Cape Disappointment, Washington ~ September 14, 2008
There is a lighthouse on Cape Disappointment, and I'll show it another day; I was standing near it when taking this picture. It's a different lighthouse, but not far from North Head lighthouse, which I posted a few days ago.
All of the water in the foreground is still the Columbia River. The actual mouth of the river is a ways to the right, outside the photo. You can see a white line on the right just below the mountains (especially if you enlarge the photo). Those are the breaking waves of the beach beyond South Jetty. North Jetty is farther to our right. The hump in the middle of the horizon is Saddle Mountain, the top of which I showed in this post. By the way, the name "Cape Disappointment" is obviously not derived from the view or the scenery, but because an English fur trader named Captain John Meares could not find shelter here from a storm at sea; the river was so wide, he didn't recognize it as a river, and thus found no shelter. He knew that a river was supposed to exist here, but apparently in the storm and low visibility, he concluded that it was not a waterway.
Astoria is at the far left of the photo. The Cape Disappointment link above includes an image identifying various places in this scene and some that you can't see here. It's worth a look.
4 comments:
I've always wondered about the "Disappointment" connection. Mostly because I am NEVER disappointed when I visit there!!! :=} I haven't been there in a while ... sigh. I miss the ocean.
Clytie has a point here, it's difficult to get dusappointed by thie view...
Certainly no disappointment in today's view.
Now I know for sure it was not the view that gave the lighthouse its name. :-)
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