Downtown Astoria with passing ship

On this Watery Wednesday, I'm posting yet another view of the Columbia River. I've been wanting to show an overview of the town of Astoria from lower down on the hill than I showed the first time and the second time. Both of those were taken from the top of the hill. I took this photo last Saturday from a friend's back deck. They have an exceptional view not blocked by any power lines! This shows the major part of the downtown area. You can see how close the shipping channel is to the town. The moving ships have a specific lane, and then if they're dropping anchor, they'll go farther out into the river. The line in the water at the left is the flat part of the bridge to Washington. The ships pass under that bridge very close to land, then they skirt the land for a few blocks and turn toward the center of the river as you can see this one is starting to do. If you click on the image, you can see the small green and white pilot boat racing out to swap pilots for the trip upriver. I explained a lot about that in this post. One of the fun things to see in Astoria is the exchange of pilots when the boats dash out to the big ships. It usually takes place right in front of the town. I'll have some close-ups of the green pilot boats later on in the blog. We had perfectly beautiful days on Saturday and Sunday. It's been more overcast since then, but it's been burning off somewhat during most afternoons.