EMP Museum

It's only taken two years of living in the Pacific Northwest, but I finally went to the top of the Seattle Space Needle.  I'm glad I did it, just to be able to say I've been there, done that.  Cross it off the list and not live a life wondering what I was missing.

In hindsight though, holy cow that was some highway robbery!  The cost of the tickets to go up the Space Needle and check out the view were astronomically high.  You'd think we were actually funding putting the Space Needle into orbit!  My wife's cousin has lived here in Seattle for over a decade and has NOT been to the top of the Space Needle.  She's now gone so long without it that she considers it a matter of pride and refuses to go when invited.  To her I say, WELL DONE!  She is much wiser than me.

After the Space Needle, we went to the nearby EMP Museum.

Oh.

My.

I didn't really know what to expect.  My wife said she heard it was cool and it had musical instruments and stuff.  I said okay, sure, why not?  I'm always up for some new experiences.

I'm SO glad we went.  The EMP Museum is TOTALLY worth the price of admission.  If we weren't getting ready to pack our household goods for yet another cross-country PCS move, then I would have bought the annual pass so we could go back. 

If you have ANY interest in ANYTHING sci-fi related from Star Wars to Star Trek to Dr. Who to The Fifth Element to Men in Black to Aliens to Terminator to War of the Worlds to the Matrix...  You should go to the EMP Museum.  I LOVED the Icons of Science Fiction exhibit.  It's a museum of costumes and props from just about every sci-fi movie and television show you can imagine.

The Art of Video Games exhibit was like going back 30+ years through a time warp and conducting a pass-in-review of the various electronic boxes that have consumed hours upon days upon weeks of my evening and weekend free-time away from school and eventually work.  Starting with the Commodore 64 and working your way up through the first Nintendo to the Wii, XBox 360, and Sega, there is an exhibit for each computer or gaming console and a sample of four types of games to show you the quality of graphics and sound.  Man some of those old games brought back memories!

Up on the third floor they have some pretty cool music stuff.  There's a Sound Lab full of different musical instruments for you to try, with an interactive touch-screen computer display for each instrument.  I was pretty impressed my eldest son picked up the bass guitar, figured out the bars works the same way as on his cello, and started plucking out the notes of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on the guitar.

Then there's this exhibit called On Stage where you can go do a simulated live performance in front of a huge crowd.  You make up a band name and choose from a short list of cover songs to sing.  My family chose the Go-Go's "We Got the Beat."  If you really do know how to play the instrument, then they can turn it on so you'll really play it, but otherwise, you just pretend you're banging away on the keyboard or guitar and sing along.  They play background noise like there's a screaming crowd of fans in the audience in front of you.  We had fun pretending to be rock stars on the stage.  Of course, after you walk off the stage, then they would like to stick a vacuum in your wallet and get you to buy DVDs of your stage performance and posters of your band on stage, etc, but that's all optional.  We skipped the souvenirs, but we had fun playing on the stage.

There are several more exhibits there to see, and you can check them all out on the EMP Museum website, but those were my top three favorites from our visit.  The website is well-done and has a lot better pictures than what I took with the camera in my phone.

The gift shop was pretty dangerous for us, too.  My boys are obsessed with Dr. Who, and there was a TON of Dr. Who stuff in the gift shop.  They've both been wearing their new Dr. Who t-shirts as often as my wife gets them through the laundry.  That resulted in my youngest son wearing his Dr. Who shirt to school two days in a row.  Plus they had a lot of funny Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Princess Bridge paraphernalia like glasses labeled "IOCANE POWDER" and t-shirts with "HELLO:  My Name Is... Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die."

My advice, skip the Space Needle and just go have fun at the EMP Museum!

Forerunner versus Fenix

You don't have to read my blog for long to know that I'm a gadget freak.  I love electronic gadgets.  When I go hiking or kayaking, I need a nerdy vest with half a dozen pockets to hold the GPS, the phone, the camera, etc.

In the category of GPS, I'm a big fan and a stock-owner in Garmin.  I started off with a Garmin 12XL way back in 1998.  When I got bit by the geocaching bug, I upgraded to the Garmin GPSMap 60CSx, which I still love and use a lot.  It was sorta bulky for carrying with me when I went running outdoors, so a few years later my wonderful wife gave me a Garmin Forerunner 405.  There were things I liked and things I didn't like about the Forerunner.

