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Photos below are courtesy of Sheryl Todd, business owner in Astoria, Oregon. Click on her photo to view her blogs, browse her business website and learn more about her.
Astoria Coffeehouse on 11th Street between Marine Drive and Commercial is one of my favorite places to go for a good cup, good eats, nice folks, and pleasant ambiance. It's not on the water, but only a block and a half from it. You can see passing ships from the sidewalk tables on a gorgeous day like this day in August 2007, or on a day like yesterday. It's also only about three very short blocks away from where I spend most of my time.
This old scale and the view are just a couple of the things I enjoy about the Pier 39 building, which used to be the Bumblebee Canning Company. The doores to the left take you into a comfy, atmospheric and much-loved coffe house called Coffee Girl, where treats (scones, lox and bagels, fruit/granola parfait with lox on the side - yumm) are served along with one of my favorite cups of coffee. It's the original place where coffee was served to the cannery workers. We'll be back, don't worry. Here are some other posts featuring Pier 39 and Coffee Girl. The inside of Pier 39 is essentially a roofed-over outdoor museum. I hope it never changes much. Thank you, Floyd!
Fort Sevens is huge and varied. I've already shown several photos of the beach and other parts. You can read about the military history of this area in Wikipedia. It's only about a 10 minute drive or so from where I live.
If you like driftwood, you'll find it in winter on the Oregon beaches. Brought in by the storms, it accumulates along the dunes that separate the beach from the forest and grasslands. The park is large and varied, incorporating ocean, forest, bike trails, lakes, and old miltary bunkers, and it's all about 8 miles west of Astoria.
I took the photo standing a few yards from one of our favorite sites, the wreck of the Peter Iredale. It's such a picturesque and interesting spot (and easy to get to) that I've already used it three times on this blog: sunset, bones of the ship (one of my favorite photos on the blog), and sunset with ship's bones. These photos are taken just a couple of miles south of the jetty series at the mouth of the Columbia River. Fort Stevens also holds this military cemetery. A person could do an entire City Daily Photo blog on Fort Stevens and never run out of material. Don't get me started, I'll end up like Jacob.
Can anyone explain this building? I've been wanting to show you this building for a long time. As interesting as it is, it's hard to photograph. I finally gave up on "good" and just went for "expository." See the very odd angles of the front section? Note the interesting eaves brackets. It's not the only place in Astoria that has this type of ornate eaves bracket, but the other buildings don't have simiar "things" on the front. Is this a cross between a turret and a portico? Maybe someone can help me out. Also note the cement arch behind the power pole. Just for the record, this building is on Exchange near 16th.
This time it's not the angles are not the digital camera doing its thing, it really is a building with strange lines. Is this an odd blend between Victorian and Craftsman? Again, I have not taken time to do the research, but I always enjoy looking at this place and wondering about it. I would also like to rip off the electrical wiring and conduits and plunk it down into an idyllic rural setting. It makes me think of a lodge from around 1910.
This arch also intrigues me. Going with the idea of a turret, maybe the arch is a secret entrance to a fortress camouflaged as an apartment building.
About 10 feet deep in the recess of the arch is a door, apparently locked. The door is for people, not for vehicles, so thisi not one of the built-into-the-hillside garages one sees locally. In any event, I consider this odd place one of Astoria's man-made wonders.
In an early CDP post, I talked about how so many local places are referred to as "the old" this or that, so that a relative newcomer like myself has no idea what people are talking about. I'd try to get directions, only to find that I couldn't understand them because I didn't know where "the old" (whatever) used to be. It had been gone since before my arrival in Astoria. The building you see here will probably be referred to as "the old co-op" for some time to come.
The food co-op is alive and well, but it's moved from this wonderfully funky building on Duane and 14th to a newer building on Exchange and 14th that has much less character. I'm sure the new place serves them well (I should say "us," since I'm now a member), but I recall the first time I walked into the building shown here. I thought I'd stepped into a piece of San Francisco from the hippie days, and I loved it. So, until someone moves in and gives the location a strong new identity, it's still "the old co-op" to me, and probably to many others as well. I wonder what else it used to be? Maybe someday I'll have more time to do the research.
Motorcycle mailbox B SQUARED always finds the creative, funky mailboxes, so I guess this photo is to show that we have at least one in Astoria. I'm sure there must be a few more. I'll keep my eyes open and my camera handy. If I remember, this one is on 16th Street around Franklin Avenue.
Theme Day: Wood When my friend Francisca was here a week ago, we walked to the Astoria Column via the city streets, then came down the hill on the Cathedral Tree Trail. It had been several years since I'd been to see the tree, and I wanted to see it again and to show her our mini version of the giant redwoods. What I found was that everything had changed.
Two years ago a wind storm reaching hurricane force had felled trees like crazy on parts of our hill, and loggers had later gone in and not only cleaned up the mess, but apparently had felled many additional trees. Some, I'm sure were taken out due to safety issues, but I don't know the rest of the story. In some areas, there were stumps as far as the eye could see, rather than the dense and glorious forest I remembered. That some of the standing trees had been precarious, I don't doubt. Many huge root systems were already upended along the route, with their majestic trunks lying horizontally on the forest floor.
I might have shown you a photo of the Cathedral Tree itself, but we missed it. In the sea of logs and new wooden walkways, I'd become disoriented and had neglected to take a short spur of trail going east just before we reached this rustic bench. I remembered the bench, and my memory told me the tree had been right here. I was devastated, thinking that the Cathedral Tree itself had been a casualty of the storm(s) (although I thought I would have heard something if that had been the case).
So we decided to go back the next day and see and photograph the locally-famous tree with its arched recesses. However, the next day it poured rain all day, and we opted for indoor entertainment. Someday I will go back and post the tree.
It seems as though there's been a lot of new paint in Astoria this year. Last May (or maybe April) new yellow lines and arrows were painted along the Riverfront Trolley tracks. Remodeling and new paint on the red building on the right is also fairly new. The whole building has been reconstructed in the last couple of years, although this end is still vacant. The white folding sign on the pavement is The Wheelhouse - one of Astoria's several comfortable and friendly coffee houses. The sidewalk and street are part of the River Walk, and the river is only a few paces away. I took the photo standing in the intersection of 14th Street and the River Walk.
The pilot boat from "the fish building" More about the "fish building" later. I was fortunate to be enjoying this view a couple of weeks ago, when the pilot boat charged out of its dock behind the "Baked Alaska building" (Doc's on 12th) and headed into the river to meet a ship. Note the tires attached to the sides for buffering against the dock and the sides of ships. The land you see in the background is not across the river, but our Astoria coastline is curved, culminating in a peninsula.
The salmon weather vane on the upstairs railing appears very small in this photo, but you can see it in this post.
I want to thank you all for visiting and commenting. It's been an exceptionally busy week for me in my business, and I do expect to get around and visit you in your own towns and cities more this weekend. Speaking of which, have a good one :)
Coast to Coast
B SQUARED
