Click on a photo to enlarge it.
After some more photos at Haystack Rock we went further north to see the Peter Iredale wreck which ran aground in 1906 so it's 105
years old!
Haystack Rock - 360° Panorama(move mouse over panorama and click on the arrows)
Fort Stevens Beach - 360° Panorama(move mouse over panorama and click on the arrows)
Then we went to our last stop along the Oregon Coast - Astoria. We took a very steep road up to the Astoria Column. It was built in 1926 as the last of 12 markers commemorating Lewis and Clark's
final destination on their exploration to get to the coast from the Midwest around 1805. We climbed 164 steps up the 125 ft column
for the views across the Columbia River to Washington from the top.
We said a sad farewell to Oregon and drove across the bridge into Washington to continue along the coast.
Our first stop was at North Head Lighthouse and Cape Disappointment. Then we drove along the peninsula to Leadbetter Point State
Park and Wilapa Wildlife Refuge where we did one of the trails.
The weather wasn't at its best and we drove quite a bit in the rain for two days which put a bit of a damper on our sightseeing.
But we did manage to see the "Big cedar tree" and we stopped at Ruby Beach.
We stayed at Hoh Oxbow camp ground which is free. We were woken at 4am by someone banging on our door. Turned out to be Department
of Corrections Officers warning us that a prisoner had escaped from the corrections centre!! Try going back to sleep after that!
Well, it took us a long time seeing as there were so many vehicles driving around the camp ground checking!
Our rude awakening meant that by the time we got back to sleep and woke up, half the day had gone so we decided to have a day off!
It was raining anyway!
The next day we drove into Olympic National Park and went to the Hoh Rain Forest. We did a 5 hour walk and saw elk,
waterfalls, and large cedars and spruce covered in moss. The walk goes parallel to the Hoh River which is turquoise blue as it is fed
by glaciers. It was a beautiful sunny day and no rain! (And we are in the rain forest!)
Elks im Hoh Forest (Olympic NP)
We drove back out to the coast at La Push and went for a 1.5 mile to Second Beach for the sunset. At the ranger station at Mora we
found out that they closed the Hoh forest entrance of the National Park because of aggressive elks! It is very unusual for them to
close it down. But at least the escaped prisoner had been caught!
We drove into Forks only to find a very big hype about the Twilight books. We didn't have a clue what it was all about. When we were
told it was about vampires we dismissed it - not our thing. We proved ourselves wrong because later we read all four books and watched
the three films that had been made so far!
We drove just north of Forks and went to a free camp ground and sat out another rainy day.