Forerunner Likes
- Compact / Wrist-worn.  As previously mentioned, it was a little awkward running with the bigger handheld GPSMap 60CSx in my hand.
- Automatic Wireless Data Uplink.  I loved that all I had to do was walk into the same room as my computer, and my Forerunner would automatically start wirelessly transmitting the data from my run / hike / kayak / outdoor adventure-du-jour to my computer.  It would upload automatically to the Garmin Connect website where I could see where my outdoor adventure took me on a Google street map or satellite image, along with plots of my altitude, speed, heartrate, and anything else I could want to analyze.

Forerunner Dislikes

 

- Sort of like Gizmo in the movie Gremlins.  DON'T GET IT WET! 

Yes, yes, it's water resistant and wasn't damaged by getting wet.  However, the Forerunner was minimalist on buttons and instead had a touch-sensitive bezel to operate it.  It was pretty cool, but the first time I went running in the rain, oh my!  I discovered it treated every rain drop as a touch and activated all sorts of different sub modes and features.  I think it was telling me how many calories I burned in Swahili, but it wouldn't let my legitimate touches get it back to the display screen that I actually wanted. 

Okay, no problem.  If you push both buttons at the same time, it locks (or unlocks) the bezel.  I would just lock it before going on a hike in the rain or going kayaking where it might get splashed.  I just couldn't change screens or modes while it was wet.

- Battery life was meh.  I could use it one day for a GPS activity outdoors and then would need to recharge it.  If I hadn't recharged it in the previous couple of days, then the battery was likely to die in the middle of my excursion.

Again, no problem.  It was manageable.  I just made a point to put it on the charger the night before any outside activities.

Overall, I liked the Forerunner and used it A LOT.  I've got 153 entries in my Garmin Connect log dating back to October 2008 to prove it, and you can see the Garmin Connect widget on most of my hiking and kayaking blog posts.

 









Enter the Fenix.


I was pretty excited when I read about the Fenix on the Garmin website, primarily because it's waterproof and the battery life is much better than the Forerunner.  I got the Fenix in the autumn just before leaving on patrol, so I haven't taken it out on any real outdoor adventures kayaking or hiking yet, but I've been messing around with it on my way to and from work and while at sea.

So far, it's living up to my expectations.

Got wet?  No problem!  It's been pouring rain here and with five buttons on the Fenix, I can do any sort of manipulations I want while it's wet.  No touchscreen to go haywire with rain drops.

The battery has been doing GREAT.  With the old Forerunner, my only battery indication was when the Forerunner DIED (typically in the middle of a run or hike).  The Fenix has a handy indication on the screen to tell you the exact percentage charge status of the battery.  I have been able to use it for weeks at a time just as a watch with the GPS turned off.  I have also used it for several hours at a time standing on the bridge of a submarine with the GPS turned on and had PLENTY of battery capacity left over.

I love that it is very adaptable.  You can have as many or as few screens as you want.  You can customize each screen with different data parameters to display.  You can customize the buttons to do just about anything except order a pizza. 

I like that it monitors temperature and includes that in the plot of speed and other parameters on Garmin Connect.  Now, the temperature reading isn't accurate when it's on my wrist and sensing my body heat, but I've been using it in very cold environments, attached to the outside of my cold weather gear.  I also got one of the remote temperature sensors that I will attach to my backpack when I go hiking in the summertime, and it will wirelessly transmit the temperature to the Fenix at some periodic interval. 

My only complaint about the Fenix is: No automatic uploads.  It doesn't transmit wirelessly like the Forerunner did.  I'm okay with that.  I don't mind plugging in a USB cable.  The frustrating part is when I open Garmin Connect, it "sees" the Fenix is there and plugged in, and I click on "upload activities," and it says there are no activities to upload.  In order to get the data from my Fenix into Garmin Connect, I have to manually open the file and import it into Garmin Connect.  So it's a little labor intensive, but I can live with that.  

Overall, I'm ecstatic with the Fenix, and I'm anxious to go try it out hiking and kayaking now that I'm back in port.

I'm back!

Received a gentle nudge from one of my two or three readers who asked if I had "given up on the blog?"

