Ocian in View! O! the joy!

I grew up in a state whose history is not that interesting to me. Moreover, I grew up in the top corner of  a state that takes 18 hours by car to get from one side to the other, and in a family that took... interesting vacations. I've seen the Anderson Pea Soup Factory, and stayed at the truck stop in the olive capitol of California, but have never been to Disneyland (which is 1000 percent fine with me.) Most of the history that interests me, now and as a kid, happened on the East coast, so I've never been fortunate enough to really get 'close' to the history that I'm passionate about.

THAT ALL CHANGED, FOLKS.

My parents came up for a brief visit this past Memorial Day, and on Sunday we drove up to Astoria OR and visited Fort Clatsop, the area where Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery stayed the winter in 1805/6. I've wanted to visit for years, but it's never actually something I've been able to do, but I actually got time off this visit around so we went for it. It's not that far away- for some reason I thought it was a lot farther than it is from Portland to Astoria.



The site, though not the exact original location of the Fort, is most likely very close to where the original fort was constructed in about three weeks in late 1805 when the Corps arrived. Apparently it was first constructed in the mid-1950, but burned down in 2005, then rebuilt with more technologically accurate details taken from William Clark's journal specifications.

The fort itself is tiny- much smaller than I had expected. There were four or so rooms with bunk-style beds to fit everyone on one side, plus larger rooms for the Captains and Sacagawea and her baby/husband on the opposite.



Appropriately, it was raining. During summer months, I think they have reenactors, which is cool, but most importantly, I got to meet THE SEAMAN DOG REENACTOR.

I had to surreptitiously take a blurry photo of him hanging out in the gift shop because there were damn kids everywhere and I had to be the adult and not shove them out of the way.  My crappy photo makes him look small, but he was a huge Newfoundland dog that easily came up to my hip when he was standing.

My one regret is that I didn't think to bring my Stuffie Billy Clark! Argh! He's been photographed all over the city but this would have been his moment!


Aside from Fort Clatsop, the only other history site I've been to that wasn't Humboldt County history was the Carmel Mission in the Bay Area, which is very beautiful, but very depressing. I'm always slightly jealous of people who I know that are interested in a particular part of history and live in the area where it actually happened! It was very exciting to get to visit an area where the people I am interested in actually lived!