Fort Clatsop

Wow!  What a day!  It feels like we went to so many different places today that were important to Lewis and Clark.  Our first stop was literally right outside the balcony of our room last night.  The salt works they built during the winter at Fort Clatsop was right down the street from where we stayed on the ocean.  

Five men worked here through the winter and generated 28 gallons of salt for the return trip.

Next, we went to Ecola State Park to view the area where Lewis and Clark searched for a beached whale they had been told of.  We spent quite a while hiking the trails and across the beach.  This park is stunning!  It was a normal northwest Pacific coast day - cloudy and wet.  However, this is a place where you ignore the weather and enjoy the beauty of the beach.

The blue skies are gone but it is still beautiful.

We loved the rock with the hole in it.

Haystack Rock

Next we went to Fort Clatsop.  Needless to say, this was an important stop for us.  After spending our summer following the trail it felt wonderful to at last reach their final destination.  The interpretive center there is as nice as all the others and they have a re-creation of the fort built on Clark's drawings.  There were only 6 rooms in the fort and they built it in 18 days - hard labor!  The soldiers shared 3 rooms, Lewis and Clark shared a room, Charbonneau and his family shared a room and the last room was for their supplies.

Fort Clatsop

Our final stop of the day was Cape Dissappointment and the Interpretive Center there.  It is located on the tip of Washington State where the Columbia River empties into the Pacific Ocean.  Once again there were beautiful views.  Lewis and Clark spent 10 days here and considered it the official end of their voyage.  This is the place where the first woman and slave in American history were given the opportunity to vote - to decide where their winter camp would be built.  After a decision was made they moved to the south side of the river to build Fort Clatsop.

The final interpretive center of our visit!

We are in Portland tonight and will be staying here until our flight home Sunday morning.  Tomorrow we are taking a train ride to Mt. Hood.