Today we took a drive with Leo out to the coast. Although I had been to the coast a month ago with the Spaul Family and Leo it had been a while for Emily and she had the itch for the Pacific. Instead of heading straight west we chose to pass through Longview and her old work mill at Wauna. She had received a big promotion to the head of the Camas Mill the week I got laid off which cut her drive time from 1.5hr each way to 20min each way! 
On the way out to Astoria we stopped at Jones Beach along the Columbia River which Emily had visited with co-workers from the mill. She said it would be a perfect place for me to fly the drone and she was right! Nobody was there and I had plenty of time to try out the different flight modes and fly it out over the river a bit. I had it circling Leo and Emily a bit and then gave the controls to Emily to check out as well. She’s not too good with toggle sticks like on a Sony Playstation so I kept close watch and kept her over land!
We didn’t spend much time in Astoria but did drive up to see the Astoria Column. It was a pay-to-enter site so we told the guy we just wanted to turn around as we didn’t want to spend the money. As we did I snapped a few photos of the monument before heading back down the steep hillside to town. It would have been a great place to stop and fly the Mavic but there weren’t many spots to stop on the side of the road below the top paid parking lot. The long Astoria Bridge looked tempting to try to flow the drone across as it had fully charged on our drive from the beach but I didn’t want to tempt my luck and lose the new drone in the Month of the Columbia River!
Instead, we kept driving till we got to Canon Beach and stopped at Tom’s fish and Chips to check it out. Unfortunately, everything looked fried so we just headed over to the Ecola Seafood Market as I had done last time with Tom and Eric. I ordered pretty much the same thing again - chowder, bay shrimp cocktail, and smoked oysters! Yum! While we ate at a table outside the place it began to sprinkle which made me a little nervous about bringing my drone out to Canon Beach but I did anyway hoping the wind would die down and the rain would end.
The rain did stop but the wind kept up and being a Saturday there were a ton of people on the beach. I was also within 5 miles of a heliport on the coast and with everyone around on the weekend I decided to keep it in my pocket instead of flying. We did take the time to walk with Leo all the way down the beach though to Haystack Rock, a huge sea stack along the coast. If there hadn’t been so many people it would have been an amazing place to take the drone for a spin around it! Oh well. Instead we just snapped a few pics with our phones and headed back to town, stopping for ice cream at the same candy shop as before! Fun, easy day, and Leo really enjoyed being outside with us!
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