Really looking forward to this day! Big bucket list item check-off day for Rosie
and I between going to see the ‘Spruce Goose’, Howard Hughes’ massive Birchwood
plane and, the Goonies house, from the movie in the mid-80s, in Astoria.
We were up early enough on another beautiful day in Oregon
for Rosie to take time to go and do some early morning wildlife gazing from off
of Mo’s pier. The Evergreen Aviation
& Space Museum in McMinnville was ~55miles away and opened up at 0900. By the time we were packed up and checked out
of the Looking Glass Inn, it was 0730.
Decided to get breakfast in Lincoln City prior to departing for the
museum. Stopped in to 1 of several
places the Inn’s front desk recommended for breakfast: Lil’ Samos.
Very retro place and has a fairly long history in the city. Breakfast was good but, nothing especially
noteworthy.
Back on the road at ~0830.
Drove through the city and 5miles up the 101, intercepted OR-18 East,
the Salmon River Highway, which would take us all the way up to and through
McMinnville to the Museum. Fairly flat
terrain with lots of farming along the way otherwise, a fairly uneventful drive
with no stretch of roadway with speed limits above 55mph. Got to the museum’s boundaries by 0945 and
turned onto Captain Michael King Smith Way.
As you approach the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum,
the first thing you notice is that there’s a full sized B747 parked in a field
in front of the 3, triangular shaped museum buildings, the 2 biggest buildings
flanking the smaller 3rd building and, that there’s another B747 on
top of a 4th building adjacent to the museum buildings that is
apparently a part of a waterslide feature and funplex. The founders/owners of this museum built the
museum on former farmland. There are a
variety of static display aircraft outside around all 3 main buildings – all
very cool and ready to be visited.
Plenty of parking space. Behind
the buildings there a variety of other vehicles including some tanks and
armored personnel carriers.
The 3 buildings making up the museum are each focused on a
different function or era. The primary
building housing the ‘Spruce Goose’ is focused primarily on WWII and earlier
vintage aircraft and displays. There’s
even a weapons display area on the 2nd deck above the entry
area. The Center building appears to be
just a large iMAX theatre… Rosie and I had purchased tickets that included
seeing a show or too but, we didn’t have enough time in this 1 day to go see a
feature. We wanted to spend our time in
the museums. The third building contains
post-WWII aircraft including helicopters, modern jets and, quite a few rocket
and space age vehicle displays. It also
contains the food café, the Cosmo Café, where Rosie and I had lunch before
departing the museum via the grounds around the building.
Rosie and I walked into the ‘Spruce Goose’ building just
after 1000. They have very nice Docents
spread out throughout the building ready to share information with you about
all the displays. The Spruce Goose
dwarfs all other aircraft in this building… in fact, the building had been
designed and built with the Spruce Goose’s dimensions in mind. Tickets were reasonably priced, $25 for
non-members, and included access to everything except the upper deck and
cockpit of the wooden plane. Turns out
you can buy a ticket to get up to the flight deck for a personal tour and photo
op… that was a no-brainer and I immediately
shelled out whatever they asked for (believe it may have been $20 but, they
could have asked any amount and I was going to pay it anyway)! We were the very first visitors on this day
to purchase tickets to the upper deck.
Pretty exciting!
We had a good 45mins before the flight deck was available
so, Rosie and I went on our own paths around the main floor. All of the displays were dwarfed by the
immense HK-1, Spruce Goose (eventually re-designated the H-4 for Hughes’ 4th
aircraft built)… hard to miss the
plane. J I was very moved by Rosie’s discovery of the
A-26 ‘Marauder’ display. She’d never
actually seen the aircraft that her father, Tom, had been an aerial
photographer in and really enjoyed spending time visiting the airplane. This version was not the reconnaissance
version her father crewed in but, the airframe is basically the same except for
the nose cone area – which would have been mostly plexi-glass for
photography. Was a wonderful thing watching
my wife connect with her late father in a place ~3,000 miles from her home in
New York.
