Astoria, Oregon and Cannon Beach, Oregon

We Drove out from Portland on highway 26 today to visit the mouth of the Columbia River. I haven't spent much time at large river Deltas because you likely can't drive easily past the Delta much on the Sacramento river that easily (or because they dredge the delta) or because of the San Francisco Bay creating sort of a Non-Delta experience because the San Francisco Bay mitigates it there.

However, you get the full Big River Delta experience at the mouth of the Columbia River where it turns into rivulets with islands with Trees on them before it opens up fully to the sea. We crossed the the river more than once.

I misunderstood at first what was happening when we crossed the first bridge because I thought we were already at the mouth of the Columbia River where it goes into the sea. But instead we were crossing into Washington at Longview, Washington instead which is miles inland from where the river fully meets the ocean. But, even at Long View there were large ocean Going ships there being loaded likely with Timber and other things to be hauled either overseas or to other ports along the West Coast of the U.S., Canada or Mexico.

We stayed on 4 as far as Naselle where we took 401 towards Astoria. It connects with the large highway 101 which then goes across the long set of bridges to Astoria where we had lunch at a place actually on the river. In other words the water was under the restaurant as we looked out upon the very large River which might be the largest on the west coast of the U.S. Either the Sacramento or the Columbia is the largest river on the west coast of the U.S. because they are both pretty big. Further South of the Sacramento there is not other river this size in all of California for example because most of California south of San Francisco is Semi-Arrid and almost desert like in some ways and from about Beaumont and Banning South on the Interstate 10 it begins to be desert all the way into Arizona and New Mexico on Interstate 10.

After eating around dinner time in Astoria (since sunset is now around 9:07 pm in this area we headed further down to a view point overlooking Cannon Beach which was quite lovely and took many pictures. The bottom right one is the view we saw from the viewpoint. But, all these pictures are quoted from Google images under the Heading "Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Then we headed back down Highway 26 back to Portland for the night and arrived just before sunset.

It was a very scenic and amazing day as I had never been any of these places before in my life. When you do something that you have never done before it opens up entirely new passages in your brain and new ways to think about everything which I find is helpful in evolving and adapting as a being here on earth.