Seattle To Astoria

It was finally time for our road trip. This meant a trip back to the airport to pick up our hire car. At only $3 per person, our choice of transport for the light rail to Seattle Tacoma Airport. The trains came every 6 minutes and our trip only took about 30 minutes. At the airport station, it was a relatively quick and easy walk to where the car rental shuttles pick up was. The shuttle took us from the airport to a huge multi storey custom made building where all the car rental companies were. We picked up our GMC Yukon, our “Chevrolet Suburban equivalent”, with relative ease.

The car rental building looked almost futuristic!

Traffic back to our hotel in Seattle was thankfully light despite being peak hour on a Monday. Being Martin Luther King day, we assumed the public holiday was the reason for our easy drive? We picked up the rest of the family and piled our suitcases in before speeding north toward the Boeingfactory. Unfortunately we did not make the 930 am tour that we wanted to go on. That meant having to wait until 11 am. The surrounds of the Boeing factory was spectacular with the mountains providing the stunning backdrop. We tried to pick the names of the various peaks but failed miserably even with the help of the boards with a silhouette of the mountains and their names on it. The main factory building was massive, and the guide cited it as the biggest building in the world by volume. Disneyland could fit into with space to spare! We were shown 747, 767 and 787s on the assembly lines as well as completed planes which were being tested post assembly. The 90 minutes went by very quickly. A quick word warning, they did not allow bags of any sort nor cameras or mobile phones but there were free lockers available onsite. There were also no toilet facilities on the tour route! The guide did give everyone a last chance to visit the restrooms before the tour started.

Boeing tour!

We had to keep moving as we had a 3.5 hour drive to Astoria. The fast food chain that received the honours of being our lunch venue was Taco Bells. This was my very first visit! I’m not sure I would come back but Elliot thought his Dorito Locos tacos was superb. Traffic at 1 pm for some reason was worse than traffic at 830 am. After getting through the rather stressful 6 lane freeway driving, we watched with relief as the lanes dwindled to 5, 3, then 2 and finally 1. We crossed the Columbia River leaving Washington State to enter Oregon and before long we had reached our destination of Astoria.

By this time, it was dark and we could not see much. We got ourselves some delicious clam chowder and peanut butter pie at Mo’s Chowders before calling it a day.

That's a big car

I guess logging was an important part of the area!

Crossing the Columbia River into Oregon and sales tax free territory!

Clam chowder time

Peanut butter pie. Yum!!