Astoria Forts

Monday was Memorial Day so we had some more weekend time. We decided to go on a small road trip to visit the old forts near Astoria. Astoria is located at the mouth of the Columbia river, in the northwesternmost tip of Oregon. The forts are both on the peninsula at the exit of the river.

View of the Columbia river, looking towards Mount St Helens, miles before reaching Astoria.


Fort Stevens has mostly remains from a WWII era fortification which was aimed at defending the coast against invaders (in 1942 they even got bombed by a Japanese submarine).


An earlier fort was built there in the 1860s near a Clatsop Indian village (a Chinook tribe), but nothing remains. It was meant to protect the area that could have been disrupted easily with just one boat prior to the fort's construction. The fort was not so interesting to me as it was just another set of bunkers like we have in Normandy... However I really liked the rebuilt Clatsop longhouse. I was expecting Indians to live in tepees but apparently the Northwest Indians lived in nice wooden houses. This kind of breaks yet another Hollywood induced myth.


Later on we visited fort Clatsop, which was the first settlement in Oregon by Lewis and Clark. The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803–1806), was the first American overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back. The building is a modern rebuilt but it was still very interesting.


Lewis and Clark's room


And more pictures in this gallery.

Rose Festival

The annual Portland Rose Festival started last Friday. We had our friends over for our house warming party and were hoping to see great fireworks from our window. Too bad they decided to fire them right at the only dead angle in our view. I'll file a complaint for next year :).
On Sunday morning we went and explored the festival on the waterfront to see what it was about. Well it's about fast food, rides and a mini-Zoo so mostly for kids but it was still nice to enjoy it.

Here is the roaring tiger... train.


A hang-gliding kid


Or a girl that looks like Fifille 25 years ago


All in a very nice musical ambiance


It was a nice weekend, we even got to see our first boat requiring Hawthorne bridge to open. I was happy to be there.


The rest of the gallery is here.

Spring Fields

Besides the pollen issues, spring has been gorgeous here. This morning I stopped on the side of the road on my way to work to take a few pictures:

Cathedral Park

Last weekend we had a small trip to Cathedral Park to get some sun while I was recovering. The park is located to the north of the city, something like 10-15 minutes away from home. We enjoyed the site quite a bit with the old bridge's arches shaped like a Gothic cathedral's arches. When you are under it feels like you are in a gigantic cathedral.
The weather was fantastic as you can see on the pictures.

The bridge's park


Inside the cathedral


St John's bridge tower (400ft high).

More views

Different camera :), less clouds and more details. All taken from our balcony.


Overall East view, no clouds.


Dowtown Portland and the convention center


Hawthorne Bridge


Mount Hood, Marquam Bridge, OMSI's submarine and the Willamette River


OHSU, where I just got surgery, 1 mile from home

Flowers

Today it's been a ball of flower delivery men, here is how our table is looking like now:


Thank you everybody ! :).

Afternoon view on Portland

I have been staying home today, recovering from my recent apendicitis surgery. That way I got to enjoy the nice afternoon light from our place:

Looking North:

Looking East:


Looking South:

Our Roomba

As some of you probably already know, we bought a nice little new cleaning robot. A Roomba. That little guy is very nice, full of enthusiasm and energy. Yesterday he told me he wanted to open a blog so I offered him to host it. He was so pleased !
You can find his blog on http://iroomba.blogspot.com. Please be nice to him he's working hard everyday.

Our place

I posted a few pictures of our place here. Yes they are in B&W, I hated the colors that came out with the a mix of artificial and natural light and I was too lazy to correct it so you'll have to see it in shades of gray.



Et voila.

OMSI

This weekend M's dad drove down and stayed with us. We crossed the river and went to visit OMSI, The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry that we see everyday from our window. This was the last week of a temporary exposition on Leonardo Da Vinci which was showing a lot of his inventions and some detailed analysis on how the Mona Lisa was looking when he painted it. It was overall quite nice.
After that we got to visit the submarine that has been intriguing me since we moved in, as I see it every day. It's been a nice visit and I took a few pictures. It is one of the last non nuclear submarines built by the Navy. All the black and white pictures are because of the submarine's red lights which make horrible red and black pictures :).


Officer's Deck, Dive alarm sounding


Torpedo room


Bedroom

This evening a nice rainbow showed up for a few minutes, here it is.


More pictures at the usual place ;).