Oregon trip notes #1 - South Jetty (September 9, 2013)

Our September 2012 trip to Oregon (eight overnights spread across three cities:  Astoria, Welches (Mt. Hood) and Portland) was so delightful that we repeated it in September 2013.  We repeated many of the same activities, and added a few more.  Liked trip #2 even better, so this will stay in our travel rotation.

Showing South Jetty in relation to Astoria.  Man-made seawall (visible if click-photo-to enlarge) heads  straight west from South Jetty and divides the Columbia River from the Pacific (an effort to control, somewhat, the uncontrollable).

I gave quite a bit of description on our 2012 Oregon activities (three posts, available here) so won't repeat (much).  Will (mostly) point out a few new things we saw in random posts from time to time.

Looking straight west along the seawall (see above map, left side) out to the Pacific Ocean.  

Exhibit 1 is "South Jetty" - a few miles west/northwest of Astoria.  (Not to be confused with a similarly-named location much farther south along the Oregon coast (that one's near the town of Newport.  Never been there.)

Anyway:  last year we learned about the power and danger of the collision of the Pacific Ocean and the massive Columbia River - the fatal "Bar" littered with shipwrecks.  But in 2012 we didn't make it out to the South Jetty from Astoria.

Checking out the wreck of the Peter Iredale (sank in early 20th century, remnants
still on the Pacific beach, a few miles south of South Jetty).

This year:  we did.  And the place definitely captured our imagination, bigtime.  Until reading this book, I hadn't known that "Finisterre" had a deeper meaning than a tony Scottsdale neighborhood - though the Latin translation should have been obvious - this was the "end of the land" at western Portugal.  Until last year, I hadn't known that "Land's End" was anything other than a clothing company - then I learned that it is the western extremity of England.  So when one goes to the "South Jetty" - the western end of Oregon, where the Columbia crashes into the Pacific - all this resonates as you observe the wild seas and skies.  Not hard to imagine how the ancients conjured up a great unknown populated with nothing but monsters out there.

It was a sunny, placid day in Astoria (typical for September even if the area is rainy much of the year).  A few miles away at South Jetty:  rainy, windy, squally, menacing.

"Wreck of the Peter Iredale" - per photo above - is interesting and unusual.  Especially if you consider the back story (from which below photo is taken).

Wreck of the Peter Iredale, 107 years ago.

OK, you had to be there, but PJ's video (below) gives something of a feel for the setting (she starts out looking west along the seawall, then swings south, then back out along the seawall out to the Pacific (Columbia River is on the right side of the seawall).

Finisterre!