Life with Andrea

Thanksgiving in Astoria, 2007.


Thanksgiving and Christmas are those huge American holidays that require the family. If the entire family is not present, one cannot help but feel empty. I generally feel empty at Thanksgiving regardless, because I want it to be a pilgrim Thanksgiving - with a hundred people, the whole town, everyone I know. And we are such an insular family that we seldom have more than “just us”. As a result, I have to find a work-around. Sometimes it’s having friends over before or after Thanksgiving, sometimes we go away in order to avoid the empty house. This year, we went to Astoria the day after Thanksgiving, and took Brandon for Soren so he wasn’t bored.

Astoria is in northwest Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia. It was one of the first towns in the Pacific Northwest, and has many beautiful old homes. The downtown is standard tourist fare - coffee shops, kitsch, bakeries, restaurants. We didn’t notice galleries, but there were several music shops. Bob said it felt like leftover hippiedom. It was cute.

We didn’t do much - just poked around. One of the “things to do” in Astoria is climb the column. A column sits atop the highest hill, a mural of historical events spiraling its way up the outside. Inside, 136 steps circle to the viewing platform. Neither Bob nor I was up to the steps, but Soren and Brandon were. From the top, one could fly balsawood gliders, and they would spiral and loop and float for minutes. The boys flew them down, combined them to make bi- and tri-planes, and climbed up again. Soren said he was dizzy from climbing in circles.

Along the waterfront Astoria has a trolley. It wasn’t running while we were there, as it is a summer attraction, but paralleling the track is a Riverwalk. So, we walked the riverwalk. There were many ships, pilot boats, lots of birds, shops, and the constant sound and smell of the ocean. I had hoped for many birds, and I saw a few new ones: cormorants, a heron, and a kind of duck with racing stripes! I think it's called a bufflehead. I kid you not.

After a while, we began to hear barking, that distinctive barking of seals and sea lions, so we hurried to find them. A dock was loaded with sea lions. They were practically lying on top of each other, flapping each other with their fins. Every once in a while, two or three would get into a shoving match. Some of them posed for us. One stood on his four pins and walked, just like a circus seal. We watched from a dock not 15 feet away, and they had no fear. Too big to be cute, they were certainly funny to watch.




Astoria was definitely worth the trip.