More Exploring in Astoria, Oregon (2026)

 

Astoria is fun! This historic trade and fishing city is near the mouth of the Columbia River. Despite its proximity to the Pacific Ocean, it largely protected from ocean swells by the Columbia jetties, the ebb tide shoal, and by sand bars in the river. The town has become trendy, with great restaurants, plenty of hotels, and other tourist paraphernalia. Winter must normally be gloomy and wet, but my last two visits were sunny. In January 2026, the sun was glorious - just for me? 

 

Astoria in Mono 

 

Astoria–Megler Bridge (opened 1966) (135mm Pentax-M lens, yellow filter, tripod-mounted)

11th Street view north (135mm Pentax-M lens)

The Columbia River flows majestically past the city. It dominates the scenery and the emotional feel of the community. Houses climb the hills and have spectacular views.

This was interesting, a Quonset Hut shed where a locomotive foundation is restoring a steam locomotive. No one was at the project the day I stopped. But I want to return and see how they are progressing with their locomotive. The tracks in the picture above run into a mound that supports a parking lot, so the train group will need to lay new rail out the back. 

 I wonder if this is a surplus WWII Quonset Hut? Thousands of them were available after the war. 

 

Astoria in Color

  

 Here is the locomotive shed taken on Kodak Ektar 100 film with a Zeiss Ikon ZM camera and a 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens. 

Riverwalk mural

Bigfoot drinks coffee??

Dear Readers, you know the inevitable end to vigorous exploring and walking:  Go eat some of the best fish 'n chips I have ever tasted at Astoria Brewing Company. Plus, have some ales or beers. Mmmm....

 

The square black and white photographs are from Kodak Tri-X 400 film via my Rolleiflex 3.5E twin lens reflex camera with its 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens (5-element version). The color rectangle frames are Kodak Ektar 100 film from a Zeiss Ikon ZM rangefinder camera with 50mm and 35mm lenses. I will write more about the ZM later.

Checking out South Seattle, Washington (Sea 08)

South of Seattle's business district and south of T Mobile Park is a broad flat area that is heavily industrialized. Rail lines criss-cross the area feeding King Street station and numerous companies and warehouses. Boeing Field is to the west, a short distance from the Duwamish waterway.  Here are a few frames from March of 2025, an overcast day with soft light. 

Downtown Seattle from South Horton Street (135mm ƒ/3.5 Pentax-M lens)

The Amtrak train and the Sounder run on some of these tracks as they approach the King Street Station.

Sounder commuter train, King Street Station (Canonet GIII QL17 camera)

King Street Station clock tower

King Street Station view south

The bell tower on the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy inspired this graceful clock tower. When new in 1906, it was the tallest structure in Seattle.

View south from South Horton Street

The neighborhoods south of the city offer interesting subject matter. I want to explore some more.

Fixer-upper house, 3rd Avenue South

Guard Lion, South Bennett Street

Teriyaki, 4th Avenue South

Most of these pictures are from Kodak Portra 160 film. I used my Pentax Spotmatic-F camera with various Pentax lenses. The photos in the King Street Station are from my Canon Canonet GIII QL17 compact camera. It has a superb 6-element 40mm ƒ/1.7 lens. I scanned the negatives with a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED film scanner.

The Leica IIIG in Oregon and Eastern Washington (May 2025) (Abandoned Films 13d).

We were restless after a very wet March in Olympia. It was time for a road trip. And I wanted to exercise my Leica IIIG camera and try Kodak T400CN film again. Some of these expired rolls have looked fine, but others have deteriorated. The rolls I used in Greece looked great. I should give up on this long-expired film forever, but thought I would try one last  roll. I loaded a roll in the IIIG for some of the great expanses of Washington state east of the Cascades (plus an overnight in The Dalles in Oregon). 

The Dalles, Oregon

The Dallas (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, dark yellow filter, 1/125 ƒ/5.6)

The Dalles is a busy rail junction. But areas of this rail yard now have bare sections and unused tracks.  Still, an interesting place. The mill became a winery?

