CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT, WA (2024) “King Tide”

The low moan of the foghorns at night put a chill into your soul.

Columbia River Channel

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This was a last-minute trip. Two days, one night. The plan:

>Wake up early

>Drive Portland to Astoria, OR

>Drive across the Columbia River to Cape Disappointment, WA

>Check out the King Tide

>Then back to Astoria, to “robot” hotel

>Next day poke around downtown Astoria (AA meeting?)

>Drive back home that night

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A King Tide is when the tide is unusually high and—if the conditions are right—the North Pacific becomes insane: big waves, high water levels, giant logs left in the beach parking lot, huge walls of water crashing into rocks or ramparts and exploding hundreds of feet into the air.

There have been three this year. The King Tide I saw on this trip, wasn’t as raucous as the previous one. Just a month before, a King Tide had been on the local news several nights in a row. That one yielded video of tourists screaming and scattering as blasts of airborne sea water doused them on beach-town promenades. It looked like a lot of fun. But I missed it.

Unfortunately, the King Tide I did see (described herein) occurred amidst milder weather and calmer seas. Cape Disappointment, where there are always some crashing waves to look at, was not any more spectacular than it usually is.

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Rough Seas on the Columbia River Bar

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But that was okay. For me, the real reason I went on this trip was to break up the holiday season. I’ve been having trouble getting through the holidays lately. Is this a later-life problem? I have not much remaining family and no children and NO PETS, which right there is probably the real cause of my problems.

Obviously, at my age, a person should at least have some pets. I don’t, partly because I write a travel blog so I sometimes need to run off at odd times, or buy a one-way ticket to Hanoi without knowing when I’m coming back.

I’m sure I could arrange to have a dog or a cat and still live this way, but my brain has resisted figuring that out.

So I remain pet-less and thereby rely on short impromptu trips to relieve myself of the Holiday Blues.

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