Fort Clatsop (Seaside, OR) Adventure

 We have been reading a biography about Meriwether Lewis and knowing that we live close-ish to some historical sites along the Lewis and Clark trail, I decided to look it up and plan a field trip. There are several places we could visit, but I decided on Fort Clatsop because it's a National Park and Alex has a 4th-grade National Parks pass this year that would make it free for our whole family to visit. We had never been there either. It's the fort that Lewis and Clark built and stayed at for a winter when they finally arrived at the Pacific Ocean. 

Our first stop was inside at the visitors center. Inside the visitors center, they have exhibits to see that tell some of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and what happened at Fort Clatsop.

Alex wanted me to get pictures of the models of the Fort, which we hadn't actually seen yet. He was so excited when he learned that the one above was a scaled-down model of the replica we were about to go outside and see. The fort pictured below is a model of the winter fort in North Dakota. Looks very similar!

The statue pictured below is a commemoration of Lewis and Clark arriving at the Pacific Ocean. 

An exhibit of some of the rifles and pistols that Lewis and Clark carried with them. Alex liked this exhibit, he thought it was neat how different they looked back then.

He was explaining to me how the ammunition works.

The Lewis and Clark expedition was called the "Corps of Discovery." Did you know that there were more men than just Lewis and Clark on the expedition, and they comprised the "Corps of Discovery" with Lewis and Clark being co-leaders. That was new information for me in our biography reading!

The canoe was an important part of the expedition as was the Keel boat. They used different boats for different parts of the trip, but they landed with a canoe when they got to Fort Clatsop.

Another view of the canoe.

The story diorama pictured below: They set out to get some blubber when they heard there may possibly be a beached whale. They used whale blubber for burning in their lanterns. I can't remember exactly what they were doing in this scene, but they were talking with the local Native Americans about getting the blubber. I think they were negotiating a trade for some blubber.

Some Native American artifacts. I can't remember what this is, but it looked really neat. I really should have gotten pictures of the things explaining what some of these things were. I read them while there, but I've forgotten specifics, and I don't want to get it wrong.

After we were done exploring the inside exhibits, we headed outside to check out the actual fort. It was a nice trail all around with beautiful trees and some statues and signs to read about things that Lewis and Clark studied or did in that area. Alex was our fearless leader.

Here we are! The entrance to Fort Clatsop. These were pretty much the living quarters for all the men in the corps of discovery.

There were several rooms to look into.

Most of them had bunk beds like this one. Some had just one bigger bed. Probably the private quarters for Lewis or Clark. We didn't listen to the audio tour like we probably should have, so we didn't know exactly what each room's purpose was.

We guessed this was where they probably stored their food.

After we finished looking at the wooden structure we walked along the trail to see where they might have collected their water, about where they might have landed the canoe, and followed the trail a little way that goes all the way to the beach (about 6 miles). We didn't go very far because we were not prepared for a long hike, but it would be fun to do sometime! Alex and dad doing an air fist bump. Some of these trees were really big.

A family picture done twice to get the one taking the picture in the shot too. There were not a lot of people around. We maybe passed one or two families on the trail.

This is the boardwalk (pictured below) that leads out to the point where they think Lewis and Clark's company might have collected their water.

Alex was having such a good time, and he was so happy to be in every picture because no one else wanted to.

After we walked the trail we ended up back at the visitors center. Alex really wanted to go check out the store, so we did. We picked up a few cool things for our Lewis and Clark display.

That wraps up the Fort Clatsop portion of our adventure. After we were done there we headed to Seaside to see the beach/downtown area. It was such a beautiful windy day.

Going out to play on the beach looked so fun for this guy. He wanted to go swing on the swingset that was out there, but when we tried they got snatched up by some kids that were faster in the sand than we were. Oh well, we'll try another day. We decided to walk around the town/shopping area since we didn't really have stuff to play in the sand.

There were so many fun things to see as we walked around. This is a river. Alex was watching some people on a paddle boat.

After walking around for a while and seeing so many people having fun riding around on these surrey bikes, we decided we wanted to try it out too. We stopped in at 2 stores and neither had one big enough for 6 people at the time, but we could come back in an hour (because it's a 1-hour rental) and one should be back by then. We weren't sure if we wanted to wait around an hour, so we just walked around some more, and then we'd probably just head home. Well, as we were walking back to our car we passed one of the bike rental places and they had a 6 person surrey sitting there. We all decided we still wanted to do it even though we were a little tired already from walking around so long. I'm so glad we did it, it was a blast. While we loaded up the rental people gave us some rules, and we were off!

The interesting thing about these is that you have to pedal at the same time as everyone else. This was quite comical at times, but we were able to get it down. It was also very tiring!

We switched seats around a few times. I ended up being in the seat that the pedal kept falling off, so we had to stop and go back and pick that up and try to reattach it several times. On top of that, while I was distracted with the pedal falling off, I lost both my phone and my camera lens cap, but I didn't realize it until we were way down the road. We turned around, and right after we turned around and started heading back we had to stop again for the pedal. It was about this time I realized that my phone was missing. I looked down the road and I could see something sitting right in the middle of the street. It was my phone, and I thought for sure someone had run it over. There was even a car coming right as I was running to the phone to pick it up. Thankfully that car straddled the phone and I didn't have to witness it being run over. I picked up the phone to discover that the only thing that was broken was one spot on my case and the protective glass cover. Not even the screen was broken! I was thrilled and so thankful. Later I did discover that the camera was broken though. It landed just right to make something dislodge inside where the camera is, so I cannot take pictures with it, but at least I have a phone! Oh and as they were biking to me where I was with the phone and I was running back to the bike, Michele noticed the lens cap a little bit past where I dropped the phone. It was pretty comical to hear him say to one of the kids "go pick up mom's lens cap over there." I couldn't believe I lost both around the same time. 

We biked over to the roundabout at the end of the main drive where it gets to the beach and saw/pointed out to the kids the hotel we stayed at over 20 years ago for our honeymoon. They thought that was cool, and not very far away. Yep, we didn't go far for our honeymoon, but we had a great time touring the Oregon coast.

As we went around the roundabout I snapped a picture of the Seaside Oregon sign, and look who's behind it! A statue of Lewis and Clark! I didn't even realize it was there until we were making our way around it on the bike.

This is where we stopped at one point to rest for a bit. I think this is the road I lost my phone on.

After our bike ride, we decided to load up and go home because it's about a 2-hour drive from where we live and we didn't want to get home too late. 

I was excited to make a display with all of our treasures from the trip and things I've been collecting. The store had some really neat items. We came home with a coloring book, a map with an article written on really old paper, a list of the names of all the men that were part of the corps of discovery, a little leather sachel, and a squished penny that has Lewis and Clark on it. 

What a fun and memorable trip. I love making books and things we're learning about come to life, and this really did it for Alex. He made a lot of connections to what we are reading for school. We also had some fun too!