BACK TO ASTORIA

Counting the "Big Bridge" crossing of the Columbia River, it's a little under 20 miles from where we're parked near Long Beach, WA, to Astoria, on the Oregon side of the river.  With the Astoria Sunday Market as our first destination, we got outa Dodge fairly early for us, hitting the road a little after 9am.  We knew this street fair/market was much bigger than the smaller Ilwaco market, and even though we saw many of the same vendors, it was probably twice as big, with live music, and lots of food for sale.  My big purchase for the day was a bag of cheddar cheese flavored kettle corn.

 

 If there's a cat in the area, Patty most surely will find it.

As we were leaving the street market, a familiar subject came up, and even though I tried my hardest to tune out the conversation, I was outnumbered.  Once again,  there just happened to be a quilt/fabric store "right around the corner", and the often heard phrase "we'll only be a few minutes", was part of the not so benign request to chauffeur these quilt addicts off into yet another sector of fabric land.

With Nancy in the back seat giving me foot by foot directions on her smart phone, & no way I could get lost, I dropped the shopaholics off at the latest quilt store, and told them I would be back in "a few minutes".   I'm thinking that there's no way they'll be done in "a few minutes", so I drove down to the waterfront, wandered around the viewing platform, taking some pictures, enjoying the bright, sunshiny day.  Next stop was a gas station, where I filled up the tank, rotated the tires, washed & waxed the exterior, and rebuilt the engine & transmission.  OK, probably enough time has passed, and I can go back and pick up the quilt sisters.  Wrong, I still had time to sit in the parking lot, recline the seat, and take a little snooze.  Finally, they returned, and we were off to our last stops - Costco & Freddie.

Fire was the scourge of early towns, built mostly of wood like Astoria.  There's still evidence of Astoria's history of devastating fires.

 Another quilt store is added to their already Guinness World Record.

We stocked up on some provisions at Costco, and the local Freddie store, before heading back to Long Beach.  I spent the rest of the afternoon watching some drag racing action from the biggest race of the year in Indianapolis, while at the same time, recording the NASCAR race from Atlanta.  

Nick & Terry came by in the early evening, and we visited for several hours before calling it a day.  I think Patty & Nancy are driving back to Astoria today, while I get my motor sports fix on the tube.