Vacation 2010 - Day 4

Today Kenny and I were going from Hood River (OR) via Astoria (OR) to Aberdeen (WA). Since that is only a little over 200 miles that wasn't really a big deal. So we got up at 8 am and I started packing things up, while Kenny was checking his emails. Once he was done, he joined me by 9.30 the truck was all loaded up and we were ready to hit the road again.
We were going via Astoria to Aberdeen since the movie Goonies was shot there, and Kenny is a big Goonies fan. So we took I-84 west and on the outskirts of Portland we merged onto the 205 North. It's rather odd as the GPS made us go up north into Washington and than back south into Oregon. So we passed the outskirts of Vancouver (WA) and then took highway 197 west and were supposed to go via the Lewis and Clark Bridge over the Columbia River back into Oregon.
But somehow our GPS got at little confused and told us to go right and that
way we ended up in a lumber yard.So we turned the car around and took the Lewis and Clark Bridge into Oregon.
This is a big and architecturally very impressive bridge. From the Oregon side
you have a absolutely stunning view of the bridge. We then followed the historic US Route 30 west. It's a 2-lane highway and you get some interesting views. What you see most of the time is lots and lots of forest. We could have driven through Vernonia and check out the home-base of 2 of History Channels "Ax Men", but that would have brought us further south than we actually wanted to go. So we opted to continue on the 30 west until we reached Astoria. We stopped at the entrance to take a picture with the city sign and than drove into town.
While we were driving through town in search of a fast food place we found a
way better 'Welcome to Downtown Astoria Sign'. We stopped and took a picture
in front of that sign and then we hit the road again. We didn't find any fast food place that would have agreed with our stomach, so we opted to drive over the 4.3 mile long Astoria Bridge into Washington. This bridge is absolutely amazing... not only because of it's length, but also because of it's architecture. We stopped at the next turn out on the Washington side and took quite a number of pix and videos and we also took picture right in front of the Washington State Sign.
We merged onto the 101 and followed it north. Again we came across some quite interesting views, but lots and lots of forest and for about 1 1/2 hours we didn't come across any city. We finally reached the city of South Bend but didn't find any fast food place that would have agreed with us. That prompted my statement, that "in South Bend fast food isn't on top of the list of priorities". We continued on the 101 north and soon reached the city of Raymond where we had lunch at a Diary Queen.
After lunch we got back onto the 101 north. That's when a really odd thing happened with the GPS: We had about 30 miles to go and the GPS estimated that we would need another 2 hours. That struck Kenny and I as rather odd.
Turns out that the GPS was wrong, as about 40 minutes later we reached Aberdeen and checked into the Hotel. So far this hotel is the nicest on the entire trip. All in all we have been lucky with the hotels we have chosen.
Tomorrow we will be spending with Kenny's friend Rick and his family.