Searching for history, vampires and the beach in Oregon

Ten days and nearly six thousand miles later, we have returned from our most active vacation since our three kids came along.  While we don’t mind traveling long distances, we had become accustomed to staying put once we arrived at our vacation spot – usually on the beach. This year, we were on the go on a different sort of holiday – a three-state trek through Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Last week, I wrote of our travels through Idaho. This week, explore the second part of our journey – Oregon.

PART TWO – OREGON

When we began plotting the Oregon leg of our northwestern trek, my husband and I had visions of our family following the footsteps of Lewis and Clark and thousands of westward expansionists along the Oregon Trail. We imagined Sacagawea navigating the Columbia River in dugout canoes and wagon trains crossing hazardous terrain. Our southeastern kids would surely appreciate the wide open spaces; the lure of the west; the historical significance of such a trip.

In the weeks before we left, it became obvious that river gorges and 200-year-old forts didn’t hold the same appeal for our middle-school-aged daughter. To bring the entire family on board, we plotted an eclectic mix of stops through the state that satisfied Mom and Dad’s historical vision, our tweenager’s insatiable appetite for pop culture and everyone’s overarching desire to walk barefoot on the beach at least once this vacation.

Geographically, the drive from Idaho takes you from the high desert over the Cascade Mountains, past the dominating Mount Hood into the forested Columbia River Gorge before the river opens into the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Ore. Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery paddled the Columbia, so if you can see the river, American history is all around you.     

Check out the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Wasco County Historical Museum east of Portland in The Dalles to learn more about the gorge and Lewis and Clark’s journey in 1805.  Or travel on to see Fort Clatsop near Astoria, where the Corps wintered after finally reaching the Pacific. Here, families can meet “Captain William Clark”, and listen as he reports on the Corps’ findings. Captain Clark is even happy to pose for a photo, though he does appear perplexed by the flash photography and digital technology used by those in his audience.      

Before your kids can roll their eyes at one more reference to “the past”, you can treat your tween girls to a tour of movie locations for the vampire love flick Twilight. Along our route to the coast, we found several towns where parts of the movie were filmed. Our girls’ top two Twilight stops included Kalama, Wash. (a quick trek over the river) and the lovely View Point Inn in Corbett, Ore., where a very understanding staff encourages giggling girls to roam the property, photograph movie set remnants from the film’s “prom scene” and enjoy a breathtaking view of the Columbia River Gorge below.  Kalama is home to the high school in the movie and the site of several scenes, which Kalama High School very helpfully maps out for visitors. 

Other areas to check out if your daughter fancies vampire love stories or actor Rob Pattinson are the small towns of Vernonia and St. Helens, Ore. The locals are quite willing to point you in the right direction to find the specific spot where the actors “made movie magic”.     

If you have boys, the Twilight tour probably won’t be on your list. Instead, check out the alpine slide, go-karts and 500-foot zip line at Mt. Hood Skibowl’s summer action park, the Oaks Amusement Park in Portland or the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria. 

Finally, the “beach” part of our Oregon trip combined everyone’s interests. First, for east coasters used to the warm, calm waters off of St. Simons, that first view of Oregon’s Pacific – with its rock outcroppings, hillsides down to the water and huge waves – was simply a beautiful sight. Of course you would have to be madder than a box of frogs to get in that frigid water without a full wet suit – even in July.  (Our girls’ sanity is questionable; they ran over and over into the numbingly-cold waves.) 

We visited Indian Beach at Ecola State Park near Cannon Beach, Ore.  Capt. Clark and Sacagawea journeyed to this very spot to see a beached whale in January 1806.  More than 200 years later, the director of the Twilight film used this beach for a movie scene, and the Still girls got their first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. All of our interests were wrapped into a tidy little package that day on the Oregon beach.  

How do you combine competing interests into one family vacation?  What are your success stories? Your horror stories?  How shocked were you the first time you visited a “different” beach?  Do you think Georgians take for granted our easy access to many warm, sandy beaches? Would you consider vacationing at a cold beach destination? Or tell us your Oregon travel tales.