A SURPRISE adventure in Oregon AND Washington! (Astoria + Cape Disappointment)

For this adventure, I'm planning it from start to finish. Catherine has zero idea what we're doing, should be a lot of fun. It's so fun to have no idea what's going on today. I am breaking the rules a little bit because yesterday we said goodbye to Oregon and that goodbye is going to be a premature goodbye because this video is going to be an Oregon and a Washington adventure. And to be clear, this isn't a special day or a special occasion. Catherine does the majority of the heavy lifting for our videos. So I just thought it would be fun to plan a video from start to finish and let her just enjoy it without having to plan it. So with that said, the adventure is going to begin tomorrow morning. Adam is putting in the secret location into the GPS. I'm not looking, I promise. I seriously have no idea where we're going today. I have a few theories on what areas we could go to just based on like this time of year, but I truly don't know. I'm super excited. I'm also a little nervous because surprises just naturally make me very nervous. But it's going to be fun. It is an hour and 24 minutes away. All right, let's hit the road. We just entered Oregon this whole time. I thought we were going somewhere in Washington. Are we going to Oregon? I don't know. Or is it the fastest way to get? I don't know. Am I breaking the rules? I feel like you're telling me now that we're staying in Washington. Oh, man. Full of surprises. Where to first? First stop. We made it. We are starting our adventure in Astoria, Oregon, which is not only the oldest town in Oregon, but it's also the oldest U.S. settlement west of the Rocky Mountains. Did you know that? I did not know that. And I did not know we were coming here. I thought the whole time we were just staying in Washington. So this was just such a surprise. This is awesome, though. Like the views here are incredible. I had no idea this column existed. So this is it's so fun to have no idea what's going on today. And to get a good view of the area, we're at Coxcomb Hill, which is home to one of the most popular tourist attractions, I guess, in Astoria, the Astoria Column. The column was built in 1926, and at the time it cost $27,000 to build. And in today's money, that would be about $400,000. It was built to celebrate the discovery, exploration and settlement of the West. On the outside of the column, you'll see pictures and murals going all the way to the top. And these depict major moments from Lewis and Clark's journey. It's 125 feet tall and it has 164 steps to get you to the top. Oh, cool. That was a workout. I wasn't expecting a workout today. This view is absolutely amazing. We have mountains over here. The town right there. The water right there is just gorgeous. We have friends that just came to Astoria like last weekend, and I was thinking to myself, I've always wanted to go there. So I'm just so happy to be here. This is beautiful. From this spot, from this park here, you can see Washington over there. Like Catherine said, there's Astoria, the park. And then also this is the Columbia River. And right over there is the Pacific Ocean, and you can see the meet on the way to our next surprise destination. We're going to go pick us up a little treat. It's something we've been seeing in tons of towns. We've been going through and we said we have to go get it before we leave this area. It has to be Dutch Bros. At first, I was like, what have we talked about recently? But I keep saying we got to get ourselves some BB while we're up in this neck of the woods. For those of you unfamiliar with Dutch Bros, it is a drive through coffee stand that's all over like Northern California, Oregon and Washington, and actually started here in Washington. And they're now expanding all around the US. They have them in Texas now, too. And we've always just gotten really boring drinks when we go, just like an Americano or a coffee. But someone told us the other day that Irish Kicker, Irish Cream Kicker, which is a brevet, so it's instead of milk, it's half and half. So it's like extra good when Irish Cream was their favorite drink. So I've been wanting to try it for a few days now. She got the ice one. I got the hot one. Oh, yeah, that is decadent. Man, that is really good. The hot one is super creamy and sweet. I have a couple more fun facts about Astoria. It's notable for many things, but maybe most notable, at least in pop culture, as being the setting and many filming locations for the movie The Goonies. And because Astoria has a lot of a good collection of 18th and 19th century Victorian homes that dot the hillside, it's sometimes referred to as Little San Francisco. Funny enough, this morning while we were driving up some of the hills here, I said, this kind of feels like a mini San Francisco. And I had no idea it was called that. We're walking along the Astoria River Walk Trail, which goes along the city waterfront and a portion of the Astoria and Columbia River Railroad for about six miles. Along the way, there's tons of shops, restaurants, breweries and maybe even some sea lions. I hear tons of sea lions barking right now. They are so loud. We're walking around Pier 39, which is the former Hanthorne Cannery, which opened in 