No!  I haven't given up on the blog. 

I've just been...  away... for a while.

My Christmas stocking was hung in the wardroom in hopes Saint Nick would find his way down through the main induction sump.

Shipmates from the Mighty MSP might have noticed this was the first time I haven't made a post on December 29th. 

I didn't forget.

I wore my Sailors, Rest Your Oars black armband, and I led training with all my officers and chiefs on the painful lessons learned from that day in Plymouth.

A few weeks fortnights later, I observed a beautiful sunrise on Easter Sunday.

I've been in the Navy almost 19 years, and that was the longest I've spent at sea without setting foot on dry ground.  At least fast attacks get a port call every few weeks or so.

Now I'm back, and we are again approaching that transition that comes with every PCS move.   The moving company was at the house today doing a visual inventory of all our shtuff and how much packing materials they need to bring on pack-out day.  The Navy is sending us back to the Pentagon.  I suppose I'll need to go back and re-read my own posts on Pentagon gouge.  We're excited to go back to shore duty and to see all of our friends in the NoVA area again.

...and I suspect I may have more time on my hands to write blog posts again.

It's nice to be a regular (Part II)

Being in the Navy and moving to a new duty station every couple of years makes it difficult to achieve "regular" status.  By the time you've been going to the same business often enough that the staff remembers you, it's time to move again.

Now, I'm not talking about Yelp's definition of "regular" where you go to the same restaurant twice in a week and ipso-facto-POOF!  Suddenly Yelp gives you a congratulatory message that you're now a REGULAR at that business.  No, there's no set formula for how many visits or how far spaced apart they have to be to achieve said status. 

It's all about recognition. 

Sort of like the old Cheers theme song, "Sometime you wanna go where everybody knows your name."  The employees don't necessarily need to know your name, but if they clearly recognize you and ask if you want "the usual," THAT's when you know you've arrived.  Yelp should make it so that "regular" status is only conferred by an employee of the business who enters some secret password into your smartphone to show that the employees of the establishment recognize you as a regular.

It happened a few weeks ago at the place we most frequently go to lunch after church.  Our waitress recognized us and asked if the boys wanted "the usual" to drink.  It just makes you feel... home... like a sense of belonging.

I can also confidently say I'm a regular at the Khaki Lounge on the submarine base.  The bartender, Margaret, recognizes me and asks how my boys are.  We have done a lot of wardroom lunches and "leaders lunches" for all our officers and chiefs there.  Then I took my boys in there for lunch one day while my wife was attending some sort of Family Readiness Group (FRG).  I don't imagine a lot of people take their kids to the Khaki Lounge, so it's easy to understand why that stuck in her memory.

Last weekend I was overjoyed and devastated all at once.

At first, I was overjoyed to have achieved "regular" status at the base barber shop.  Deja vu.  Last time I wrote about this, it had taken under a year, but I was in the shipyard and went to the same barber every week.  I didn't write about it on shore duty, but I know it happened a lot quicker on shore duty in the DC area going to the same places for lunch and the same barber shop every week.  Being on sea duty now, I go away for months at a time and the barbers forget all about you.  So here it is, a year and a half into my tour of duty in the Pacific Northwest, and I finally became a regular at the base barber shop.  My favorite barber recognized me and asked if I wanted it same as usual.  Yes, please!  :-)

Then I sat down in the chair and as she started combing my hair before she started cutting, she said sternly, "Somebody else cut your hair."  Ding ding ding!  :-)  That's another clear sign of being a regular - when they can tell someone else has messed with your hair or cut it differently, and another case of deja vu.  I confessed that I had to get my haircut, but she (the barber) was out of town. 

This is where my excitement of being a regular ended.

After my comment about her being out of town, she sighed and confessed.  Yep, she had to go househunting.  Her husband got out of the Navy and they're moving to Texas, so she was down in Texas shopping for a new house.  She just submitted her 2 weeks notice.

Darnit!

Back to ground zero.  It's just not fair!

Oh well, maybe at our next duty station...

Kitsap Favorites

Now that I've been living in Bremerton for a year and a half, I figure I've been here long enough that I should have a Kitsap Favorites list to keep track of the places we've gone.  Like my other favorites lists, I will come back and update this post as we find new places and events to enjoy, and I'll place a link to this post in the margin on my blog for easy reference.

