Seeing Astoria, OR with Brand New Eyes

We tend to overlook the things in our lives of which we see often. I have been to Astoria, OR many times in my life. It was about 45 minutes from my home during high school. My family and I would go there for dinner and get groceries, go to doctors’ appointments, the movies, any reason we could find.

But I never saw Astoria past grocery shopping or dinner with family until last weekend. We parked our 37 ft. home in a parking lot, five minutes from downtown, right next to the ocean. I wandered Astoria/Warrenton with new eyes, my interests and agenda very different from the last.

We walked the boardwalk along the Columbia River and saw many seals swimming and laying around. We found vegan food trucks and ran into the kindest travelers, whom we exchanged stories with and received some good R. V tips.

We walked into several unique shops that I had always seen but never explored. Such as Terra Stones, where I bought a little bottle of tiger’s eye gems to inspire good luck and will power along our journey. We also visited Godfather’s Bookstore, where we finally found a Rider Waite tarot card deck, and The Chariot, where I mostly wandered and held back from buying everything.

 We urban boondocked right where we had parked and even were able to connect to Wi-Fi from that location. The next morning, we woke up and parked our R. V on the beach of Fort Stevens and were able to enjoy the Oregon ocean, it had been too long since doing so.

This beach is known as the Graveyard of the Pacific Coast because of the numerous shipwrecks on this beach, stretching down to Cannon Beach.

The shipwreck we explored was named Peter Iredale, it’s iron skeleton still stands on this beach. We waited for the waves to go back in to run and climb onto this skeleton before the waves washed back to us. The view from the inside was magic. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t experienced it with it being much closer to me before.

The beach was full of life, as well as the luscious forest just beforehand.

Astoria is just off highway 101 and is worth the extra five-minute drive off course and Fort Stevens is located in Warrenton, which is actually along Highway 101 S. and is a must-see area while travelling down the Pacific coast to get a bit of history and a lot of beauty.