1875 and canned tuna and salmon. This building is so cool. They've kept so much of its historic charm. There's all these old boats you can look at, a bunch of old machinery, and there's even a free museum. This cannery had a variety of names over time and was once the headquarters of Bumblebee Seafoods. And even the restrooms are a fully functional historic display of what the restrooms were like back then. We're heading back to the van now. And my original plan in my early stages of research for here in Astoria, what we were going to do was to walk a bit of this trail and then take this old historic trolley back to where we started. But unfortunately, it only runs on Friday, Saturdays and Sundays for certain parts of the year. Their 2022 schedule is from March, sometime in March to sometime in November. And again, it's only on the weekends from like noon to six. But it only costs a dollar a person and it takes you most of the way along the Riverwalk Trail. That would have been really cool to ride on because you can just hop on, hop off. And there's like a historic narration on it tells you the history of the town. So if you're here when it's running and here at the right time, you should definitely do it because it sounds really cool. We're currently heading about 20 minutes south of town, but I'm not very familiar with this area, so I have zero clue as to where we could be going. It's such a weird concept for me to be so clueless today. Normally, I'm very in tune with our plans and, you know, the different facts we want to say and all of that. But I'm kind of I'm digging this because I'm getting chauffeured around and I basically just get to enjoy it while Adam has to tell us the history and do all the hard work. So I'm really liking this. We've been driving through a bunch of farmland, and it's not giving me any hints as to what could be out here. Unless you're taking me to a farm to buy a goat. Maybe. We made it. I hear a roar of a waterfall. So we headed about 20 minutes south of town to Young's River Falls. It's I think 50, 45 feet wide, 54 foot tall waterfall. It looks like it's just gushing. You can see it from the parking lot right here. I loved planning this surprise. It was a lot of fun, and it's really fun to see the look on her face at every spot we go. She's always so excited. This is the definition of a tree house. It's like a little nook underneath a tree with all the roots exposed right here. I would have never guessed that this was here on the drive out here. It is raging. So much water. We've got one more spot to check out today, but we're going to wait until this evening and you'll see why later. Do you know what there is to do here? Nope. Nothing. I'm assuming based off the name, there's a fort here and maybe the ocean. And Adam said we needed to get here at a certain time. And I'm thinking that's for tide levels. Did I get it right? You're smart. I had a feeling it was something ocean related, but I couldn't have told you what ocean or I could tell you what ocean we're going to. We're at the Pacific Ocean. I just couldn't have told you a beach we're going to. Wow. There's a shipwreck on this beach. For our last stop in Oregon for this trip, we're at Fort Stevens State Park. There's tons of things to do here, but one of the most popular is to check out the Peter Iredale shipwreck. It's best to come at low tide so that you can get up close and check it out. The story behind this ship was that in 1906, it was bound for Portland, Oregon, when bad weather forced it to wash ashore. There were no casualties and the crew was commended for its efforts to save the ship. Captain H. Lawrence's last words to his ship was, May God bless you and may your bones bleach in the sands. All that remains today of the original 275 foot steel hole is the bow, a few ribs and a couple of masts. It's pretty crazy that this thing is still standing after over 100 years and that they let you explore it a little bit. Hopefully it's the only type of shipwreck we are ever involved in. The next part of our adventure has brought us back to Washington. I kind of spilled those beans earlier in the day, though. Oops. That's our site. No way. That is way nicer than I thought it would be. The picture did not do it justice. Adam got us a beachfront campsite. I was not expecting this. This is probably the coolest campsite we've ever had. We're staying at Cape Disappointment State Park for the next two nights and we'll be exploring the park more tomorrow. But just from the drive in, it does not look to be a disappointment at all. But I guess we'll find out for real tomorrow. I still cannot believe that Adam snagged such an epic campsite. He has done an incredible job planning this adventure. The Astoria area yesterday was just so beautiful and so much fun. And despite not knowing a ton about this state park, I've always wanted to come here. So I cannot wait to see what he has in store for today. We're starting our day in the park by hiking the Cape Disappointment Trail. It should be three to four miles total, but it's going to take us to some of the most popular sites in this area of the park. So you may be wondering why they would name such a beautiful place Cape Disappointment. And that's because in 1788, a British trader named John Mears was passing through and he mistakenly believed that the Columbia River was not actually a river and that it was only a bay. There are a lot of things I did not expect over the last couple of days because I'm very clueless as to what we're doing. But one thing we both did not expect is that this interpretive center is built on top of an old fort called Fort Canby. And this fort was built to defend the entrance to the Columbia River from enemy warships. So it says here there was a cannon here known as Big Betsy. And the first time they shot it off, it was so loud that the nearby lighthouses is just over there that we're going to go see soon. It broke the glass of the lighthouse. I have been instructed to get the camera ready to get my reaction to something that's coming up. Oh, yes. This is the spot. Yeah, I only knew of one place in this park, and this is the spot. And I've always wanted to come here just to see this spot. That cove was so gorgeous, and I'm so happy I finally got to see it after many years of wanting to come here. We're now walking up to the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse. And to get here, we had to get back on the trail and we had to go through a gate right at the Coast Guard property. And now we're walking up this paved path. And I think it's just around the corner. The Cape Disappointment Lighthouse was built in 1856, and it's 53 feet tall. And it was actually the first lighthouse built in the Pacific Northwest. It's now owned by the Coast Guard. And there's a Coast Guardsman in an office over here that watches over this area, which is called the Columbia River Bar. In fact, the Columbia River Bar sits right in the middle of what's called the Graveyard of the Pacific, which is the coastline that runs from the northern tip of Vancouver Island down to Tillamook Bay in Oregon. And it's called this because ever since 1792, over 2000 ships have sunk in these waters. The Cape Disappointment Lighthouse did have its shortcomings, though, and one of them was apparently ships coming from the north couldn't see the lighthouse. And so they needed to build another lighthouse in this area. So they built the North Head Lighthouse, which is where we're going to head next. We're going to make one quick pit stop on our way to the next lighthouse. We have transported to the beautiful Hawaiian Islands. We are at Waikiki Beach. OK, it's not the Waikiki Beach, not quite the same, but it does have the same name. It does kind of have black sand like you'd find in Hawaii, though. As we mentioned earlier, this lighthouse was built after the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse in 1898. And this area here is the only area on the West Coast with two lighthouses within two miles of each other. The property also has a carriage barn and two keepers houses, and you can actually stay the night in the keepers houses. There are apparently vacation rentals, so I'm not totally sure how that works. But we're going to have to come back and do that because that is such a unique place to stay. Cooking up one more surprise for dinner tonight. It's nothing crazy, but I think Catherine will like it. Adam 100% knows the way to my heart. He made steak, mashed potatoes, veggies, and he bought this chimichurri sauce from Trader Joe's that I've been talking about a lot recently and really wanting to try. So I'm very excited for this meal. It's really good. I have to give a huge thank you to Adam for planning this adventure. He spent hours and hours and hours researching and planning, and he totally knocked it out of the park. I'm definitely going to return the favor at some point and do a surprise video for him, because for me, it was so fun to just have no idea what was going on. It was very different than how things normally work behind the scenes. It was just fun for me to see the look on your face, everything we did. And me trying to guess. It was just a total blast. But unfortunately, this is the only regular type video we're filming in Washington on our way up to Alaska. We are heading to Canada in two weeks and we have so much to do until then. We have a lot of work to do on the van, just like van prep to get the van ready to go to Alaska, which is what our next video will be about. We also have appointments. We have friends we want to see. We have a ton of work to do. And I'm flying across the country to D.C. to meet my best friend's new baby. We'll definitely be back to Washington on our way back down from Alaska and hopefully Oregon as well. But if you want to see more Washington videos, we have some from when we lived here and also a couple of previous trips we did in the van here. But for now, we're just going to focus on leaving the lower 48 heading through Canada. I can't believe it's almost here. We still have a lot more we want to share before we get to Alaska, but we're leaving a lower 48 soon. And that is just crazy. Where are we going? What are we going to do? Is it going to be fun? Is it going to be boring? Did Adam make a dumb video? Or is it going to be so cool? We're making prodoodles. Prodoodles can shake and cauliflower and broccoli. What do you want? Get away from me. Stop following me. I'm trying to record this intro and these geese are literally coming at me and following me. Get away.