Ship, Bridge, and Cannery Pier Hotel

Astoria, Oregon ~ Photo by Amy Ryding
Please click the photo to enlarge.
Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

"Scotch Broom and Bridge" by Amy Ryding

Astoria, Oregon ~ Photo by Amy Ryding
Click on the photo for a larger view, and please check out Amy's blog: Long Beach Peninsula Photo.
Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Astoria Cruise Ship by Linda Fenton-Mendenhall

Astoria, Oregon ~ Photo by Linda Fenton-Mendenhall
Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

The Pier

 

Date: December 20, 2012 Time: 2:16 pm. A good day in Astoria.

 Visit Jessie's Blog
Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Hotel and Bridge

Astoria, Oregon ~ May 8, 2011

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Photo Contest: "Car at the Cannery Pier Hotel"

Guest Photographer: Carrie Schwartzenberger

Today's entry comes in two styles: tweaked and original. Which is your favorite?

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Gull's-Eye View of the Cannery Pier Hotel

July 6, 2010

From the 4th floor window in the Holiday Inn Express, we could look beneath the Astoria-Megler Bridge to the Cannery Pier Hotel. We had thought of staying there instead, and maybe we'll do it another time (just so you can have some new views :) You can imagine how close it is to the shipping channel, which comes very near this bank to pass under the bridge.

The triangle of gray at the lower left is the River Walk. You can see two tiny benches near the water in a small park. Beyond that is the Maritime Memorial seen in this post. The white buildings and boats are West Mooring Basin, and I'll have a better picture on another day. You are not seeing ocean. The mouth of the river is approximately on the horizon to the right. The Columbia River bends in a L shape here, and the ships coming upriver go along from right to left, then apparently go behind the Cannery Pier Hotel, then angle toward the bridge. They go out the same way, making a bend in the river and staying much nearer our Oregon side of the river. You can click on any of the keywords below to see more related images.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Hoegh Transit

The white of the ship nearly blends into the reflective gray sky on yet another rainy January day in Astoria, Oregon. I took this photo on January 10th. You hear comments around town about how one day seems almost like the next. More rain, and more rain. But I'm not ready to trade the place in yet, and I still love the rain.

There are a few things going on in this photo. Seeing the big ships come past like this makes the pulse quicken for sure. They come very near the riverbank here at the Cannery Pier Hotel before they pass beneath the big bridge and angle further toward the center of the river. The hotel is on the right, and I'll have pix of that another day. The crumbling structure you see here looks like an abandoned dock, but it's a bit more than that. The lighting was too poor to show it well, so I will save that for another day, too. It's pretty interesting to see a whole structure that once appeared to be blocks of solid ground just falling away into the river with light and water underneath it.

As you can see, the green buoy is tilted downriver, "current"ly leaning the way that the water flows, but it's not the flow of the river that determines which way the buoy leans, it's the tide. When the tide is flooding, you can see the buoys leaning upriver, against the current.

You may have to click on the photo to see the next thing. It is just to the left 0ut of sight in this picture. It's a field of old pilings where net-drying sheds used to stand in the middle of the river in the old days of horse seining - one of the colorful bits of Astoria's history.

The hills you see are in Washington.

I want to thank all of you who have visited my blogs and commented recently. I hope to make the rounds again this weekend. It's been a complex week in business and has taken most of my time. I look forward to surfing the CDP sites in a more relaxed way in the next couple of days. See you there!

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Free as a bird

That may seem like a funny title for this photo, but I don't know how else to describe the feeling I had standing on the deck of the Cannery Pier Hotel watching these two vessels pass by. The air was pleasant - not hot, not cold. The breeze was gentle and beckoning. I almost felt the way I do when I'm on the prow of a boat or ship cutting through the swells, free and without a care. I'd never been to this viewpoint before, and it was amazing. You don't need to enter the hotel to get this opportunity, just walk up to the railing beside the building, and you feel a part of the elements. What is hard to convey in any photo is the enormous size of the ship and the bridge, the feeling of vastness. Try clicking on the image, it may help. The land on the other side of the river is the state of Washington.

This is my contribution to Scenic Sunday, where you can view pictures from around the world that various individuals consider "scenic." It's an interesting concept. I love the detail photos of buildings, people, and everyday life. Maybe "scenic" lifts us a little bit outside ourselves and into another realm. That's how I felt at the moment I took this photo.

Well, I goofed up seriously here, but I've been a day early all week! Crazy. Today is Saturday, yes, it is. I'm not changing the post :)

Carnival Splendor and the Cannery Pier Hotel

Astoria is a port of call for big cruise ships as well as smaller paddlewheel boats that come down the Columbia River from Portland. The big cruise liners, of course, come the other way: in from the ocean. This ship dwarfs the four-storey Cannery Pier Hotel, built on the location of the former Union Fisherman's Cooperative Packing Company. The designer and owners went to a lot of work to attempt to preserve the look and flavor of the 1900s buildings. A boutique hotel will never feel like an authentic cannery, but I'm so glad they went to the lengths they did instead of building something without thought to history or location. We have a few of those, too! You can see an old photo of the Union Fish Cannery and a fleet of small fishing boats in a photo on the hotel's web site.

The cruise ship Carnival Splendor was getting ready to leave and go back out to sea. They stay for a day and then they're on their way. We've had quite a few cruise ships in already this year. The visitors come into town by bus or they can take the riverfront trolley or walk along the River Walk. They fill Astoria's streets, put smiles on the faces of local merchants, and generally seem to enjoy their stopover, even the ones who have been re-routed here instead of going to Mexico due to the swine flu outbreak this year. Astoria has many faces, and one of them is tourism. Many people drive to the coast from inland or come down from Seattle, and the ships help boost that bottom line for many merchants struggling with today's economy.

I took this pic at 8:18 p.m. on May 26. I love the way the water reflects light from the sky on most evenings here.

. Watery Wednesday

. ABC Wednesday, "U" is for "Union Fish Cannery"

. Outdoor Wednesday

. . . and can I include

. Window Views? There are more than I can count if you include the staterooms!

While we're at it, I'll make an additional link back to my friends at City Daily Photo, which is what got me started with this blog. It's such a great way to travel the world when I can't be doing that it real life!