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Astoria Bridge

Astoria Column

After our wonderful stay in Washington we have finally moved to the coast of Oregon. Our first stop was Seaside which is just down the road from one of our favorite places, Astoria. This is the city where the movies Goonies and Kindergarten Cop were filmed. This is where Laura is begging that we come to live for a while after we go off the road. Since we have not seen a winter in this part of the country yet I am still not sure. The coast from Astoria to Newport really is beautiful and is in the top 5 places I would like to settle for a while. We drove over the Astoria bridge into Washington to check out a couple state parks over the river and went out to the Astoria Column to throw balsam wood gliders and watched them for about 10 minutes while they glided on the currents.

Astoria Sea Lions

Goonies House

Next stop for the Hamilton Clan was the Goonie's house, where a nice man from Germany took our family photo. We ran across town and checked out the jail house and got to see the vehicle from the movie which we watched our first night in the area.

The car from the movie with the bullet holes! See our traveling friends too? That is the Traviglino Clan, so fun to travel with others!

Fort Clatsop

Lewis & Clark National Park

We took a couple hours to learn more about one of grandpa Hay's favorite topics  Lewis & Clark. Now we have been to this area of Oregon several times over the past 8 years but this is the first time we had spent so much time. When we were here the last at Fort Clatsop, the boys were younger and we got a picture with Sacajawea which I wish I had with me.

Rollin down the River

Seaside Beach

Haystack Rock

Laura and I had a great lunch in Seaside several years ago and during this trip we took a walk by that restaurant and around downtown. We stopped at the end of the street where you could walk out on the beach and check out the sea life. We were also able to run down to Cannon Beach to check out Haystack Rock where they filmed another part of the Goonies. We walked along the beach for a couple of hours and then had a great bowl of CHOW DA at one of Oregon's staple restaurants, Mo's. We stopped at ever Mo's in Oregon on this trip just because we love the chowder that much.

We had to take several trips into Portland while staying in Seaside due to a computer drive going bad and having to go back and forth to get it repaired. While in Portland we checked out the legendary food trucks which are spread out all over down town. We also went to Voodoo Donuts for a dozen and Stepping Stone Cafe for some 12" pancakes. now I know you are wondering about that stuffed dog, that is the Full Time Families mascot Rambler which families take on their outings for the web page. We stopped a the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry where we took a tour of the first fast attack sub the USS Blue Back. I think the boys thought this was a pretty cool thing to see but they have seen so many cool things its hard to tell anymore.

USS Blue Back

USS Blue Back interior

First attempt at catching a clam

We visited a couple state parks in the area and saw the remnants of a ship wreck from 1909. The kids got to play on a shipwreck! AMAZING!!!!  Of course had to try our hand at clamming near Cannon Beach which was fun but non productive. People who sell the gear should be required to give tourists information like, it is not a negative tide so you won't be able to get to the clams! That is great information that one should know before adventuring out. not to say it wasn't a great sunset and a blast to try but we came up empty. Don't worry about us though, we got clam chowder at Mo's to ease the pain.

Cool shipwreck at Fort Stevens State Park

Mt Saint Helens

After leaving Seattle we took a quick trip south to see Mt Saint Helens before heading to the coast of Oregon. One of my memories from childhood was a trip that dad, James and I took to Oregon after the eruption in the 80's to gather some of the ash. This National Monument was really cool to see 30 years later and the fact that it is still active made it even more interesting. Of course there was a badge for this great park that the boys were able to get by helping the ranger demonstrate how this volcano blew out. We spent the day with the Traviglino's and the Arnold's here and had yet another wonderful day

Nana & Papa Bob

After a couple weeks relaxing on the beach we came back up to Auburn, outside of Seattle, where we spent time with Nana and Papa Bob. They are staying in their 5th Wheel here for the summer before going back to Arizona. They keep the rig on Bobs good friends property Joe and Sue who were gracious enough to let us park next to them and spend over a week visiting.

Our first outing was with Nana and Papa to the Seattle Aquarium where we were able to see and touch a bunch of sea creatures from the area. Jacob and Aiden tried to get eaten by an octopus during our walk through of the aquarium.

After the aquarium we took a walk over the Ferris wheel where the boys and Papa went up and took some great shots of the city before having a wonderful lunch of seafood.

While we were visiting we took a trip back into the city with our friends the Traviglino's to see the troll under the bridge and have lunch at a sushi restaurant around the corner. Just down from that was a site of statues that people dress up and take pictures in front of so of course we needed to do it ourselves.

