Oregon Coast Full Day Tour Astoria Goonies House and Cannon Beach

What's Included

Meeting and pickup

Itinerary

• 1
  Goonies House

  The day starts where a whole generation's idea of treasure hunting started. This white Victorian on a bluff above the Columbia River is the Walsh house from the 1985 film The Goonies. It is a private residence, so we view and photograph it from the public street, keep voices down and stay off the driveway. The current owners are fans who restored the exterior to its 1985 appearance. Your guide will point out the porch, the attic window and the driveway the kids pedal down at the start of the chase.

  10 minutes • Admission ticket free
• 2
  Hanthorn Cannery Museum

  Step into Astoria’s waterfront history at Pier 39, where travelers can explore the Hanthorn Cannery Museum, home to preserved cannery equipment, vintage labels, and photographs that tell the story of the workers who built the town. Stroll along the boardwalk, enjoy river views, visit Rogue Ales’ public house, spot a working tugboat, and listen for the resident sea lions barking beneath the pier.

  20 minutes • Admission ticket free
• 3
  Astoria

  Pigeon Steps is a charming historic staircase overlooking Astoria, Oregon. Climb the steps for a beautiful panoramic view of the city, Columbia River, and surrounding mountains. It’s a peaceful spot for photos and a memorable stop while exploring Astoria.

  10 minutes • Admission ticket free
• 4
  Fort Stevens State Park

  Concrete, moss and empty gun emplacements in a spruce forest. Fort Stevens guarded the mouth of the Columbia from the Civil War until 1947, and Battery Russell is the part you can walk straight into: stairwells, magazines, observation posts and gun wells, all open and all quiet. On the night of 21 June 1942 the Japanese submarine I-25 surfaced offshore and fired seventeen shells at this battery, making Fort Stevens the only mainland United States military installation shelled by an enemy during the Second World War. The shells fell into sand and scrub; the confirmed casualties were a power line and a baseball backstop. Bring a phone light for the darker passages.

  30 minutes • Admission ticket included
• 5
  Peter Iredale Ship Wreck

  The most photographed shipwreck on the West Coast, and the easiest to reach: the ribs of the Peter Iredale sit right out on the open beach, where you can walk up and put a hand on them. She was a four-masted steel barque, 285 feet long, built in Maryport, England in 1890 and driven ashore here on 25 October 1906 by a sudden southeasterly gale on a high tide. Every crew member survived. What is left is a rust-red skeleton the tide fills and empties twice a day. At low water you can walk the full circle around her with the wreck doubled in the wet sand.

  25 minutes • Admission ticket included
• 6
  Indian Beach

  For anyone who read the books, this is the one. Indian Beach, inside Ecola State Park, stood in for First Beach at La Push in the 2008 Twilight film: the driftwood shore where Bella walks with Jacob and first hears the Quileute legend that turns the whole story. The production had planned to shoot at the real La Push in Washington and moved here because it was closer to the rest of the Oregon schedule. It earns the stop anyway: a small cove of dark sand held between two headlands, surf breaking over black basalt, Sitka spruce running down to the tideline. Point Break was shot here too. Bring a jacket, it is colder and windier than Cannon Beach.

  30 minutes • Admission ticket included
• 7
  Ecola State Park

  Take in one of Oregon’s most iconic coastal views at Ecola Point, where travelers can admire dramatic cliffs, sea stacks, Cannon Beach, and Haystack Rock from a scenic overlook high above the ocean. Look offshore to spot the historic Tillamook Rock Lighthouse (“Terrible Tilly”) and explore the park’s famous filming locations featured in The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop, and Free Willy.

  30 minutes • Admission ticket included
• 8
  Haystack Rock

  The last stop is the beach itself, four miles of it, flat and wide, with Haystack Rock standing 235 feet out of the sand. The rock is an Oregon Marine Garden and part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge: at low tide the pools around its base fill with sea stars, anemones, chitons and crabs, and from April to early July tufted puffins nest on the upper slopes, one of the most accessible puffin colonies in North America. We read the tide table on the morning of your tour and time this stop to it, because low water and high water are two completely different places. The Goonies ends on this beach.

  30 minutes • Admission ticket free

Additional info

• Specialized infant seats are available
• Public transportation options are available nearby
• Suitable for all physical fitness levels

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