Sunday 15th March

Back to the Wet Dog for breakfast to stoke us up for our little Goonies tour! We went to the visitors centre to see if there might be a self-guided tour or any information on the locations, but it was closed as it was Sunday. Feeling quite gutted about this as we peered through the window at the Goonies paraphernalia, and then the owner of the place drove in at just the right moment for us to catch him. Another very helpful and friendly guy, he told us plenty about the surounding area and gave us free Goonies stickers! First stop was the Flavel House Museum and the Clatsop County Jail, virtually next door to each other. The Museum is the place where Mikey’s Dad works, you see him waving from the steps as the kids cycle past. The jail is in the first scene of the film, when the Fratellis break out. It’s a free-standing building and a lot smaller than it looks in the film. We then went to the Goonies jewel of Astoria, the house where the boys lived. Very recognisable from the film, was very strange to be there and quite emotional for a film geek. Plenty of photos taken, obviously.
We then headed out of Astoria to Ecola State Park, a great place to go aside from the Goonies connection. It overlooks Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock, which Mikey lines up in the doubloon with the restaurant and the lighthouse. The restaurant was built specially for the film, but you can see where it would have been near the picnicing area of the park. Also in the film is the winding entrance to the park, you see the kids riding their bikes along there and looking at Haystack Rock through the trees. We went on to Cannon Beach to see Haystack Rock up close, very impressive.
We then travelled back inland to Portland, our second majot city stop. We had booked a private room in a hostel earlier in the day which made things nice and easy. As soon as we got there we heard other English voices which we found a bit depressing, we were more interested in hanging out with locals rather than other travellers! Portland seemed a nice enough city, although it had a lot to live up to after Seattle. First place we went to was the Rock Bottom Bar & Brewery, we were actually a bit disappointed with the beer there considering Portland has more microbreweries than any other US city, but the jambalaya, enchiladas and chocolate cheescake more than made up for it. We met a couple of people there who took us to a place called Dante’s which had some sort of cabaret night with a guy breathing fire! When we came out of the club there was a guy doing some astounding drumming on the bottom of some tubs and a dog bowl, completely blew us away! It was a fun first night in the city, which seemed like a friendly and manageable place.