We had a great visit with the other Hamilton clan while with Nana and Papa and got to spend some great time with my brother, sister in-law and our niece and nephew.

We took a day trip to the aircraft museum where the kids were able to see a life size space shuttle and walk through several planes including the Air Force One that Kennedy used and a retired Concord jet. This museum also housed several aircraft from WWI and WWII which were awesome. The one great plane we got to see was one of the WWII bombers that Laura's grandfather flew in during the war.

Washington Coast

After a few days outside of Seattle we found ourselves on the Washington coast in an area we had not seen near Ocean Shores, in Ocean City. On this part of our trip we had seven other families around us and we did not see the kids for hours on end. Kids from 18 to 3 all playing together with little or no problems. The first couple of days the kids dug bunkers in the sand around the playground and had sand wars until the old campground rangers squashed the fun. Now if the kids were leaving these sand bunkers and not filling them in after they were done I would be able to see the issue  but they were filled in when done and they didnt leave other kids out of the fun.

We were able to be part of the first beach fire the Hamilton's have ever done, the kids went around the beach and gathered huge logs that kept this fire going until 3am.  Laura and I went a little farther down the road and were able to drive out on the beach and look around which was fun. We had a night out at a bar down the road called the "Green Lantern" which had great ribs and beer.



We went to a lake up the coast with Barb and the Traviglino's to watch a boat race and sun ourselves. This lake also had the largest Spruce Tree in Washington or maybe the world. I also dragged the family for yet another National Park excursion where, you guessed it, we got another badge. The HOH Rainforest in Olympic National Park is another place that I enjoyed fishing and relaxing.

On our last day at this wonderful RV park we were informed of a whale that had washed up on the beach. This was another first for the Hamilton Clan on this wonderful trip around our country. It looks like this one died at sea and just finally washed up. Now we are heading back to Seattle for a nice visit with Mom and Bob.

Washington

           After our wonderful adventure in Glacier we headed West to Washington. We stopped at a campground north of Spokane after leaving Montana. This Thousand Trails had seen better days and it was obvious that the KOA side of it was way better maintained but its free for us so we stayed. The second night of our stay we had a pretty bad storm that had lots of thunder and lightning but nothing we haven't seen before all over the US. While I was working the power went out so we had dinner with the Traviglino's and I set off with Laura to find out when the power would be back on. Now we knew there was wind, rain and lightning but we had no idea that the whole park was literally in shambles after the storm passed. We attempted to go out one road to find three trees blocking our way. Another road had cars, tents and trailers crushed by huge trees and of course our way was blocked. We finally found a road we could use by dodging trees and when we got to the main road we could see the front of the park was worse hit than what we had come through. This place looked like a war zone and we were the only ones not affected. Needles to say we moved to the open field by the main gate just in case another storm came through all the while Laura was trying to push a a tree over onto our rig so she could have that wonderful used toy hauler.

        We decided to cut our stay short there and headed to Quincy Washington to another Thousand Trails where we there was supposed to be river access from the campground. This part of our trip had been a little interesting already but when we arrived we were told it was $1000 fine for going near the river because the damn had a 30 foot crack. I was a little concerned about this to say the least but we were high enough on the valley floor that any failure on the damn MIGHT protect us all. The heat in this canyon was at 100 Degrees and of course they had closed the pool because some parent didn't notice their kid tacking a huge poodle. Our little Wildcat air conditioner just cant keep up with cooling the trailer if the temps are over 95 so without the pool we all decided this was not where we wanted to be.

            The group decided to head to an encore park just outside of Seattle where we spent a several days with several other families and the weather was just right. Anything over 78 degrees and the love of my life turns into a raging nightmare so this was the perfect spot. Now that we were stable for a few days we could go see some sights in the Seattle area. A bunch of families decided to use the Seattle  public transportation and hopped a bus into downtown.

Our first stop was the Pike street market where we wondered around and looked at all the wonderful sea food. We were also delighted to see the famous fish throwing which Laura and I have come back to see several times in our stops to Seattle.

While wondering around the market my lovely wife had to stop and play with sasquach for a bit and of course the famous wall of chewing gum. Now this was really more than a little disturbing to me but its kind of a trademark of the market in downtown Seattle. In the mall below the market we found some wonderful stores and came across this stop with a life size photo of the largest man.

We had a wonderful lunch of clam chowder and hot dogs with a little ice cream to finish off the visit before jumping another bus back to the RV park. Seattle is one of my favorite cities, during the summer but I don't know if I could handle the lack of sun in the winter. Due to my work schedule we only had one trip downtown and would have to do the rest of our sight seeing when we came back to spend with my mom in Auburn.