Waiting for a horse

Columbia Hills State Park

Cross the Columbia River, drive past Dallesport, and ascent a gravel road up into the Columbia Hills. In contrast to the forested mountains of the Columbia Gorge closer to Portland, these hills are in the rain shadow and are a dry terrain. The area is famous for wildflowers in early spring.

Dalles Mountain Ranch (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, yellow-green filter)

Farmland and the Palouse, Washington

Head east out of Richland, and you drive through miles and miles of beautiful rich farmland. As you continue east, you enter a land of hummocky low hills composed of loess (wind-blown silt). This is the Palouse. It encompasses parts of western Idaho and central east Washington. 

Rail junction, Roosevelt (Canon 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, orange filter, 1/60 ƒ/11)

Pasco-Kahlotus Road north of Pasco (50mm ƒ/2 Jupiter-8 lens)

Historic schoolhouse, Pasco-Kahlotus Road (Jupiter-8 lens, orange filter)

Silo, Kahlotus (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter)

Grain terminal, Oaksdale (Jupiter-8 lens, yellow filter)

The Grain Train, Oaksdale

This roll of T400CN was thin. Once again, it may have been mis-developed by Photoland at The Evergreen State College. I will not use their services ever again. This old T400CN is grainy, probably much more so than when it was fresh. But I still like the tonality, and the ICE scratch removal in my Nikon Coolscan 5000ED scanner is a great convenience. Still, it is time to stop fooling around with T400CN. As a substitute, I can try Ilford XP2, which is the only C-41 black and white film still in production. 

On the Waterfront: the Duwamish Waterway and Port of Seattle, Washington (Sea 07)

The Duwamish Waterway (river) flows into Elliot Bay along the base of the glacial drumlin that forms West Seattle. The mouth of the Waterway has been extensively modified to create the Port of Seattle. The city created Harbor Island and the other terminals by dredging and filling over the last century. This is a busy commercial harbor with container and bulk terminals. But I was surprised to find that the city has been preserving small parks and wetlands in the industrial zone. And bicycle paths let you bike along large sections of the shore, passing through or around the commercial terminals.  

March 2, 2025, was not raining, a good day to drive to the city and explore the waterfront. It was a cloudy Pacific Northwest winter day, the sky was overcast, and the light was blue.  Click any photograph to see it at 2400 pixels wide.

Port of Seattle and Harbor Island shore, view east

Seattle from Jack Block Park viewing tower

Port of Seattle view north (55mm ƒ/1.8 SMC Takumar lens)

Terminal 5 from Jack Block Park, view south (55mm ƒ/1.8 SMC Takumar lens)

Terminal 5, view south

Don't eat the oysters; Duwamish Waterway view northeast towards Seattle

Duwamish Waterway and Ash Grove Cement Seattle Plant (35mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Takumar lens)

Duwamish Waterway from Harbor Island Marina with West Seattle Bridge in distance

Rail car, West Marginal Way (35mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Takumar lens)

Work barges, Kellogg Island, from həʔapus Village Park & Shoreline Habitat (135mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens) 

Bicycle club members

I met these gents in the viewing tower at Jack Block Park. They had biked all the way from Lake Union along the Seattle waterfront. They belonged to a club and were in their 70s and 80s. Two of them had ridden through the new Rte 99 tunnel (under the waterfront) on the official opening day when it was open for bicycles.

I took these pictures with my Pentax Spotmatic F camera on Kodak Ektar 100 film, exposed at EI=64. This is a high contrast color negative film, which I find it hard to use. The scans from my Nikon Coolscan 500 ED scanner had too much blue. I used skylight filters on the lenses, but an even warmer filter, like an 81B or 81C would have helped. I corrected the colors as well as I could with the neutral grey dropper tool in Photoshop 6. 

This is Seattle article no. 07.

Trains Through Chehalis, Washington

Chehalis is the County Seat of Lewis County, Washington. It is south of Centralia and is overshadowed economically by the larger city. But Chehalis has a well-preserved downtown with late 1800s and early 20th century buildings. It was primarily a logging and railroad town in the late 1800s.  It also hosts the BNSF rail line, which cuts right through the center of town. 