Places to Go / Daytrips:

- Seattle Aquarium.  We've been to many aquariums around the country.  Although the Seattle Aquarium is somewhat small compared to others, it is a pretty nice aquarium with good exhibits.  We particularly enjoyed seeing the baby sea otter.

- EMP Museum.  I HIGHLY recommend the EMP Museum.  This place is awesome.  If we were staying in the area, I would buy the annual pass so we could go back again.

- Pike's Place Market in Seattle.  Oh my!  What a cacaphony of sights, sounds, and smells!  Just looking at pictures, you might be inclined to think to yourself, "Self, so what?  It's just a market."
  

- Seattle Seahawks.  One of my Sailors did a reenlistment here, and it was pretty awesome.  They allowed ten of us down on the sidelines to watch the Seahawks warmup.  I got hit in the shoulder by a practice field goal kick.  Head Coach Pete Carroll walked over and shook our hands and took pictures with us.  We got to watch the team run onto the field and stood on the field saluting during the national anthem.  Then we went up to our seats to watch the game.  Warning:  The Seahawks stadium is known as the LOUDEST in the nation.  It was deafening.  I saw kids there wearing headphones.

- Northwest Trek Wildlife Park.  We enjoyed this place.  You ride a tram / open-aired bus around the park and get to see tons of caribou, elk, mountain goats, deer, and other animals in their natural habiat.
- Olympic Game Farm.  I haven't actually been here yet, but my family has been a couple of times with visitors while I was out at sea.  I've seen the pictures, and it looks pretty cool.  You drive through in your own car, and you'll have all sorts of animals sticking their heads in your windows to eat bread out of your hand.

- Port Townshend.  Fort Worden State Park and the town of Port Townshend are where the movie Officer and a Gentleman was filmed.  Fort Worden was one of three forts guarding the entrance to Puget Sound and the approaches to Seattle, and the old concrete gun emplacements on top of artillery hill command a very nice view.  We also walked out to the Point Wilson Lighthouse and got to climb up and see the beautiful Fresnel lens.  The view from the top of the lighthouse is also pretty spectacular.

Weekend Getaways:
- Great Wolf Lodge, Grand Mound, WA - it's a hotel with a big INDOOR waterslide park.
- Evergreen Air & Space Museum and Waterpark in McMinnville, Oregon
- Astoria, Oregon - Goonies never say die!

Outdoor Activities:

Hiking and Snowshoeing:
- Green Mountain - Gold Creek Trail - close by, not too difficult, might be okay for kids depending on how used to hiking your kids are.
- Guillemot Cove Nature Preserve - close by, short easy walk with kids.
- Mount Rainier National Park - Snowshoeing at Paradise - I want to go back sometime and do the Park Ranger guided snowshoe trek.  It is open for kids 8 yrs old and up.
- Olympic National Park - Dosewallips River
- Olympic National Park - Hurricane Ridge in snow - in winter months they have sledding here for kids under 8.
- FAV! Olympic National Park - Hurricane Hill in summer
- Olympic National Park - Mount Zion - steep and strenuous hike, not recommended for kids.
- Olympic National Park - Marymere Falls and Spruce Railroad Trail - short hike to beautiful waterfall, easy for kids.
- Olympic National Park - Obstruction Point to Deer Park - long hike for adults only.
- Olympic National Park - Staircase Rapids - short and easy hike, easy for kids.
- FAV! Snoqualmie - Snowshoeing and Tubing

Kayaking:
- See also Kitsap Kayaking Resources
- Port Gamble kayaking (Hood Canal)
- Belfair State Park kayaking (Hood Canal)

Places on my "to do" list but I haven't made it there yet:
- Hiking Cape Flattery
- Kayaking Nisqually Flats
- Weekend trip to Victoria or Vancouver, BC
- Weekend trip to Pacific Beach - Navy MWR has a beach hotel and cottages there

Restaurants:  I've been exploring and trying many different restaurants around the Kitsap peninsula, but here are a few that I have been back to more than once:

- Barbie's Cafe in Seabeck.  I found this place totally by accident when coming back from hiking Green Mountain, and it quickly became my favorite on the peninsula.  Nice little cafe on the Hood Canal with excellent food, and if you're lucky you'll get to watch the bald eagles soaring around the dock outside while you eat.

