Our plan today was to stay close and explore Astoria (just a ten minute drive from our house). But as luck would have it, A1 fell asleep within about two minutes so we made a quick decision to extend the drive to let her sleep. Instead we headed over the Columbia River into Washington.
Long Beach is on a peninsula.
Due to its location, Long Beach claims to have the longest stretch of continuous sand beach in the world (but apparently this isn't entirely accurate). It is actually second to a beach in Bangladesh. Oh well. Second in the world, not bad! Surprisingly it is a beach that you can drive on. Technically you cannot drive the entire 28 miles because of protected clam beds, but I am sure when they made this arch they had the best of intentions.
We started to drive on it (like two tires) but I got too nervous about getting stuck since there were vans that were struggling, and because we were hungry and I didn't want to push the car to a restaurant. For the record, the Subaru's tires did drive on the second longest beach in the world.
We stopped for lunch at the Chowder Stop.
I went hard.
Not only did I get halibut fish and chips but a cup of chowder.
When in Rome...
We found a secluded picnic table just a few steps from the beach to enjoy our Pacific Northwest cuisine.
These are A1's first fish and chips!
Very close to our picnic spot we found this amazing boardwalk surrounded by beach grass and sand dunes.
Shipwrecks are so intriguing.
Paralleling the boardwalk is a bike trail that we are going to come back to soon.
The Discovery Trail has our name written all over it.
Today was a spontaneous day but it worked out swimmingly.
That is the nice thing about having a home base for a longer period of time.
There is plenty of time to explore.
Oh Brady, you continuously amaze and delight. You made me laugh about the Subaru tires, the second longest beach, the 'all in' with the Chowder Shop, etc. I absolutely love this post. You do look cold. Were you too hot in Idaho? We're going to use your blog and our guide when we get to Washington. I hope you don't grade me too tough for plagiarizing. Fun ahead.
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