Cape Disappointment State Park

Our first stop on the Seattle to California road trip was Cape Disappointment state park. This was our first view of the Pacific from the vantage points of both a pacific beach and the lighthouse along this coast. We took some small trails, enjoyed the white sandy beach and had lunch at an open meadow windy picnic place.

First question that must be in your mind – why is this called Cape Disappointment state park?

The folklore goes as follows – Though the cape was first mapped by Spanish explorer Bruno de Hezeta in 1775, its naming is credited to English Captain John Meares, who approached the cape in 1788, but could not locate the river’s entrance. Meares, therefore, named the headland Cape Disappointment.

Our kids are not big on hiking so we pick upto 3miles roundtrip distance trails and carry lots of small things to give them energy along the way. Take a look at this post to know more about snacks you can carry for vegetarian kids, on hikes.

Hikes: The two trails we did were the Lighthouse keepers loop trail (0.5miles, easy) which takes you to the North head lighthouse and Bell’s view interpretive trail (0.2miles; easy) which has lovely views of the Pacific ocean at the end. You have to reach the North head trailhead from where you can take both these trails. Both trails were the starting point for getting our kids used to hiking so that by the time we reached Yosemite, they easily managed a 5mile moderate difficulty loop trails and 2 mile strenuous trails.

After this we went to the Waikiki beach which is covered with white logs. It was a very short walk from the road and you should be able to find parking easily. We were here on a bright and sunny Sunday and still got parking so I’m guessing it shouldn’t be tricky. We tried flying our kites but the wind was pretty crazy. However, the whole beach was covered with tree logs which added to the beauty. Being a pacific beach, it was quite cold and we didn’t feel like dipping our feet in the water.

With rumbling tummies and enough action for a Sunday morning, we stopped at the Welcome center where there were lovely picnic tables and a small pathway to stump. Don’t forget the read the messages on the walkway. These are written from the Chinook people to this forest.

If you have time and feel like it, you can then drive up to the Lewis and Clark interpretation center for some more interesting information about the Cape Disappointment lighthouse.

Picnic: Managing food in national parks or state parks being vegetarian is not very easy. So we make it a point to always have enough food with us for both snacking and meals. Since we had started from home this day, we had pav bhaji (an Indian mélange of vegetables eaten with dinner rolls) and mix veg sandwiches for snacks and meals which we enjoyed in a super windy meadow picnic area.

Fee: We already have the pass for Washington state parks and thus we did not have to pay any entrance fee here. For more details, see the website

Astoria – Megler Bridge

Our next stop was crossing over from Washington to Oregon on North America’s longest truss bridge – the Astoria Megler Bridge. This bridge connects Astoria in Oregon to Megler in Washington. Historically known as the bridge to nowhere, the construction of this bridge began in Astoria which was inhabited to Megler which was not a well known city then (and now too).

The best place to take pictures of this bridge are from riverside park. However any mobile camera will not be able to take the full expanse of this bridge clearly and you may want to stick to the interesting sections.

Fort Stevens State Park and Shipwreck beach

Our only interest in the Fort Stevens state park was the shipwreck beach. It is more commonly known as the shipwreck of Peter Iradale. There is not much of a shipwreck left, but one can still see the rusted iron pillars of a part of the ship and see parts of it which are beneath the sand now.

Entrance fee: To visit this state park there is an entrance state park fee which you need to pay, however if your idea is to only enjoy the beach, like ours was, its for no charge [not that we knew it when we planned] but since we were going to be visiting other national and state parks along the way, we did not have a particular interest in the park itself.

Also with young kids, you can almost never go wrong with a water body – be it a pool, lake or a Pacific beach. It was soft black-ish sand but we still had fun dipping our feet in the water, taking a few pictures and walking around.