Today we have followed a sort of trail of locations for the film The Goonies. Two main places are Astoria and Ecola State Park.
We started in Astoria at the County Jail, well it was the County Jail until 1976, it was used as a location for the jail scene in the film and is now a movie museum, mostly about the films made in and around Astoria. These included The Goonies, Short Circuit, Kindergarden Kop, Free Willie, The Postman and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
Right across the street from the jail is the Museum featured in the beginning of the film, it is a very pretty building, well kept with beautiful gardens. in fact there are many beautiful gardens in Astoria.
From there is was coffee time, we wandered into a combined brewery and bakery, which was very pleasant.
The main event was to drive up to the Goonies House. The house is still there and welcomes people to view it from the outside, which we did. Although painted a different colour we could recognise it easily as the Goonies House, and the house next door which had a zip line into their kitchen. We took a few pics and enjoyed the view of the town, talked to a few people who also came to see the house. It was very pleasant. We could even hear the large numbers of seals down in the marina about a half a mile away.
We had planned to have our picnic at the Astoria Column, which is on a hill overlooking the town. This took us past the school used in Kindergarden Kop, all of 150 yards from the Goonies house.
The view from the hill was truly spectacular, from the top of the column (157 steps) I could see Mount St Helen to the East and Ecola SP to the south, as well as Astoria laid out below.
Once again we were amazed at the beauty of the scenery, the view over Cannon Beach to Haystack was spectacular. With the cloudless sky the sea was a really deep blue.
I tried to find the exact spot where Mikey held up the doubloon, while Sally watched a group of elk that came wandering past. I could see one island, but trees had grown to obscure the view of the second point, and the restaurant has been taken down, so not spectacularly successful there, however Sally did manage to get some good pics of the elk.
The last stop was Indian Beach, a mile up the coast. The road in the SP was wound its way through the dense rainforest so it seemed further than that. The beach is very beautiful, there were quite a few people there, some surfing.
On our way back we stopped at a Chinese restaurant and had a nice meal, Sally enjoyed it as they said you tell us what veg you want and we will cook it for you! So she had garlic shrimp with snow peas (mange tout), bok choy, carrot and spring onion.
Quite a long day but we really enjoyed following in the footsteps of The Goonies.
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