BEST OF THE OREGON COAST | Astoria to California | van life vlog

During this week's video you'll get to travel down the entire Oregon coast with us. We're going to stop by Astoria for a Goonies tour. Shout out to all the 80s kids who are a fan of the movie. Visit some historical landmarks, explore some pretty epic beaches, and meet some sea lions in Newport before we finally hit the border of California. Good morning beautiful people. We are just getting the van all ready to go, putting away all our laundry, cleaning up, doing all those morning time things, getting ready to head out to Astoria today, which is pretty cool. It's also Goonie land pretty much is what I think of it as. So I'm excited to bring you along for the adventure. So yeah, as Crystal was saying, we are in Portland. Came down here to visit our cat who ended up not liking van life. So we like to pop into Portland every once in a while to check him out, see how he's doing. Tommy, everybody wants to see you. You're so popular. And also I met a buddy down here who knows a thing or two about electric and said that my Bluetooth app that monitors the charge of the batteries for our van was not synchronized with the actual batteries. And so when the app said it was at 100% we weren't really at 100%. So we were underpowered for a long time now. So I got that changed. So hopefully that's all going to work, but we'll just have to see how this next week unfolds and see what happens. Astoria actually sits on the Columbia river. There's a bunch of, I think sea lions down there. You can totally hear them. So next up we're doing some Goonies exploring. If you're a child of the eighties or nineties, you'll definitely know the Goonies. If you haven't seen it, then you definitely need to watch it. And so now we're going to go check out the house is up next and then the jail and then maybe some other steps. To the Goonies house. I kind of want to watch that today. We just literally went to the drive-in like two months ago. We fell asleep though. We didn't even watch the whole thing. Yeah. Something to know if you come to Astoria is that just to respect the owner, they ask that you park a ways away, then walk up, don't go into their driveway or anything like that. Got to walk up this little driveway here. So the new owner recently remodeled. So there's a donation box so you can donate to the remodel, which is pretty cool. Keep the house alive. Keep the Goonies alive. Yeah. The opening scene of Goonies was the brothers escaping out of jail. At least one of the brothers. So next up, we're going to go visit the jail. If you remember the Goonies, the Fratellis escaped from the County jail, which is right back here. So this is 1985. It is also right across from the Flable or Flabble house. I'm probably totally mispronouncing that museum, which Mr. Walsh actually worked at in the movie. And it is a museum in real life. Look at these views up here. We just got here to the beautiful Astoria column, which I think is one of the tallest points in Astoria. The Astoria column is 125 feet tall and it was built in 1926. And if you look closely on the column, you can see like artwork of Astoria's history. We can't actually go up the tower right now because of COVID. They have it closed off. However, if we did go up the tower, we would get a beautiful panoramic view of the whole entire city and the Columbia river. But now it's a pandemic view, not a panoramic view. Up here on the hill where the Astoria column is, there's a bunch of grass and picnic tables. I think this would be an awesome date spot. Don't you think B? If you are a homeowner or you love working on your house, Astoria is also home to a ton of antique stores. There's one in particular that we really love and that is Vintage Hardware. It's right on the Columbia river downtown. So it's a cool little place to do some shopping for antiques Something to know if you're a van lifers about coming to Astoria is that there really is no specific parking that we found on all the apps that we use. And a lot of the places that people have used have been marked as closed. So it seems like it's a really picky area to even do stealth camping at. And one of the issues with that is that everything is on a hill. So you're not really going to get a whole lot of level ground in Astoria. So something to think about if you come here. So we're going to show you where we park later tonight. So I think we've hit the Astoria column. Yeah. We've done quite a few of the goonies places. We're going to pick some of it up tomorrow though. Now where are we off to? We're gonna go to the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. So we just arrived at Fort Clatsop which is located in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. It's about 15 minutes outside of downtown Astoria. Some cool things to know about Astoria and Fort Clatsop is that Astoria was actually the first American settlement west of the Rockies in the early 1800s. So Lewis and Clark spent a long cold winter. They're expecting a ship to that never came. So they had to stay here and this is where they lived. So cool. Yeah. And this was actually a rebuild of the original Fort Clatsop. Yeah. Yeah. It's a rebuild. Rebuilt. Did a really good job. It looks just like the old. Yeah. When I was here, So this fort really established Astoria as a port and a place for fur trading and also fishing. It really put Astoria on the map and really allowed for a lot of exploration on the rest of the continent. Little cracks in there. The Fort Clatsop was built because they had to stay here for the winter. And then during their first expedition, when they first saw the Pacific ocean. Yeah. And then a fort called Fort Astor, 11 to 12 years later, that's the fort that established the fur trading for this area. Astoria was also first city in Oregon. Yes. First city in Oregon. So we headed down south to Seaside, Oregon, which is another cool little city, little town. It's just got a great beach. So it's pretty awesome. Really any time of year, but I always think of it as a place for bumper cars, biking, saltwater taffy, and just like hanging out. It's a real weekend place for a lot of different families to come down here. It can get really crowded in the summer. If you've been following us, you know that we haven't been able to cook for some time. So we're going to try it right now and see what happens. So far so good. No alarms going off back here. That's good. I think we're okay. We'll see what happens. I believe. So a little helpful thing that we actually have on the bottom of our jars is handy little label maker. That's what it's called. So these are a big help. Cause I would not probably have memorized the herbs that we have in here. So Crystal just finished cooking dinner. Everything works. The food processor works. The induction burner works. We made hot food in a very long time. It's been weeks. I think a long time. What'd you make? Spanish rice, but it's made with cauliflower rice instead, some guac. And then I made a raw vegan, kind of like taco meat. I don't really like that saying. And then we have some sprouts, some