This is Longview

A slide show of iconic areas and buildings in Longview

Longview Named 'prettiest city' by Forbes

A Portland OR news station visits Longview after Forbes named it one of the prettiest cities in the country.

My cousin's son is interviewed.  It's his brother's wife who is taking me running.  Their family grew up less than a block from Lake Sacajawea.

Flying Over Longview, Kelso, Kalama WA and Raineer OR
and the Columbia and Cowlitz Rivers

This is long and a bit herky-jerky in places but worth it for some of the awesome views of our river valley.  Unless you are especially interested in planes and flying itself, skip ahead to the take off more than ten minutes in.

Driving over the Lewis and Clark Bridge from Raineer Or into Longview WA

Also known as the Longview-Raineer bridge, this is an iconic image for our town.
A swarm of memories from the 1960s to the present were triggered by watching this.

• Watching from the back seat as my Dad paid the toll in the mid sixties.  
• Being driven over it at break-neck speed at age 14 by the drunk father of the kids I'd been babysitting.  
• Driving over it for the first time myself at age 20.  
• Riding beside Ed on our Honeymoon--our motel was in Longbeach WA but the better road along the Columbia, especially in winter at night, is on the Oregon side so it is common to cross over to Oregon at Longview and back to Washington via the Astoria bridge near the mouth of the river.  Which I'm pretty sure is what we did the evening of December 2nd 1978 as I do remember the winter storm that lashed the windows of our room that night and the thrumming of the strong surf in my bones.