A Day Date at the Coast (Part 2)

...and the date continues!  After lunch we headed out towards Fort Stevens, but not before stopping near the Astoria-Megler Bridge for a few photos.

The 4-mile long bridge, built in 1966, is the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.  It spans the Columbia River from Washington to Oregon, near the mouth of the river.

For a January afternoon in Astoria, the weather was actually pretty decent.  It didn't rain at all accept for a little while shortly after we got to the beach.

Ready for another history lesson?  Fort Stevens.  An active military reservation from 1863-1947, it was the only military base on the continental U.S. to be fired upon during WWII.  It is now a state park, with ocean access, trails, camping, and military reenactments.

These last 5 pictures are kind of strange.  Here's why - they all appear to have been converted to B&W (and considering I love black and white, that would be a valid assumption).  However - none of these have had any processing done.  And it wasn't even intentional.  There were a lot of clouds in the sky, but the sun was amongst them and was actually really bright.  Apparently my camera was having a hard time processing the strange lighting and when I thought I had correctly adjusted everything, I was apparently way off.  But it is kind of cool how they turned out.

On the shores of Fort Stevens sits this carcass of the Peter Iredale.  The ship ran ashore here more than 100 years ago and has slowly been eaten away by the salt water ever since.  I hadn't been to this part of the park for about 12 years.  I was surprised how much of the shipwreck has gone away since then.

It really was a beautiful afternoon at the coast, when it wasn't raining.  More to come...tomorrow!