salads, some radishes. It's kind of a nice healthy mix for today. Time to eat. Let's do it. So successful meal. We're going to go ahead, watch the Mandalorian for the night. Super psyched about that show. Baby Otis, what's up? And I think we have one last stop on our Goonies tour that we're going to show you tomorrow. So see you then. Night. Hey, good morning. Just waking up, getting our day going. Spent the night in Seaside, Oregon, right on the ocean. Very nice stealth parking spot. It's very nice to wake up to the ocean. We're going to get our day going. Now we were off to show you one more of the Goonies sites on our tour. Last stop on this Goonies tour in Astoria area is actually Cannon Beach, which is Haystack Rock. And this was in the opening scene of Goonies. And from what I remember, they had, I believe Mikey had that skeleton key and it helped them point out where the entrance, where they started basically their journey was, if you remember it. So watch the Goonies. Whoa, it's coming. It's coming quick. Wow, this water is unpredictable. You really got to watch your back. What do you feel like doing now? I think just hanging out in the van for the evening, being chill, reading a book and cuddling up. I don't really feel like doing so much. All right. Sounds good to me. I don't feel like driving anymore today. Yeah. Spend the night in Cannon Beach. Yeah. And then explore Cannon Beach tomorrow. Show you all around. So we'll see you in the morning. See you tomorrow. Good morning, everyone. Brian and I had a little run in with the law last night. This was the first time that we've parked and stealth camped and had an officer actually come and knock on the door. We've had that happen once with port security before. And one time somebody actually tried to break into our van, but this time it was actually a law officer. And he basically told us that there was no camping whatsoever in Cannon Beach. And we had to go back to Seaside to camp, but we're back in Cannon Beach this morning because we want to look around this really cool town. But just an FYI, if you're a van lifer, there's absolutely no camping in this area. Unless you want to pay for it. There's a couple like RV parks and stuff, but that was really late at night. So we're going to go hit Cannon Beach up right now. Just take a look around at all the shops, kind of see what Cannon Beach is all about besides the beach. You want some coffee then? We're going to get some coffee upstairs. Oh, I'm not getting coffee. I don't drink coffee. Just to be clear. It's a cute little town. I've been trying to get him to do an escape room. I think we finally found some coffee for me. It's closed right now for obvious reasons, but let's check it over here. Okay. It's a cute, definitely very cute and involved coastal towns I think we've seen in Oregon. It's really nice. Yeah, it's really nice. So I got this coffee at the bakery, not knowing there was an actual coffee shop around the corner. So I'm going to do a little taste test. This is from the bakery. Not bad. This one's better. Insomnia. Insomnia Coffee Company. Who's the winner? Right across from this coffee shop is this. Oh, the water comes right up here. Wow. Yeah, this is cool. Want to head down to, head south now? Go to Depot Bay? Yeah, we're going to go look for whales. Yeah, we're going to try to see if we can see whales from the actual, just on the street. You just park your car, you look out, you can see whales. Just depends what time of year you go. I think migration, like they should be there right now, supposedly. I hope we get to show you some whales. Just pulled up to a Depot Bay here on the Oregon coast. For those of you who don't know, Depot Bay is pretty well known for whale watching, like literally pulling over on the side of the road and just looking out and seeing whales. I'm not quite sure if this is the time of year, we're going to find out, but we're going to go explore. So Depot Bay is actually a huge whale watching city. Today, it's actually really stormy, so we're probably not going to see any whales, but during the winter time from mid-December through the end of January, there's 20,000 whales that migrate through this area. Because of the winter storm, they're generally not going to come close to the shore, but during the summer, some of the whales will actually feed here and will be really close to shore. Brian and I have gotten to see that, I think it was a couple of years ago when we first came here, and there were whales all over, gray whales and orcas that were all super close to the shore. There is also a whale watching center. It's a little further down that way. That's a great place to go. They will tell you what whales they've seen during the today and the past week. It has all the different stats for it. We're going to keep going to Newport so we can see some seals. So we're just going to get out of here, a quick little stop in Depot Bay, but we really wanted to show you because it's such a cool area. Do you really like this bridge? I do. We're driving and Brian's like, just try to get the shot of this bridge. This bridge, every time we come here, just get a shot of this bridge. Hello, good morning. We stayed the night at a KOA in Port Orford, Oregon last night. Weather was crazy bad and our batteries were pretty low. We couldn't charge them and we didn't want to drive to charge them. So we went to a KOA and plugged in, but we're getting ready to head out. We are just a few hours away from Crescent City and we're going to finish our last leg of the Oregon coast. We'll see you there. So we're on our last stretch of coast in Southern Oregon and we're not quite sure what towns are in between here. We're just going to see what we find, but this is absolutely gorgeous. The one time I didn't wear my hiking shoes. This actually reminds me of Scotland or Ireland. I've never been to either, but this is my assumption of what they're like. So that was a sweet little walk that we had back ways and we jumped in the car and have just been driving further down the 101. There's not a whole lot of cities or towns that we've really found on this Southern part of the Oregon coast. Just a lot of little pullouts with a lot of different areas to check out the ocean and water. We're nearing California here pretty soon, but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of stops left. Just really awesome views like this one. We have officially made it to Brookings, which is the last city before California. We're about 15 minutes from the checkpoint to get into California. So we have officially made it all the way down the Oregon coast on the 101. An awesome drive. Definitely like the first part going through Goonies territory, Astoria, all the way down. It's been absolutely gorgeous. It's been awesome for the viewpoints, but we're gonna go ahead and wrap up this video and then we're gonna see you all next week as we enter California. If you like what you've seen today, give us a like and please subscribe to our YouTube channel, and we will see you next week. Friday and I are gonna do a truffle shuffle competition. I think she won.