beach it looked like there might be a nice sunset over the ocean so we went down to take some pictures, it wasn’t as nice as I had hoped it would be but it was still a bit of a sunset.