But here is my trip report.
I arrived in Astoria Friday at 1:30, with sunny skies. Picked up my weekend pass at the Goondocks, I also bought about $10 in swag: pint glass, postcard & stickers. I then set up camp at Fort Stevens, stayed 3 nights. Then came into town to srat the scavenger hunt. This went faaster than I thought, almost finished it. I had dinner at the Silver Salmon Grille, ended up eating in the bar watching The Goonies.
About 6:30, headed over to the 'greay carpet' premiere. It turned out you didn't need tickets to see the stars out front. I got some fairly good shots. One of the volunteers was writing movie quotes on the street, she had quite a few mis-spellings though.
So afterwards, I decided to head down to Gearhart, McMenamin's Sand Trap Inn was on the scavenger map. I then stuck around the watch the sunset, ended up waikng about 3 miles round-trip on the beach down to Tillamook Head & Seaside. The sunset coincided with Appalachian Spring on my iPod, that was most awesome.
Saturday, ( more sunny skies) headed over to the Film Museum opening. The replica ORV was parked out front, it took awhile to figure out they were going to re-create the opening jailbreak scene. There were opening remarks by the mayor, the museum curator and cast. Then they did the jailbreak, complete with the ORV circling the block and coming back chased by a squard car. The orginal 3rd Annual Off Road Rally banner was stretched over the street. I was part of the first group to go inside, it is much smaller than I expected. The jail cells are devoted to The Goonies for now. The room on the other side talks more about other Oregon films and the filmmaking process. They only had 4 months to get this display together, they will feature other films later and might even expand the museum. Afterwards, I had lunch at Fort George & finished the scavenger hunt. I collected my 'bounty' at the Goondocks, there were 5 gold coins in a little packet.
3pm meet-n-greet. The Q & A went an hour, Joey P. was not on the dais, but he showed up briefly afterwards. I was one of the last in line to go through and got out at 7:30. At this point, I was actually exhausted from stainding in line for 3 1/2 hours. I had a quick bite at Subway and took a break waiting for Cosmic Bowling at 9:30. Quite a few dressed up for the occasion, alot of day-glo, mullets, Sloth & Chunk made an appearance, actually Jesse & Jeremy Horst from Buffalo, NY. Their trio was rounded out by "Cyndi Lauper' Since I didn't make reservations, I had to wait to see if I could fill out a foursome. I ended up with a family from Medford, bowled 2 games, my top score was 117. Done for the night, back at camp about 12:40.
Sunday, perfect Goondock weather. It rained overnight but tapered off
with overcast skies the rest of the day. I went to the 9am breakfast fan meet-up. Andy, Shaz, Giuseppe, Merk, imdblast and a whole bunch of others. I think we filled up at least 4 tables. 11:30am bus tour. The tour guide either made it a great experience or not. I lucked out with Rosemary Johnson whis is the city planner. Needless to say, she knew
everything about the movie and made it the Goonie related highlight of the weekend for me. Getting to go into Mikey's house and also
Mouth's house/not his house was fun. The owners were very appreciative of the turnout. We also stopped at Warren Field and the bolwing alley, part of the opening credit scenes. As we were leaving the bolwing alley to head back to the Goondocks, somabe said that Joey P. was over at Video
Horizons signing autographs. A few of us rushed over afterwards.
Altough I was happy to get my poster signed and complete the quartet
of actors that weekend. Joey was talking to a reporter about his latest
prokect. I guess I was intimidated or felt awkward about asking him questions about some of his other film roles. At least that's the vibe I got at the time. I headed back to camp and ran into my 'neighbors',
another couple from Medford here for the weekend. It was great to talk about beer, the Ducks and the Goonies. I then went over to the fairgrounds for the concert. Except for the Whiskey Rebellion bluegrass band, the other groups didn't interest me ahwole lot. I amde the most of it and got hang out with abuck of Goonie friends. Finally's it was time for Corey's band and Sean Astin came out to auction off a Strat guitar, it went for $3800. Corey isn't much of a singer, but he put on a great show. In his defense, he played in Eugene on Friday night, then spent all day Saturday and Sunday talking to fans, so I imagine yhe was worn out by that time. The 80's encore was interesting to say the least. Billie Jean, Another Brick In The Wall and then Goonies 'R Good Enough. I later found out that Daisy de LeHoya was on Rock of Love before this.
Sean came out to sing background vocals on Goonies and Richard Donner made a few comments after the concert. But they did not sign any autographs afterwards, Corey & his band did. I finally left about midnight and went back to camp.
Monday, broke camp. A quick peak at the Columbia River beach overlooking the Astoria-Megler bridge into Washignton, a new viewpoint for me. I then drove down to Ecola State Park for the picnic.
Another round of mis-information as the Lions Club would not accept out weekend passes for the linch, only the blue tickets. Got if figured out
before Regina showed up. The food was OK, but the fellowship was much better. Another appearance of the ORV. And 2 guys whe were there for the filming, the park ranger and local resident who is wrting a book about his experience.
I'd say in terms of my Goonie 'geekdom' I fall somewhere in the middle. I'm an Oregon native, I didn't have to travel halfway around the world to be here. But I felt part of the gang now, it was like leaving summer camp at the end of the week. Shaz showed up late. Andy pointed out the 'rock'
Seeing her jaw drop just a little and reading her facial expression was prceless.
Overall, here's my rankings for the weekend
1. picnic 2. bus tour 3. film museum 4. meet-n-greet 5. concert
And for the record, Buba Smith is not as 'awesome' as he thinks he is
I'm working on getting my pictures together on a Flickr page.
500 pics in all and an hour of video shot.
