Going to the Beach

Saturday... late in the day may I add... we loaded up the dogs and headed for the coast. Our ultimate destination was Astoria, but we took a wide swing once we crossed over into Washington. We skirted along the Columbia river and headed up the Long Beach Penensula. The Willapa Bay side was almost as pretty as the ocean side. Long Beach was a tourist trap with lots of souvenirs shops and rv parks. In fact there were very few hotels, mostly those uber seedy roach motels. There were lots of rv's and tents in town. I was surprised there weren't big pretty beach houses, but you didn't really get to any of that until you got to the tip of the penensula. We drove all the way up to Leadbetter Point which is the very tip. It was really quiet up there.

We took the dogs up above Long Beach to the Cranberry Rd beach access. The sun was going down and the tide was coming up. It was gorgeous. It had rained off and on all the way to the coast, and was generally overcast, but by the time we got to the coast it was clear and sunny. The dogs had a blast running on the beach and playing in the water. The water was actually warm. The weird thing was they allowed people to drive on the beach. There were just a few people out flying kites and getting ready to do some camping. Long Beach is home to the World Kite Museum so there were lots of strange kites out on the beach. It was pretty cool.

Unfortunately it was dark by the time we got to Astoria, but we crossed the Astoria-Megler Bridge which was really cool. We have to go back during the day to check it out.