Astoria, Oregon: on the other coast and two poems

A gas fireplace is on instead of air-conditioning.  The temperature outside our room at the Cannery Pier Hotel is 57F and it is foggy,  We stayed here nineteen years ago and liked the place so much we always planned to come back.  As you can see the hotel is right on the Columbia River.  The land on the far side of the bridge is Washington state, and the notoriously dangerous mouth of the river is not far to the left of the frame.

Ocean going ships pass close to our windows and the Astoria Marina is a neighbor.

We walked over there yesterday and found few boats of interest.  This one was for all the wrong reasons.  I don’t recall ever seeing a boat so neglected or with such growth on it.  We wondered why anyone is still paying slip rent for it.  Perhaps they aren’t.

We are staying a second night here and then Carol will start to drive us slowly south along the coast.

  

I thank my friend, Tim, for a link to a 1861 Civil War poem reminiscent of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT which it preceded by more than sixty years and several wars.

And from William Butler Yeats.