Mighty Columbia

This is the bridge over the Columbia River at Astoria, travelling over into Washington State. It is, so I'm told, the longest continuous truss bridge in North America. It has a high level section that's nearly a mile long at the start which, as you can see by the metalwork at the top of the shot, we're just driving down from, leaving just a huge causeway bridge to cross, with another higher section at the other end. The whole bridge is about 4 miles long. Let's just say it's pretty hard to get into one shot - hence this cop out as I don't have time for photoshopping panoramas on this trip!

Spent the morning at the Maritime Museum in Astoria. The short route between here and the ocean is apparently a very dangerous shipping route because of shifting sand bars and bad weather. The kids seemed fascinated by all the stories of the wrecks there have been over the years.

The town attracted lots of fishermen from North Atlantic areas when their waters were fished out (you'd think they'd have learned from that: since the industry here all but closed when, surprise surprise, the waters were fished out...) I guess things must have been pretty bad for them at home to risk the journey around Cape Horn to come here. The cosmopolitan nature of the town means there are lots of Finnish centres and baths and the like (and more blondes than I've seen on the rest of our trip!) and upstream there seems to be a Scots flavour with even a Highland Games in the summer.

We've now headed up into Washington and are in Eatonville ready for a trip to a wildlife park tomorrow.

On the way up here we passed a few 'for sale' signs on trees, advertising land for sale. My daughter saw these and piped up from the back of the car "Mammy, some of those trees are for sale".

After dodgy/no internet recently, I've got around to backblipping the last few days, starting here


(Don't bother if you don't like pictures of sea stacks)