Thursday, August 16, 2007 – After breakfast we traveled west on I-84 and then Hwy 30 to Astoria, Oregon. We stopped briefly at Fred Meyer near the giant, red World Peace Candle in Scappoose, Oregon.
According to the Wikipedia, President Nixon came to Scappoose in 1970 to light the "Peace Candle." The event took place on what was previously a farm owned by the Scharf family. Brocks bought the property and built a candle factory there which was quite successful. As a way of drawing attention to their enterprise, they ran a natural gas line up through the center of an existing silo on the property and put thousands of gallons of wax on the outside of the silo. President Nixon used his famous quote, "There shall be peace in our time," as he lit the flow of natural gas. A freak gust of wind blew the flame back towards the president and his eyebrows were partially singed. He continued undaunted with the ceremony. Ironically, the candle was intended to be "eternal", but when the natural gas bills started to come in, the candle became "terminal".
We had lunch at Stephanie’s Cabin at noon in Astoria. We traveled across the 4.1 mile bridge to Cape Disappointment, stopping at Waikiki Beach. I photographed the historical signboards. We left for Portland, Oregon about 4:30pm. We traveled east on Hwy 30 and crossed the Longview/Kelso Bridge. We passed Kalama Narrows that caused the Missoula floodwaters to back up to present day Eugene. We had a Farewell Dinner at the hotel in downtown Portland.
1 comment:
Hello Rose Red,
I read your post and the picture of the lighthouse on the cape is from the same vantage point of a photo that I took for a waymark in 2005. I think I used it for the default photo. Lovely area and it sounds like your tour was wealth of information.
Have a good day.
TheBeanTeam
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