- Oak Table in Kingston.  THE BEST BREAKFAST on the peninsula.  They also have a second location in Sequim, and somebody who shall remain nameless accidentally entered THAT location into our car's GPS and started driving toward Sequim one Sunday morning.  Thankfully somebody else in the car had a clue and said, "Why are you driving past the exit?"  Granted, Kingston is about a 30 minute drive out from Silverdale, but it's totally worth it.

- Port Gamble General Store in... well... Port Gamble.  Also has excellent breakfast.  To wit - lemon ricotta pancakes with fresh blackberry compote. 

- Mike's Four Star Barbecue in Port Gamble.  Although I'm not a fan of their cole slaw, everything else here is delicious.  If you've got a large party to feed, Mike's does a great job with catering - just pick up some large trays of ribs and beef brisket and you're all set!

- Fondi's Pizzeria in Gig Harbor.  My kids beg us to go here all the time.  They love the pepperoni rolls that are on the appetizer menu.  I am also a big fan of their pizza and wish they were closer to our house.  Our favorite pizza place in Silverdale closed down and we haven't found a suitable replacement, so we've been making our pizza at home.

- Yacht Club Broiler.  Right on the waterfront in Silverdale, WA, the food is delicious, the service is good, and the prices are reasonable.  Twice now, I have hosted large group parties for 20 or so people there, and Yacht Club Broiler did a great job and for a very reasonable price.  (Thumbs down - they serve Pepsi, but so does just about every other establishment in Kitsap County.)

- Burrata Bistro in Poulsbo.  Think butternut squash ravioli.  My kids don't like this place (food too fancy), so we don't go often, but I LOVE their culinary masterpieces.

- That's Some Italian Restaurant in Poulsbo.  This is a family favorite for us.  The name is kinda cheesy and the prices are a little steep, but the food is really good.  I think my kids just like to eat here for the garlic bread and meatballs.

- Juanito's Taco Shop in Chico.  Little shack on the side of the road with great Mexican food.

- Tacqueria El Huarche in Silverdale.  There are MANY Mexican restaurants around here, but for those of you from San Diego, this is where you can get a California Burrito (carne asada burrito with french fries just like Santana's on Rosecrans in San Diego).

- Ivar's Seafood in Seattle.  This is worth the ferry ride over to Seattle.  Take the Bainbridge Island Ferry over, get off the ferry and turn left.  Ivar's is one of the first restaurants on your left hand side.  Top notch food and service.

SUSHI.  While I've been happy with the plethora of Mexican restaurants to choose from, I've been disappointed by the selection of sushi.  Probably just because I was spoiled coming here from Pearl Harbor where I had dozens of awesome sushi places to choose from and ate sushi multiple times per week.  There are two places here in Silverdale - Origami Sushi and Hakata.  Neither are great.  Hakata violates their agreement with the credit card company and won't let you use a credit card unless you spend $25 or more.  Their sushi isn't bad, but the quantity I received was small in comparison to the price I paid.  Origami likes to put gobs of mayonnaise on their rolls.  Yech.

Olympic National Park - Dosewallips River

This was supposed to be hike #3 in the Falcon Guide titled Best Easy Day Hikes - Olympic National Park.  Unbeknownst to me, at some point between when the book was published in 2008 and now, the road was washed out about 5 miles short of the entrance to the National Park.

At the point where the road is washed out, we found about a dozen cars parked (see the victory pose photo below), so we figured people were just beginning their hikes from that point onward.  We encountered a few hikers coming out and asked what it was like.  They told us after the initial switchback trail up over the hill above the washout that it was pretty flat and easy.

This is what the switchback part of the trail looked like.

The trail over the hill was well-defined hard pack dirt and easy to follow.  When we got over the hill, the trail dropped us back down onto Dosewallips Road on the other side of the washout.

Blunoz Self Portrait by the Dosewallips River

From the point we rejoined the Dosewallips Road to the Elkhorn campsite, we enjoyed the deafening roar of the river at our side.  Still photos don't capture the essence of walking along the roaring river, so I had to post a short video clip instead.  The section of road from the washout to the Elkhorn campground was a nice flat road and would have been nice for a bike ride.  We saw a family riding their bicycles near the campground.  You'd just have to push your bikes up over that first hill.

