Fort Stevens – wanderingyuncks

We spent Mother’s Day weekend hiking several trails in Clatsop County. We began on Saturday by driving to Ecola State Park and parking in the Ecola Point parking lot. We last visited the park in December 2013 when we hiked north along the Oregon Coast Trail (OCT) to Tillamook Head’s high point. (post)

For this visit our plan was to hike south on the OCT then take the Crescent Beach Trail down to that beach.
The trail begins near the restrooms.

The trail began by climbing via a couple sets of wooden stairs to Ecola Park Rd which it briefly followed along the shoulder.

Ecola Park Road.

Where the trail left the shoulder, we came to a pair of cyclists who we thought were looking out at the Ocean. It took a second for us to realize that they were actually watching a small herd of elk in the forest below.

After watching the elk for a moment we started down the trail which wound up switching back down toward the elk. Luckily they were following proper Leave No Trace Principals and remained an acceptable distance from the wild hikers.

We continued on past the elk following the OCT approximately a mile from parking lot to the junction with the Crescent Beach Trail.

Skunk cabbage

Scouler’s corydalis

Window to the Pacific.

We turned right at the junction and descended a quarter mile to Crescent Beach.

Ecola Point

Chapman Point and Bird Rocks

We decided to head north toward Ecola Point to check out the tide pools. We had inadvertently timed our visit nearly perfectly as it was about an hour and a half from low tide.
Prior to reaching the tide pools we passed Waterfall Creek.
The upper falls.

Waterfall Creek

The lower falls.

The tide pools from Waterfall Creek.

The tide pools wound up being some of the most impressive we’d seen. We spent a good amount of time walking around to the different pools. We were careful not to climb on any of the rocks or to disturb any of the wildlife. In fact some of the rocks that were exposed are likely part of the Oregon Islands Wilderness.

We found Patrick from Spongebob!

After admiring the tide pools we headed south along the beach toward Chapman Point and the Bird Rocks.

We were curious as to what forces carved out the backside of this rock.

Chapman Point is only passable at certain low tides. On the far side is Cannon Beach (post).

This cave through Chapman Point was flooded at the far end.

Pigeon guillemot

Goose

We turned around at Chapman Point and headed back to the Crescent Beach Trail.

Whibrel

We retraced our steps back to Ecola Point where the lot was beginning to fill up.

Seaside bittercress

Youth-on-age

Our hike here came to 4.4-miles with approximately 600′ of elevation gain.

We hopped in our car and headed north to Fort Stevens State Park for our next hike. There are several parking lots at Fort Stevens and we opted to park at Battery Russell lot.
Battery Russell from the lot.

As with Ecola Point we had started a hike here before. In September 2017 we visited Battery Russell, Coffenbury Lake, and a shipwreck at the park (post). Again today we were going in the opposite direction, this time north to visit the park’s Historic Area. We followed a paved path east from the parking lot then over Jetty Road on an overpass.

The overpass

We followed the paved path to a junction near a pill box where we went right.

The path led past Swash Lake which helped explain the host of mosquitos that were flying around us.

We stayed right at the next junction and Jetty Lagoon on the Swash Lake Bridge.

Looking out toward Swash Lake from the bridge.

A little under 2 miles form the parking lot we arrived at the visitor’s center.
The gate to the Historic Area is locked in the evening.

Visitor’s center

A number of trails and paths wind around the Historic Area as well as open spaces that one can simply walk across. We made up our own route based on a suggested hike from the Oregonhikers Field Guide.

We began by walking past a jeep on display and looping behind the visitor’s center.

From the visitor’s center we headed into a large open space where the barracks had once been.

We made our way to the far end of the open space and turned south to see the old guardhouse and Battery Clark.
The guardhouse on the left.

Battery Clark

We then turned back north cutting across the barracks area toward a pair of smooth bore cannons and Battery Freeman.

We passed the cannons and hiked through a guarded underpass.

Fort Stevens Earth Works.

We crossed a grassy field to the cannons atop the Earth Works then descended a staircase.

White-crowned sparrow

We cut across the grass below to the footbridge in the distance.

Columbia River

Looking west toward the Pacific.

At the Columbia we turned right on the Jetty Trail and followed it past some disc golf holes and Battery Smur to a former roadbed.

Battery Smur

The roadbed coming in from the former barracks site.

We turned left on this road and followed it to a gate and the former Torpedo Loading Room.
Mine Loading Building

Searchlight Generator

Torpedo Loading Room

We turned around here and walked back to the Jetty Trail and followed it west through the Disc Golf Course to the Clatsop Longhouse site.

From the longhouse site we continued on the Jetty Trail toward Battery 245.

Battery 245

We hiked around Battery 245 and onto Battery Mishler.

We passed this battery and Battery Pratt then veered right on a paved path which led back to the path we’d followed from Battery Russell.

Sign for the Lil’ Oozlefinch Putting Course.

We headed back toward the parking lot and at the Pill Box we veered right which was a more direct route to the parking lot. The drawback was that there was no overpass here so we had to watch for traffic before crossing Jetty Road.

Bald eagle

Gate near Jetty Road.

After crossing Jetty Road, we followed the paved path left a tenth of a mile to the Battery Russell parking lot. This hike came to 6.3-miles with just 75′ or so of elevation gain.

Our final stop of the day was just 5 miles from the Battery Russell parking lot at Lighthouse Park in Warrenton.

The parking lot at the park.

Our plan here was to hike the 2-mile Skipanon River Loop. Three things drew us to this trail. First it was a trail we hadn’t yet hiked. Secondly, we hadn’t hiked along the Skipanon River yet, and while it isn’t an official goal we are trying to visit as many of Oregon’s rivers as possible. Finally, one of our favorite post hike restaurants, Nisa’s Thai Kitchen is located along the route.

From the parking lot we crossed NE Skipanon Drive and followed the sidewalk past a storage facility to a path next to E Harbor Drive that promptly passed beneath the road.

Emerging from the underpass.

We turned right onto a paved path along the Skipanon River for a third of a mile to Skipanon River Park.

Mallard family

Sign at the park.

At the park the trail ended and we turned right onto SE 3rd St and followed it a block to S Main Avenue where we turned left. After two blocks on Main we turned left onto SE 5th St and then took a right on a grassy track behind some buildings.
Eighth Street Dam from the grassy track.

We crossed the river on the 8th Street Dam where we finally saw an official trail map.

Until we saw this sign we’d been thinking that maybe the trail didn’t exist any longer. We were also questioning how the loop was supposed to get back across the river at the other end since the only bridge across the river there was Harbor Drive. Until seeing this we were thinking of turning around at the dam, but instead we decided that we’d do the loop with Heather getting a table at Nisa’s while I recrossed the river to retrieve the car.

With lunch calling, and our feet feeling a bit worn, we opted not to do the optional out-and-back B1 spur trail and continued on the loop past a gate.

On this side the trail was a nice grassy track following a dike which was far more pleasant than Main Avenue.

Not the clearest picture but I think this is a greater scaup based on the head shape. We’ve seen a number of lesser scaups, but this would be our first greater.

Great blue heron

Cormorant

A brief paved section.

Nisa’s Thai Kitchen across Harbor Drive.

There was a nice wide bike/pedestrian lane on the bridge making the crossing not too bad even with traffic. As I was made my way across I noticed a path leading down to the underpass on the south side of Harbor Drive which meant I wouldn’t need to cross the main street on foot.
Looking back up the path from Harbor Drive.

The loop came in just over 2-miles with minimal elevation gain.

This would probably be a nicer hike early in the morning when less traffic was about. It was a little awkward walking along the city streets as well, but the grassy dike was a comfortable walk. What really made this worth the stop though was the Drunken Noodles and Pad Thai. After a satisfying meal we drove to Astoria arriving at our motel right after check in time (3pm). We originally thought we might head out to the Astoria Riverwalk after cleaning up, but after showering a resting for a bit it was clear that 12.9 miles were enough for one day. Happy Trails!

Flickr: Crecent Beach, Fort Stevens Historic Area, and the Skipanon River Loop

We continued our year of shuffling hikes on our latest mini-vacation. The string of wildfires starting in Northern California in the Klamath Mountains and continuing along the Cascade Range north to the Canadian Border had us looking for a last minute location for 4 days of hiking. We turned to the coast hoping to escape any possibly smokey conditions and wound up deciding on checking out the northern most part of the Oregon Coast as well as our first foray along the Washington Coast line.

We booked a room in Gearhart, OR and I began putting an itinerary together. We are still plodding along in our attempt to hike all of the featured hikes in Sullivan’s 100 Hikes guidebooks and there were several in the area we’d yet to tackle. I managed to fit eight of his featured hikes into the four days and even threw in an additional stop at Fort Columbia on our third day.

We set our sights on three of the hikes for our first day starting with a relatively short loop around Clatsop Spit. The spit is located inside Fort Stevens State Park at the mouth of the Columbia River and is the northern terminus for the Oregon Coast Trail.

As we were driving to the spit along Jetty Road we spotted some elk and had to stop for a couple of photos.

Once we had parked at the large parking area at the spit we checked out the view from the South Jetty observation platform.

We then headed west beside the jetty toward the Pacific.

We then turned north along the beach heading towards the Columbia River where we could see plenty of traffic on the water.

We turned inland at the river we had a view of the distant Megler Bridge.

We passed a host of people fishing along the shore but didn’t see anyone having any luck.

We looped around a peninsula near Jetty Lagoon and located the wildlife viewing bunker near the park’s Parking Lot D.

view from the bunker.

We crossed a footbridge to the parking lot and then had a 1.1 mile road walk back to the spit parking lot.

We drove back along Jetty Road and parked in a signed lot for Battery Russell.

We took a set of stairs up to the concrete bunker.

For forty years (1904-44) the battery guarded the Columbia River from enemy attacks. We spent quite a while exploring the old bunker. The history made it neat but too many video games and horror movies kept us imagining what might be hiding in the dark corners of the rooms.

We followed a path at the far end of the bunker toward Coffenbury Lake.

The path passed another set of old buildings.

We continued on this path a total of 1.25 miles to a signed junction where we followed a pointer to the lake.

We headed around the lake counter-clockwise on a nice trail.

After completing the 2 mile loop around the lake we followed “Shipwreck” pointers for 3/4 of a mile to the beach and the remains of the Peter Iredale which ran aground in 1906.

We backtracked from the beach a short distance and turned left on a paved path at a pointer for Battery Russell (among other possible destinations).

We followed this path for a little over half a mile before turning right at another pointer for Battery Russell.

We followed this 1.1 mile paved path back to the parking lot.

The total distance of the Clatsop Spit hike had been 5 miles and this hike came in just under 7.5 miles. Twelve and a half miles is pretty good for a day, but due to our typical early start we were done with these two hikes before 1pm. Our check-in time wasn’t until four so we still had a few hours to kill.

We had been prepared for that and headed north from Fort Stevens to Astoria where we parked at the Columbia River Maritime Museum

From the museum parking lot we headed west following the Riverfront Trolley line.

Seabirds lined the waterfront and we also heard some sea lions but never saw any.

We more or less stuck to Sullivan’s described route (Hike #4 in the 4th edition of “100 Hikes/Travel Guide Oregon Coast & Coast Range) following the the trolley line to 6th St. then turning inland for three blocks before taking a left on Commercial St. After a block on Commercial St. we turned right on 7th for two blocks passing the Oregon Film Museum and the Flavel House.

We walked around the Flavel House and headed downhill on 8th St. turning right when we arrived back at Commercial St. We turned right several blocks later on 12th Street and right again a block later on Duane St. passing a Chinese Garden.

We continued zig-zagging through town passing numerous historic homes, churches, and other buildings. One home that stood out was an old run down home that had the quintessential haunted house look.

We also passed Fort Astoria on the corner of 15th and Exchange.

By the time we were done we wandered around town for a total of 3 miles.
Astoria

One of the landmarks not on the route was the Astoria Column. It was visible from the waterfront rising above the city. It was one of the times the 30x zoom on the camera came in handy.

We still arrived a little early at our hotel but luckily our room was ready. We had a nice view south to Tillamook Head.

It had actually rained lightly on us in Astoria which was a wonderful change of pace. The sun went down behind the clouds that evening ending the first day of what was shaping up to be an interesting vacation.

Happy Trails!

Flickr: Astoria & Fort Stevens