travels on the oregon coast-tuesday
Tuesday dawned lovely and clear which was a good thing because we planned on a couple of expeditions in Astoria with Catherine. Our first stop was the Flavel House. Captain George Flavel built this house after amassing a sizable fortune in Astoria. He was one of the first river pilots those intrepid souls who guide ships from the sea into the mouth of the Colombia River a dangerous feat owing to the many shifting sandbars that clog the channel.I don’t have a picture of the Flavel House because I chose not to pay the entrance fee. I relaxed in the beautiful grounds reading while TLM and Catherine toured the home. When they had had their fill of looking at old furniture we walked back to Catherine’s and drove to the trailhead of the Cathedral tree trail.
As one might expect, the Cathedral tree trail is so named because it leads to, wait for it, the Cathedral tree. See if you can guess whence its name derives.
Give up? I certainly didn’t get it until Catherine explained it to me. It’s the opening at the base of the tree. Someone thought it looked like a cathedral, someone who has never been to Europe, evidently. Anyway after leaving the sylvan beauty of the trail, it was time for lunch. And oh, what a lunch we had planned. We were going to the second best fish and chips place of my life.
Ship out is not really a dive or hole in the wall, but the food is prepared in a trailer and the seating is unconventional. The conventional wisdom is that for fish and chips in Astoria you need to go to the Bowpicker. And indeed the lines for the Bowpicker are long. The first time we went for Fish and Chips in Astoria we were staying in Long Beach WA and were told the Bowpicker was the place to go. We stood in line for an hour and it was fine, but nothing to rave about. Actually, there’s a funny story that goes along with that experience. We were, as I said, staying in Long Beach and were there over a weekend so we went to Church there. When I’m on the coast I’m always looking for good fish and chips so I asked some of the locals where the best place was in town. I was told that the best spot was in Ilwaco a little town between Long Beach and Astoria. My informant could not recall the name of the place but told me it was on the corner of the only intersection in Ilwaco with a light. It was, he said, a converted something or other, he thought it might have been a gas station. It was a dive, but I was assured the fish and chips were great.
The next day, TLM and I ventured to Ilwaco and attempted to find this place. At the intersction there was only one place to eat. It did not look like a converted gas station, but we thought we would try it anyway. When we went in at lunch time the place looked and smelled like a run down bar. There were some pool tables at the back with a couple of patrons playing, but otherwise it was deserted. After we sat at a table, a man came from behind the bar and asked what we wanted. Fish and chips were what we came for so that’s what we ordered. After taking our order the man went back behind the bar to prepare our food. I was in a position to see him open a freezer and remove a box of Vandekamps frozen fish filets, remove several and drop them in a fryer. Brilliant dectective that I am, I immediately concluded we were in the wrong place. And that’s how a few days later we ended up at the Bowpicker in Astoria.
Anyway, if Shipout is second best, well you may ask where is the best? Alas, I cannot remember. It was somewhere on the Oregon coast in a little out of the way place where the propriety explained that he brought his fish back everyday from the docks. in my head, that unamed hole in the wall retains the title. Incidentally none of the fish and chips we had in either or our trips to England came close to these two.
After lunch Catherine returned to her apartment and we retuned to Seaside. Later in the afternoon, clouds rolled in and it started to mist. That did not dampen our enthusiasm, however for another trip to the beach. This time Catherien’s friend Justin would take us to Acadia beach.
When we were done at the beach, Catherine and Justin volunteered to buy us burritos for dinner. We met back at our condo and enjoyed burritos from Justin’s favorite burrito place. And that was our Tuesday. The next day Catherine had to work so we planned on traveling to see her do story hour. Our stay was rapidly drawing to an end. I floated the idea with TLM extending our visit for another week, but that was not in the cards.