Thundering through, get out of the way! (West Main Street, March 23, 2024, Panatomic-X film, 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens, yellow filter)

These enormous freight trains come thundering through town. The lights flash at the West Main Street crossing, the barrier arms swing down, and you wait. The ground starts to vibrate, and these trains roar through at 40? 50? 60 miles per hour?

Track debris

Milky Way dairy transportation company

Milky Way is the largest milk hauling company in the Pacific Northwest. One of their terminals is right next to the rail line off West Main Street.

DrinkAMugAMilkAMeal (Samsung mobile phone photo converted to black and white)

Line off Prindle Street (250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens, dark yellow filter)

Chehalis is a nice little town. The Willapa Hills bicycle trail starts here and continues west to Pe Ell. Eventually, it will be graded and paved all the way to Raymond. I need to explore Chehalis in more detail.

I took most of the photographs with a Hasselblad 501CM camera using Kodak Panatomic-X film, all frames tripod-mounted. 

Checking Out the Rails in Olympia (Oly 07)

Western Washington was once criss-crossed by hundreds of miles of rail lines. Many mountain valleys had regular or narrow gauge lines to serve the lumber industry. Many of them were abandoned in the 1970s as the lumber industry wound down, but some remnants remain. BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) operates its main line from Longview, on the Colombia River, north to Vader, Chehalis, Centralia, Tenino, East Olympia, and then on to Tacoma. This carries mostly cargo, but Amtrak uses the tracks for its passenger service. 

Olympia was once served by two railroads, the Northern Pacific and the Union Pacific. The tracks still exist, and Olympia & Belmore Railroad, Inc., operates the occasional freight cars. I sometimes hear a locomotive horn but have never see a train trundling down Jefferson Street. Amtrak's station is on the Yelm Highway in Lacey, the town southeast of Olympia. The Amtrak does not go into downtown Olympia.

7th Avenue Tunnel

The "Subway" (Fuji Acros film, Leica M2, 90mm ƒ/4 Elmar lens)

When the Northern Pacific first brought service into downtown Olympia in 1891, the tracks came down the Deschutes River valley, past the brewery complex, and along the tide flats. The track turned east and went through a tunnel to emerge near Jefferson Street. It is ugly and dirty now. A homeless man was badly injured in the tunnel years ago.

Jefferson Street

Jefferson Street view north. Where is the train? (Fuji Acros film, Pentax Spotmatic F camera, 55mm ƒ/1.8 SMC Takumar lens)

Jefferson Street view north

Steps on Jefferson Street (55mm ƒ/1.8 SMC Takumar lens)

The track in the foreground emerges from the subway (to the right out of the picture).

Jefferson Street view south

View north from Olympia Avenue NE (Kodak T400CN film, Leica IIIC camera, 5 cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens)

Rainbow Rails

Rainbow Rails view north (not very colorful any more; Kodak Tri-X, 100mm ƒ/3.5 lens)

Rainbow Rails with State Capitol in the distance and 4th Avenue bridge (Kodak Tri-X, Hasselblad, 100mm ƒ/3.5 lens)

Rainbow rails, view north, with West Bay to the right

The Rainbow Rails ran along West Bay to a wood processing facility a short distance south of Tugboat Annie's restaurant. The name came from the colorful paint that artists painted on the ties near the 4th Avenue bridge. Much of the paint has faded, so you do not see much rainbow any more. The track is a somewhat difficult walk, but you are next to West Bay and can sometimes see a freighter across the water at the Port of Olympia. Water birds occupy a pond just to the west. 

Port of Olympia

View south from Market Street NE (adjacent to the Olympia Farmers' Market)

This track comes in from the south along Jefferson Street (see above). It diverges, and two lines enter the port area (off-limits to visitors). Most of the timber now comes to the port by truck, but I hear an occasional train, usually at night. 

This ends our short railroad tour of Olympia. Later, I will post some pictures of the rail line near the unused Olympia Brewery complex in Tumwater. Thank you for riding along.