The Elkhorn campground was a nice place and clearly still gets used.  There was no privy or any sort of facilities available though.  We spent some time by the river skipping rocks and marveling at how crystal clear the water was.  Considering how little rain we've had in the last couple of months, it was odd to see so much water in the river, but it was frigidly cold glacier runoff. 

From this sign by the Elkhorn campground onward, the road starts a steady uphill climb and diverges away from the river.  If you look at the altitude profile in my Garmin track below, you'll see that the trail was fairly flat - about 100 feet of elevation gain over the first 1.4 miles, then it gained a little over 300 feet in the next 0.6 miles as we climbed up the road away from the Eklhorn campground.  There really wasn't much to see here.  When we got 2 miles away from where we parked the car, we decided to head back down again.

There were lots of these little white and black butterflies flittering about all around us along the trail. 

We also spotted a couple of different catepillars, lots of pearly everlasting and some other common flowers along the way.

Long shadows at the end of the day.

On the hill over the washout.

Victory Pose

This was a first.  When we arrived back at the car, the boys declared "victory pose!" and ordered me to take a photo of them.  Goofballs.



Hike Stats:  When I'm searching for places to hike with my kids, I appreciate having some basic facts and figures about the hike for me to judge if it's doable with my kids.  With that in mind, I hope other parents considering this hike find the following information useful.

• Date: 6 October 2012
• Time of Departure:  Left the house about 10 a.m.  Stopped at the Quilcene Ranger Station to stamp my book, then had lunch at Logger's Landing (great food and excellent service).  By the time we got up to the end of the Dosewallips Road and started our hike, it was 1:41 p.m.
• Time of Return:    Around 4:30 p.m back at the car.  Held up by the Hood Canal Bridge opening on our way back.  Stopped and picked up Mike's Four Star Barbecue in Port Gamble on our way home.  Got home around 6:30 p.m.
  
• Elapsed:  2 hours 52 minutes
• Moving Time (GPS):  1 hours 48 minutes 
• Stopped Time (GPS):  1 hour 4 minutes 
• Mileage (GPS): 5.0 miles
• Avg Speed (GPS):  1.8 mph
• Elevation Gain:  725 feet
• Max Elevation:  1,004 feet
  
• Weather:   Clear and sunny.
• Winds:  None.
• Air Temp: 61F climbing to 66F by the car thermometer.  It felt a little chilly at spots along the river.
• Trail:  Well-defined hard-pack dirt or gravel trail.  
• Crowds?  Not crowded, but not alone.  There were about a dozen cars parked at the washout.  We passed about a dozen people along the way going in both directions.
• Hazards?  Some short but steep dropoffs into roaring rapids below.
  
• Geocaches?   Didn't bother looking - assumed there were none because it's a National Park.
• Kit: Long sleeve T-shirt, shorts, new Merrell Moab Gortex hiking boots, ballcap, walking stick.
• Route:  Intended to follow the route of #3 in my ONP day hikes book, but never made it to the Dosewallips Park Ranger station due to the road washout.  Note to self:  Check road conditions on national park website.  Instead just hiked along the road.  If I didn't have my kids with me, I would have kept going all the way up to the Park Ranger Station. 
• Facilities:  None.

Weekend Getaway - Astoria, Oregon

For Labor Day weekend, we looked a little bit farther out of our normal range of outside activities to find a place to spend the weekend.  My wife and I both loved the movie Goonies when we were kids, and we decided to go down and check out Astoria, Oregon.

Before we went there, I kept calling it "Uh-story-uh."  After spending the weekend there, I have learned everyone down there calls it "Ass-story-uh."  It's a pretty little seaside town right at the mouth of the Columbia River.  It's only about 3 1/2 hours drive from Bremerton, so it makes for a nice not-too-far weekend getaway.

View from Holiday Inn Express

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express right under the Astoria bridge.  It was a pretty nice place - and the prices reflected it, but we got some sort of weekend getaway discount deal.  They serve a pretty decent continental breakfast in the lobby, too.


