Clubs, Candles and Forts

Friday, August 26, 2011

 We awoke at Fort Stevens State Park in Hammond, OR and went out to the Petie I to have breakfast.  The camp fare for this morning was omelets, hash browns, turkey sausage, and biscuits.  It’s a wonder we don’t starve on camp fare every day.  The morning started a little cloudy and foggy at the beach.  We had decided not to fish this morning.   Fred’s back went out from hauling in all of the seaweed yesterday and Barney’s lower lip was badly sunburned.  It probably got sunburned from pouting about Fred catching a bigger eel in a load of seaweed than he did.  Fred’s was about 3or 4 inches long and Barney’s was only about an inch and a half. 

We decided to take a ride over to Fort Clatsop where Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery spent the winter, near Warrenton, OR.   We wanted to find out about the stamp for Dismal Nitch, where the Corps of Discovery attempted to spend the winter on the Washington side of the Columbia River.   It turned out that the stamp was at Fort Clatsop and we could have gotten it in April if we had asked for it.  It’s one of those things that you never know to ask about until you ask the “dumb question”.   It seems that the information is never volunteered when you ask for the stamps you know they have.  At any rate we got the Dismal Nitch stamp duely entered in the passport books.  We then went outside and watched two rangers in period costumes rendering fat to tallow to make candles.  It was an interesting demonstration and one of the young men told several interesting stories about one of the Corps members.

Betty, Barney and Wilma watching
the candle making demonstration.

Heating the cow fat they got from
Fred Meyer!

We then drove south on route 101 toward Seaside to the Highlands Golf Course and Discount Dan’s Pro Shop.  Barney bought a new set of golf clubs for Betty.  Seems her grandsons are coming closer to beating her and she needs every advantage she can get to stay ahead of them.   Of course we had to help Betty try out her new clubs so we played 9 holes just to show her that we could still lose to her.  We saw one coyote on the fourth hole and one side-winder on the eighth green. And the fog lifted enough that we could finally see the ocean on the 9^th hole.

Taking all the plastic wrappings from each club. What Fun!

The golf worked up our appetites so we dashed off to Astoria for a round at Sea Breeze Fish and Chips.  That is kind of like camp fare, but it will sure take the edge off your appetite.

We decided to do a little poking around on the north side of the Columbia River so we crossed the Astoria-Megler Bridge and made a quick stop at Fort Columbia, only to find that the VC closed at 4:00 and it was almost 4:30 when we got there.   The Cape Disappointment Light House VC also closed at 4:00 which made us disappointed, so we headed east on route 4 toward Longview, WA.    We are now firmly planted in the Longview Wal-Mart parking lot.  But don't get the wrong idea here. Normally this would be our last stop before home, but we are detouring and going to Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier before heading on back.

Not much left to do but say goodnight from the whole Bedrock bunch----goodnight.

b