Are passengers happy with shore excursions in Astoria, Oregon?

[Slingshot7]

Are passengers happy with shore excursions in Astoria, Oregon?

[AlmondFarmer]

All the cruisers that I know who have been on a Astoria shore excursion loved it….both of them.

Astoria is not a common stop. 

[WAYNO]

Astoria is quaint.

It wasn't always.  It used to be the industrial/agriculture/shipping/fishing/canning/logging/sawmill center of  Northwest Coastal Oregon,  very similar to early Seattle and even early San Francisco.  Anybody that wanted to work could get a job in Astoria.  With the above activities mostly gone, folks that live there now are doing so on the money they brought with them.  Meaningful work is difficult to find. 

That said, Astoria is a beautiful town, and the area is breathtakingly gorgeous.  The once thriving metropolitan downtown area is quite unchanged from what it looked like in the twenties thru the seventies.  It is now inhabited by local artists, and hawkers of tourist goods, much of it made by hand locally.  There is incredible history in the area.  This is where Lewis and Clark ended their journey to the Pacific Ocean.  There is much evidence of their stay here, and of their co-existence with the local Indians.  There are tributes, memorials, displays, as well as museums throughout this area, on both sides of the Columbia River.

There are military sites from the Jefferson era, from the Civil War era, and even a couple artillery batteries from both World Wars.

I know Astoria very well.  I've fished the Columbia bar my entire life.  My daughter went to Community College there.

We stopped in Astoria, cruising from Seattle to San Francisco aboard Explorer of the seas.  I thought, "what are we gonna do here?"  The dock the ship was tied to was completely covered with raw logs, bound for the Orient.  There is little sugar-coated here. We got on the local trolley at the wharf, rode to downtown and took our own walking tour.  Even as a seasoned far-West Coaster, I was reminded of the complexion of Astoria.  If a person desires, there are multiple shore excursions of the area, all of them interesting and educational, in addition to absolutely spellbinding.  Or as we did, you can do a self-tour of downtown.

 

A view from my daughter's apartment, overlooking the Columbia and part of downtown Astoria...

 

 

[cruisellama]

Isn't that where One Eye Willie's treasure was buried?