It turns out there are several movies that have been filmed in Astoria, not just Goonies.  Some of the others we recognized were Kindergarten Cop and Short Circuit.  If you stop at the Chamber of Commerce, for $1 you can have a paper map and an audio CD that takes you through a tour of the town and past all the movie locations.  We went by the Goonies' house, the winding road where Mikey's older brother chased them on the little girl's bike, the window where Chunk smashes his milkshake while watching the police chase, the museum where Mikey's father worked and was taking down the flag at the beginning of the movie, and the jail.

They have turned the jailhouse into a film museum and will let kids film their own movie inside.  Out in front of the jail they have the black Jeep Cherokee the Fratelli family used in the movie, complete with bullet holes in the back, and the cast of the movie all autographed the dashboard with a black permanent marker.

Driving that winding road that Mikey's brother rode the little girl's bike on takes you up to the top of the hill overlooking Astoria and the Astoria Column.  The view here is truly spectacular and made it worth the drive down from Bremerton.  Heck, even if you didn't want to pay for a hotel to stay overnight, you could make this a day trip - drive down, go to the top of the tower, see the Goonies locations, and drive back in one day.  This picture is looking south from the top of the Column toward the Lewis & Clark River.  The picture at the top of this post is the view toward the Columbia River and the bridge from the top of the column.

They sell balsa wood gliders in the gift shop at the bottom of the column.  They will hand you a Sharpie marker to write your name on the glider before you throw it off the top of the column.  Granted, first you have to climb the 100+ spiral staircase steps to the top, but it was totally worth it. 

The boys conducting pre-flight checks on their gliders.  We had a blast watching our gliders soaring off into the distance.

We had lunch at this boat-turned-fish'n'chips-grill called the Bowpicker.  DANG it was good stuff.  They make fish'n'chips using fresh tuna, and it was absolutely extraordinary!  Small boats aside, there were a plethora of awesome local restaurants in Astoria serving excellent dishes using fresh local produce.  There are a couple of breweries, too, but I wasn't overly thrilled with their beer.  We went to two breweries and they both served the typical Pacific Northwest style of IPA with heavy hops.  I'm much more a fan of New England style lagers.  Oh, but the Crater Lake root beer they had on tap at the Wet Dog Cafe was delicious!

There's a maritime museum on the waterfront in Astoria - the Columbia River Maritime Museum.  I've been to a lot of small-town museums before, and 99% of them have been boring and lame - some collection of random odds and ends and local history with the name "museum" slapped on the building to try and create a tourist attraction.  Not so in this case.

This museum was actually very well done with high quality exhibits about the Graveyard of the Pacific, the local US Coast Guard rescue boats, the Columbia River pilots, the salmon fishing industry, and a wing of Navy stuff from the battleship USS OREGON and the two WWII cruisers to carry the name USS ASTORIA.  The boys loved playing in the tug boat pilot house.

We also visited Fort Clatsop National Historic Park.  After Lewis & Clark reached the Pacific coast, this is where they spent the winter before heading back east.  This is a replica of the fort that was built using the drawings from Lewis & Clark's journals.

We got there just in time for a hike led by a Park Ranger, and I continue to enjoy every chance I can get to learn from them.  Park Rangers always lead awesome tours and have so much fascinating history to teach and explain.

The boys with Sacagawea.  

One of the stories I learned from the Park Ranger was how Lewis & Clark referred to her simply as "the squaw" until one day a canoe full of their precious journals and scientific instruments capsized, and she dove in and saved the stuff.  It wasn't until she saved their gear that they bothered to learn her name and refer to her by her name in their journals.

There's a nice trolley that goes back and forth along the waterfront in Astoria, too.  It only costs a dollar to ride, and we totally got our money's worth.  I would go back and ride the trolley again more for the things I learned from the conductors than for the transportation they provided.

The conductors were full of historic trivia and stories about the area.  Other people on the trolley commented on how each of the conductors had different stories to tell and they learned something new and different each time they rode.

Overall it was a wonderful trip.  If you're looking for a weekend getaway from Bremerton, or even just a day-trip, I highly recommend checking out the view from the Astoria Column, taking a ride on the trolley, visiting the maritime museum, and doing the Chamber of Commerce's driving tour of the movie sights.