After I finished up in Astoria, it was time to say good-bye to Oregon and hello to Washington! First up was a drive across the long bridge – and then depart again from 101 and head back to the coast, to Cape Disappointment.
From Wikipedia:
The cape was named on April 12, 1788 by British fur trader John Meares who was sailing south from Nootka in search of trade. After a storm, he turned his ship around just north of the Cape and therefore just missed the discovery of the Columbia River.[1] Alternatively, the cape may have been named in Nov. 1805 by a member of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, which had recently succeeded in reaching the Pacific, when he found no ships in the vicinity, according to the journal of the expedition as recited in the Ken Burns documentary.
Some sailors are such…..pessimists…. (Cape Fear, Cape Foulwind…)
This cape gets some crazy weather – which makes it a perfectly good location for the US Coast Guard to have their National Motor Lifeboat School – where the guardsmen learn to roll and right their 52 and 47 foot lifeboats. They actually do it right off the cape, when the weather brings big waves. This photo is taken from the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center (I should mention that Cape Disappointment and Astoria were the ending points for the expedition) and although I did get there around 9:00am, I was a little too late to see the guys rolling the boats (as you can see the weather has calmed down). I hear it is very cool to watch.
I wanted to walk out to the lighthouse – however – I was a bit…..wait for it…..disappointed:
