A cruise detour – to Astoria, Oregon

Posted On October 16, 2023

I don’t know why it’s done, but as with our Hawaii cruise in 2013, we made a detour to spend a day in Astoria, Oregon. This post isn’t going to tell you much about Astoria, but on the 2013 visit I spent a very busy day exploring – see “Exploring Astoria, Oregon” for that post.

The approach to Astoria is across the infamous Columbia Bar, which has claimed hundreds of boats and ships, but was quite placid for our crossing, as seen on the ship’s bow cam. Our arrival was delayed due to a pilot not being available, and he arrived by helicopter.

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The next photo shows the roughest water I saw, from our starboard cabin.

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Astoria’s most famous feature is the The Astoria–Megler Bridge, a steel cantilever through truss structure that open in 1966. It is 4 miles/6,545 meters long, carrying U.S. Route 101 between Oregon and Washington State. The next panoramic photo was shot from the stern of Koningsdam.

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The weather had been cloudy and chilly but the skies cleared as we sailed up the Columbia River. There’s always a rush to get off the ship as it docks as soon , and we waited an hour until I could see that few people were disembarking, then went down and caught a shuttle bus to downtown. It’s less than 2 miles away, so is an easy walk for most people.

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The marina and bridge as seen from the bus.

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The Sunday Market was our destination, and turned out to be all we did. It’s huge, filling 3 blocks of 12th Street. There were a lot of people, but it wasn’t crowded.

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A bit early for Hallowe’en, but very funny anyway 🙂

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From the market we walked to the Maritime Museum to catch the bus back to the ship.

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Back on the ship, we went to open area at the stern of Deck 9 for a drink and to watch the world go by.

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The Cemtrex Creation was obviously carrying fuel…

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…but this barge loaded with water has me stumped. Cathy suggested possibly hatchery fish.

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As we got ready to sail away from Astoria, the skies clouded over, and it was dark by the time we reached the ocean.

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I think this is our first trip since I got injured in August 2019, and I’m finding it difficult to accept the difference. To go from full-tilt exploring and photographing and writing to this is very disappointing. I am, though, trying very hard to just enjoy what I can.

We would now spend 5 days crossing the Pacific to Hawaii. We really enjoyed these sea days on our 2013 cruise, and were both looking forward to experiencing them again.

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Edit: Sunday, October 22 – for a long list of technical and other issues, I found writing the blog while travelling to be impossible. I’ll be busy for a few days doing that when we get home on Tuesday afternoon, though. I have some incredible places to show you, as well as other more mundane things that I’m sure many of you have not yet experienced.