The 45mins went very quickly and before you knew it, we were
queued up just outside of the cargo bay of the massive plane meeting our tour
guide and photographer for the flight deck and cockpit of the Spruce Goose,
Al. Another very generous, retired
Docent volunteer full of information and facts about the venerable historic
plane we were so excited to finally see and enjoy. Our tour started out in the cargo bay. The interior of the plane is cavernous and
was still hard to believe that ~97% of the plane is made of wood (primarily
birch). The oddest thing one notices in
the bay is quite a few large beach balls?
Turns out that Hughes used them to fill the 5 compartments of each of
the 2 huge wing pylon floats to enhance buoyancy! Who knew?
After about 5mins of marveling about the interior of the plane, Al led
us up a flight of spiral stairs into the flight deck of the Spruce Goose.
So very cool!!! The
flight deck was not only intended for the aircrew: pilot, co-pilot, engineer and navigator, but
also for other passengers. Needless to
say we took a lot of photos. The most
excellent aspect of the tour was the ‘seat time’ both Rosie and I got to spend
in the cockpit. Rosie in the co-pilot
seat and I in Howard Hughes’ left seat.
Compared to modern day aircraft, very rudimentary controls and displays
EXCEPT, there were 8 of everything. I
even got to wear a much too small hat, similar to ones Mr. Hughes preferred,
while I was in the pilot’s seat. Both
seats had bail out hatches directly above the seats and Rosie and I enjoyed
popping up out of those hatches just to take a look around the top of the
plane. Our time, ~15mins, was brief on
the flight deck but will be in my memories for the rest of my life or, until I
get another chance to visit someday in the future. J Al took our ‘official’ cockpits photo, we bid
him thanks and, made our way back down and out of the Spruce Goose! What a thrill!
So, in actuality, the rest of the museum visit felt anti-climactic,
although still quite enjoyable. We left
the Goose’s building and headed over to the smaller movie theater. Since we already felt a bit pressed for time,
we didn’t linger in the theater and decided to pass up a movie to continue our
museum tour in the post-WWII aircraft and space flight building.
We enjoyed our time in the more modern section of the museum
which included: rockets, ballistic missiles, space capsules, space flight,
helicopters and, more modern aircraft including the SR-71. Rosie and I also enjoyed a light lunch in the
Cosmos Café before we departed back to the primary museum building to do some
gift shopping before leaving the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum for our
2nd stop of the day: Cannon
Beach. Total time spent in McMinnville =
~3+30. What a great albeit a bit short
visit!
Cannon Beach would include just a bit of back-tracking on
the 101 once we got to it later in the afternoon. Total distance to Cannon Beach,
~90miles. We picked up Hwy 47 leaving
McMinnville and stayed on it for ~30miles before it merged and then changed
into Hwy 26 to the coast and Hwy 101.
Fairly unremarkable trip, we did pull over for a coffee along the way,
through mostly small towns and lots of expansive farm land.
Intercepted the 101 about 4miles north of the coastal
community and headed back south towards our destination. I was running a bit low on fuel and did not
expect to find no gas stations once we hit the 1o1… but, that’s exactly what
happened. Once we pulled in to Cannon
Beach and saw absolutely no gas stations, we found the visitor’s center in the
center of the town, pulled over and Rosie ran in to ask where we might buy some
fuel. Turns out the only place nearby
that had gas was an RV park we had passed just before exiting for Cannon Beach:
the RV Resort at Cannon Beach on the
east side of the 101. So, we backtracked
and drove into the RV Resort which was quite full of lots of RVs of all types
and sizes. With some relief – we had
been driving on a low fuel light for quite some time – pulled into 1 of the gas
pumps and filled up. Prices were a bit
high but, no complaints! After filling
up we drove back into Cannon Beach and pulled into public parking right along
the main street, Hemlock Street.
Rosie and I really needed to find restrooms so, we ran
across the street into the Cannon Beach Hotel to see if we could use their wash
rooms. We were initially refused,
nicely, until we agreed to buy something from their small café. So, took a seat and bought some delicious
cupcakes they were selling with coffee and tea.
Spent a very pleasant 20mins enjoying the hotel’s lobby, the cupcakes
and hot drinks before we headed out in search of the massive ‘Sea Stack Rock’,
made famous in movies like the ‘Goonies’.
Turns out that the hotel was located just 2 blocks off the beach and we
found that a street, Ecola Court, actually dumps you right out onto the beach
with a perfect, unobstructed view to Sea Stack Rock just about a 1/2mile stroll
along the beach to the south.
We really lucked out with timing, got to Cannon Beach around
1615 after refueling, on a perfectly clear day, very low tide and not too many
tourists. The sand of this beach was
quite hard packed and flat due to the tidal wave motion and was very easy to
walk on. Rosie and I had donned our
beach shoes for just such an occasion which made for no worry walking on the
sand and craggy rocks. Didn’t take long
for us to get to the Rock, taking photos all along the way of course. There were surprisingly few humans around the
iconic rock which made it very easy for us to spend quality time wading around
in the tide pools and crustacean covered rocks.
Rosie was in heaven! There were
tons of different colored starfish clinging to the rock overhangs all over the
place. Since Sea Stack Rock is a bird
sanctuary, there were posted signs around warning overly enthusiastic visitors
not to climb onto the rock.
We spent a very pleasant 45mins just wading around, taking
photos and enjoying being around this really cool landmark. Folks come from around the world just to see
it… count us in! Walked back to our SUV
via public restrooms. Took off our beach
shoes and piled them into the back of our vehicle (those beach shoes would make
themselves known a few days later in Hood River). Back onto the 101 north for the ~25mile drive
to Astoria, our final destination of the day and, location of one of Rosie’s
‘must see’ spots – the Goonies House.
Crossed over the Oregon Coast Highway (Hwy 101) bridge
spanning Youngs River and Bay over into the port city of Astoria. Youngs River empties out into the massive
Columbia River, the boundary between northern Oregon and Southern Washington
State. Coming off the bridge, the 101
hugs Astoria’s northern limit adjacent to the Columbia River. We made our way slowly along passing several
potential hotels for our overnight en route to the Goonies House, 386 38th
Street. Was a short 3miles or so to the
house made famous by the 1985 classic adventure movie. I dropped Rosie off by the driveway, shared
by several homes, leading up a steep driveway to the point of interest and went
to find nearby parking on an adjacent neighborhood street. The time was around 1800.
After parking I strolled up to see the house myself and took
a handful of photos of Rosie by the iconic landmark. The house is actually owned and inhabited and
the owner has apparently always been gracious about strangers coming up to gawk
at the house and do the ‘Chunk’ dance.
He’s also a businessman, evidenced by the ‘donations’ box he has
strategically placed for visitor’s generosity.
Didn’t stay long but Rosie did get her fill of the house and
location. For the short time we were
there, another ½ dozen or so ‘visitors’ had also made their way up the long
driveway to see the house.
On the way up to the Goonies house, we’d passed a couple of
hotels and settled on the Comfort Suites nestled along the Astoria River walk
fronting the Columbia River. We were
checked in and unpacking in our room by 1830.
Was high time to do some laundry so, I took on that chore while Rosie
settled in to our room, 232, located at the Eastern end of the hotel with a
view to the Goonies house and well within hearing distance of the harbor sea
lions barking away all along the 36th Street pier. The Comfort Suites had a guest laundry room
and when I went down, it was empty and I had the machines to myself. Took about 1 hr to get our 1 load washed and
dried.
By 1945 Rosie and I were quite puckish and decided to walk
the ½ mile or so along the Astoria River walk over to the 39th
Street pier and Rogue Ales Public House for dinner. Rogue’s specializes in micro-brewery beer
but, neither one of us felt well enough to have any so, over water and unsweetened
ice tea, Rosie had the chicken fingers and I had a BLT. Good bar food. Departed Rogues fairly sated and made our way
back to the Comfort Suites arriving by 2100.
Beautiful, full moon night with just a bit of a cool breeze accompanying
us back to the hotel. Rosie had started
feeling under the weather – most likely due to hanging out with me – while I
was starting to finally feel like myself.
The harbor seals were our constant companions throughout the
night and into the morning… they never appeared to have stopped barking. Before hitting the rack, took some time to
jot down some blogger notes and think back on this very memorable day: Over the course of a very short ~165 miles
after leaving Lincoln City, we hit:
Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum and the Spruce Goose; Cannon Beach
and Sea Stack Rock, and; the Goonies house.
GREAT DAY!
No comments:
Post a Comment