Astoria Tour: Part 2

Those sea lions are loud!

Astoria is a small town. One notices that everybody is white. It’s a foggy, spooky former fishing village.

The Shell station in town is far better than any Shell stations in Seattle. It has a beer cave. Astoria has multiple breweries and pot shops, all for a town of 10,000 people and, I’m guessing, very few tourists in the winter. In 1910 Astoria’s population was … 10,000 people.

The salmon runs are mostly gone and the relentless tree-cutting provides a fraction of the jobs that were available in the 20th century.

The charming architecture of the local buildings remains. Most of it is from the 1920’s (ancient buildings by Seattle standards), because the town burned down — for the second time — in 1922.

—Alex

Sea lions on the Columbia. Who knew a thousand pound animal could be so loud?

On the American Empress riverboat, flags fly at half mast to honor the late right wing podcaster Charlie Kirk.

Anchors aweigh at the Columbia River Maritime Museum.

The Atomic Motel. You can tell a town is economically depressed when it seems like they stopped building new things in the 1950s.