Adventures with Luna: Day 74 - Fort Stevens State Park

As I tried to get to sleep last night people kept arriving with bright headlights and loud voices, I may as well have been in a Walmart parking lot! Okay, not quite, when sleeping in a Walmart parking lot it is almost bright enough to read all night. After a shower, I ate breakfast in my car as there were tons of mosquitoes and other insects all around outside, I had to try and slap them away from my door anytime I opened it. We then headed to the beach to check out the shipwreck and go for a nice walk. Around the shipwreck was quite crowed and full of children, but it was much more peaceful further down the beach. Luna was terrified of the shipwreck, it ranked up there with waterfalls for how scary it was, so we did not spend much time at it. We spent several hours walking along the beach, a couple with a black Labrador and a Golden Retriever stopped so that Luna and the Lab could play, Luna was desperately trying to initiate play with him and he played a little bit, but with not much enthusiasm. It was wonderful to see Luna immediately initiating play with a new dog! We sat for awhile to enjoy the ocean and I threw sand for Luna to chase, trying to aim it so she wouldn't be able to get it in her mouth, but the silly pup would come and bite at it while it was in my hand as if certain there was something there other than sand. It was a nice beach, although, unfortunately vehicles are allowed on it so there were plenty of tire tracks and I had to keep Luna close to me quite a bit as big jeeps and SUVs would be going by every 5 minutes, but seeing as dogs are technically supposed to be on-leash, I can't complain ;) The leash laws do not seem to stand for much here, there are more off-leash than on-leash dogs at every beach I've been to and here there were even off-leash dogs playing right at the shipwreck with tons of people around. One local said to me that Oregon absolutely loves dogs and it seems that is very true, it is wonderful! Oregon also has a ton of state parks, most not costing anything to visit, I love that! They also have set rates for all the state parks with self pay with an option to pay by credit card (which is extremely handy when I am almost out of cash and almost finished my time in the US), all the campgrounds also have showers, which is incredible! In the afternoon we headed to Astoria, where, overwhelmed by being in such a busy area, I just got a motel for the evening to get away from the business and figure out what hikes I want to do tomorrow around Oneonta Gorge, which is much farther than I realized from where I am! We went for a walk around by the water across from the motel as the sun began to set. We are right beside a long vehicle bridge that leads to Washington across the water.