Travel Tips

Astoria, Oregon
4:08PM – Saturday, October 27, 2001

We arrived in Astoria at 5:00PM last night (Friday) – in time to watch the news and enjoy happy hour. We went to Pig‘n Pancake for dinner – great pecan pancakes for me and eggs, sausage, hashbrowns and toast for TBN.

It was sort of foggy and there was a light drizzle last night – but a couple of ships were docked in the river in front of the hotel. This morning it was raining lightly and after the complimentary breakfast, we toured the local Joann’s Fabric Store – everyone needs to try that!! Then we went to Gearhart and the Pacific Way Café for their great turkey sandwiches. We had them with the cranberry/horseradish dressing – Yummy.

Then we headed for Costco and got our pictures taken and did a little shopping – up and down every aisle in the store at least one time and a couple of rows a couple of times! Another must-do sort of thing, that is best on a leisure weekend!

Got really curious about the sea lions that barked all night, last night, and also did that on our previous visits. Why do they “bark” all the time, and when do they sleep. We could hear them anytime of the day or at night when we would wake up.

This time they are on vacant docks, much closer to the hotel - and much louder than before. We walked out the ramp out to the docks and were able to get pretty close to the critters. We counted about 30 Sea Lions and several were quite large.

A lady arrived in a pickup with Oregon state exempt plates and went down the ramp to the dock that had the majority of the lions. The just watched her, until she threw a waterproof firecracker. Then several jumped into the water, and the rest just barked – sort of laughing at her! As she made her way out the dock more of them would jump off as she got close but it took another firecracker to get the larger, older looking granddaddy to get off the dock.

When we inquired we learned that she must work for the Port and they are concerned about the damage the lions are doing to the docks. She said they break the chains and water lines. These guys weigh up to 1200 pounds so there is a lot of weight on the docks. She said they go chase them off a couple of times a day. We noticed that by the time she was back at her truck, they were starting to come back on the dock.

Then I remembered the last time we stopped at the Sea Lion Caves on the coast. We had to pay a fee to go in and ride the elevator down to the “cave” and there was only a couple of sea lions down there and they were a lot farther away from the viewing area than the ones you can see in Astoria. I think Astoria needs to rig up a special float for the sea lions to use in an area that would not interfere with boats. Maybe there is some device that would keep them off the boat docks – maybe an audio warning. And maybe with boats docked and people coming and going, they might prefer to use the special sea lion dock. Astoria would have another advantage. Visitors would not have to go in a cave (some people do not like that) and you are always in fresh air!

Will finish this report tomorrow and we will be able to comment on our restaurant for tonight, The Silver Salmon Grille! Hope they have something for me!

Astoria, Oregon

0600 – October 28, 2001

Silver Salmon Grille in Astoria is a nice place. Great old back bar, came around the horn 120 (or so) years ago and has been in Astoria the past 54 year years, some of the time in houses of ill repute! Made the Jack Daniels taste better! For dinner TBN had 5 baby lobster tails, cooked in their shell, covered with a sauce that contained tomatoes, black & green olives along with other indefinable objects. None of them was moving! I had a Cajun Spencer steak. The Cajun was not as spicy as some, but it was good. In the old days, a Spencer had more marbling and that made it even better, but in 2001 and the last 40 years the world had made everything low fat and by removing the fat, they also remove the taste. As usual we had more than enough dinner and had to pass up desert - and the desert tray looked like one that we should not have missed.

Talking about food, need to mention that the Comfort Suites has a complimentary continental breakfast starting at 0600 each day. They have a hot chocolate machine, and I will let that make up for them (apparently) dropping the peanut butter and English muffins. They serve Total and Cheerios and at this time there was watermelon and cantaloupe in addition to OJ and apple juice. Good poppy seed and blueberry muffins.

Morning started off pretty foggy, but we did determine that the ship that has been anchored nearby was gone when we got up today. Now (7:05AM) the fog is lifting and another great day is coming!