Lower Columbia River Trip - Day 3

The freighter offshore has a containment boom being put in place around it. I hope this is just a precautionary measure, because we’ll be on the water within the hour. This morning’s been a mixed bag. It started with a bit of rain, but now the sun’s coming out and I’m down to just my fleece. We sit in camp watching the sun on the water, then start packing everything up. Brief stop just downstream at Columbia Lowlands Park to refill on water. It wasn’t until coming back to the boats that we saw the sign say no access from the river. Oops. Downstream the view becomes more rural as the river broadens and sweeps northward. We amuse ourselves by slaloming through moored freighters, then detour into Caterpillar Slough. A collection of funky houseboats is around the corner. They run the range from half-sunk to a neatly painted gingerbread lookalike called the Chocolate Mint. Another is for sale for 65K, but I can’t help wonder how long the wood pontoons will keep it afloat. At the end of the slough we pass an a bald eagle sitting in a tree, and seals fishing off the tip of Caterpillar Island. We continue downstream under clearing skies, enjoying the sweeping views. After a sunny lunch, we slip into Bachelor Slough. It’s another river entirely, only a couple boat lengths wide, and barely deep enough to float in spots. Quite a change from the water highway we’ve been on. Slipping out of the slough, we hit the Lewis River confluence on our right, and Warrior Point on our left, with a great view of the town of Saint Helens downstream. We stop on the beach at the Warrior Rock Lighthouse for a stretch, then head down past Saint Helens and Sand Island. Although the thought of an early stop at the campgrounds of Sand Island is tempting, we decide to make a few more miles to Goat Island. Unfortunately the southern end of the island was fairly trashy, including a wide selection of flip flops (I don’t know it at the time, but this will start a trend for many of our stops). We try to make the best of it, neither of us are really stoked on the sites, and keep poking around. We end up sliding around the corner to a nice spot on the east side, just downstream of a couple of fishing shacks. After setting up camp I wonder over to the nearest one. It’s nicely kept up, with blankets covering the door, a stack of chairs, and other essentials. A calendar on the wall is set to the right month, so I wonder over for a closer look, and find notes for Saturday night - “Denny killed everyone, crazy 85". Either we missed a heck of a party, or a few fisherman were missing come Sunday morning.....back down the beach Dainella’s whipping up dinner. We discover pudding doesn’t set up right without milk, but the gooey bag of chocolate goodness we get instead still tastes pretty darn good. Maybe it’s just the 24 miles we covered, but both of us keep going back for more. Afterwards, we sit around a roaring drifwood campfire, and watch Orion, the Big Dipper, and Pleiades in the night sky.


Next up - Indiana Dai & the Tower of Doom