Day trip to Astoria, Oregon

Our kid is really into my dvd collection from the eighties. The original Annie, Beetlejuice, Legend and The Goonies are her favorites. I must say, The Goonies is the perfect kid’s flick, a treasure hunt, pirates and Cyndi Lauper! Liv has inherited my good taste in cinema. I told her about the city where the Goonies was filmed and all about the awesome child actors. We knew we had to make a day trip to Astoria on the northern coast of Oregon to see the film locations.

We had to grab some donuts for the road since I missed out on Voodoo the day before. Blue Star Donuts is Portland’s best kept secret, well maybe not so secret. Lucky for us there was no stupid, long line or crazy expensive parking since it was in walking distance from Chris & Story’s house.

Olivia was always looking for her pal Blueberry the cat

Umm, are Toni & Candace working in there?

We will definitely try this place on our next visit

Antz attempted to eat my donut

I love phone booths!

We stopped by the kid’s shoe store Clogs N’ More. I could’ve stayed there for
hours but we had to hit the road.

Can you believe that after what happened in Santa Cruz Olivia asked if we could ride this guy?!

We took a crazy beautiful scenic highway with only one lane to get there but the view was
worth the two hours of curves and slow trucks.

We have arrived!!

This building is from the opening scene of the Goonies. We followed this film location tour

Yep, I have no shame in my cheesy tourist antics

Goonies never say die!

This goregous Queen Anne Victorian was owned by sea Captain George Flavel. It’s right across the street from the Jailhouse.

We walked around town, everything looked like a movie set

This creepy house belonged to George Conrad Flavel (those Flavel’s owned most of Astoria!)

I am all about abandoned houses with a spooky story behind them. I didn’t tell Liv the gruesome details about this house but she said it looked haunted! Someone has now bought it and plans to restore it to it’s original beauty.

Veda was like, it doesn’t scare me!

The town of Astoria is extremely charming but also has a creepy element I love.

This store wins at common sense!

Astoria-Megler Bridge connects Oregon to Washington state.

We had lunch at this restaurant on the pier over looking the harbor.

We could see Washington state from our table.

So the big attraction of Astoria is of course, the Goondocks, the house filmed in the movie. For thirty years this house has been a welcome attraction for tourists to come and take photos. Well, my bad luck curse struck and just a few days before our arrival, the homeowners decided they had enough of disrespectful folks intruding on their neighborhood. So when we drove past the house we found this…

It’s hard to feel sympathy for these guys since they knowingly bought a famous house. However, I do understand that people suck and are incredibly rude and ruin the experience for others!

I guess they got sick of people doing the truffle shuffle

Even with the tarp and signs, there were still a lot of people visiting the house.

We were bummed but we still had one more stop before we headed back to Portland, the Astoria Column. A beautiful 125 foot tower with the history of Astoria drawn into a spiral column with an observation deck. However as we approached, the tower looked different. As soon as we made it to the top of the mountain I knew it, the tower was closed for renovations! D’oh!!

We were grateful for the stunning views

Oregon is the land of millions of trees and bridges

We drove around downtown Portland looking for the famous Portland neon sign

Antz and Chris had a bro-date at a soccer game downtown. Story and I drank wine while the girls watched the Spongebob movie. It was a long but epic day.