Cape (hardly a) Disappointment
Cape Disappointment State Park in Washington – just over the river from Astoria, OR – is where Sarah and I spent the past weekend. We’re not sure what we did to deserve it, but we had an incredible weekend of weather, naturescapes, wildlife sightings, food, hikes, bikes and laughter. We saw this spit of land, chose the campground, and made plans for this trip with no other research into the area – basically, ‘this piece of land looks really cool, let’s go explore it!‘
Cape Disappointment is at the northern side of the mouth of the Columbia River – also known as The Graveyard Of The Pacific for the 2000 boats and 700 people who have been lost among the strong currents, rips, waves and bars where this incredible river pours into the Pacific. Cape Disappointment was also the first place where the Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery first saw the ocean after over two years of trekking and exploration across the Louisiana Purchase and further west to the Pacific. Not surprisingly, it is an area incredibly rich in human history with the various settlements of Native American tribes – the Chinook and Clatsop, especially – and then further along to Lewis & Clark and the fur traders that settled Astoria, OR in 1811.
Mouth of the Columbia River - Washington/Oregon
It is also an area of incredibly rich natural world treasures. We sighted almost a dozen bald eagles in the course of our weekend there, effectively tripling the number I had ever seen in my entire life. We also saw numerous blue heron, osprey, a few raccoons, a salamander, a frog, a 4″ slug, caterpillars, black-tailed deer, a bear print, garter snakes, ducks, hawks, ravens, seagulls and terns. Mackenzie Head is the spit of land that makes up Cape Disappointment and that rises about 400′ above sea level, providing beautiful views to the river channel, as well as northward to the North Head Lighthouse. The whole area has the feel of Big Sur and the long stretches of rugged, undeveloped coastline complete with booming surf and empty beaches. The weather gets pretty brutal there with a lot of wind and driving rain, but we had the most placid of weather…light breezes, sunshine and temperatures in the mid-60s. The beaches are filled with huge piles of what were once enormous trees, now smoothly-weathered and scattered all over the beaches.
Benson Beach
Perfect weather, basically, for camping and riding bikes and hiking. On Saturday, we rode our bikes 57 miles straight north up the peninsula that creates Willapa Bay to the east – home of the world famous oysters. At the halfway point, we stopped in Oysterville near the tip of the peninsula at the Oysterville Sea Farms for a dozen freshly-shucked oysters and a beer for lunch while overlooking Willapa Bay and the hills farther east. It had a feel very much of Cape Cod and coastal Maine. Peaceful, beautiful, working, seaside towns. We returned to camp for a late afternoon 5-mile hike straight up a hillside on, basically, a deer trail that finally intersected with a people trail leading to the North Head Light – built in 1898 and still in operation.
Willapa Bay's finest
North Head Light
Sunday was a shorter ride (~23 miles) into the cute beach town of Long Beach and along the Discovery Trail (a beautiful, paved trail winding for miles along the beach in the rolling dunes and grass…very cool!) where we had an amazing breakfast at Benson’s On The Beach. I continued my weekend of eating fresh, local seafood with grilled razor clams and poached eggs and potatoes while Sarah had a veggie and cheese omelet and great toast. The weekend was bookended on Friday and Sunday by stopping at Josephson’s Smokehouse in Astoria for some incredible hot-smoked spring and fall run salmon and smoked sea scallops. Yum.
Overall, we had a good dose of history, lots of great food and drink (red tea, bourbon and honey nightcaps at camp are the best), clean and fresh salt air, bright bright stars, and a couple of excellent rides, hikes and beach walks in a new part of our northwestern backyard.
Click here to see all of the pictures from our weekend.
