September 23, 2008

Our first night was quiet and peaceful. As we were leaving in the morning, we realized the staff , local officials and volunteers were in the middle of a Tsunami drill. They kindly handed us a flyer with information on what to do if we were in a Tsunami Hazard Zone. One thing I noticed along the Oregon coast is that there are signs posted along the highway letting you know when you are in a hazard zone and again when you're leaving one.

This pedestrian/bike bridge spans Highway 101 at Rockaway, Oregon. For the most part Highway 101 is a two lane roadway. In some cases it goes right thru the middle of towns both big and small. The next town after Rockaway is Garibaldi. You always know when you're getting close by the big "G" painted up on the hillside above the town. This is one of the many places where they slow you down to 25 miles an hour and you drive right thru the center of town. We always look forward to arriving in Tillamook, Oregon. The Tillamook Cheese Factory is a favorite stop for thousands of tourists. In their huge parking lot, you see license plates from every state and you hear every language being spoken as as you wander thru their building.

as you enter and leave the city of Tillamook, you'll see pastures filled with cows, not only Holsteins but Jersey & Guernsey. This mama and calf that greet you as you enter the building, of course are made of plastic.

While at the cheese factory you can go to an upper level and look down at the cheese making process. These pictures were taken thru the viewing window. You can see the workers, all in white and hair covers working on the various aspects of the cheese packing process. In the cheese making process part of the building all you see are big vats. Here the blocks of cheese were being cut into different size chunks and then sent thru wrapping machines and then being packed into boxes to be shipped out to stores everywhere.

There's a huge (and wonderful) gift shop at the cheese factory and a section where you can buy all of their products~ cheese, milk, ice cream, fudge etc. There's also the Farmhouse Cafe where you can grab a quick meal. We bought a couple bags of cheese curds, and I bought two 8 oz blocks of one of my favorites~Garlic White Cheddar Cheese (YUMMY!). They don't sell this one in stores, you can only get it here at the Tillamook Cheese Factory or at their on line store. I did end up giving one to Bob's daughter so on the way home bought more for myself, my son & son in law.

After making our cheese purchases, we got in line to buy our ice cream treat. This is Bob's dish of 3 scoops. They have approximately 30-40 flavors of ice cream and they are all so rich and delicious.

In 1854 several dairy farmers got together and built a 2 masted schooner to use in getting their cheese and dairy products to Portland. Tillamook still uses a picture of the "Morning Star" on their labels and a replica of this sailing ship sits in front of the Tillamook building to this day.

After leaving Tillamook we took a slight detour to the west~off Highway 101 to Cape Kiwanda. This is a very neat area where fishing dory's are launched into the ocean surf. This day there were no dory's being launched but we've been there before when there was a lot of activity on the beach.

In the past we've seen people on horseback heading down the beach and up the trails on that far hill.
Heading across one of Oregon's magnificent bridges~we continue our journey.
We come to an area along the coast called the Devil's Churn. We'd never stopped there before so pulled in and got out to check it out.

As you can see the water was calm compared to what it can be. After I took this picture, some people emerged on the rocks below. They'd followed a trail that took off down the hill from the parking area. Brave souls !

Some folks were down walking on the beach along here.

The beautiful home and lighthouse (on the far left out of the picture) at Hecta Head.

The rest of the buildings at Hecta Head

I just love the Oregon bridges...

We stopped at another view point to look at the ocean and we heard this loud "seal" noise. We walked along the guard rail, looking down and there was this huge group of seals. There are so noisy ! This location was about 1/4 mile north of Sea Lion Caves. Obviously some of them were out of their cave and in this "romantic" little cove.

Our second night on the trail~we found a lovely spot at J.M.Honeyman State Park.
This Oregon state campground also had quite a few Yurts available.

Well, at this point we'd only been away from home a little over 24 hours and we've only covered 358 miles. We still have 1,000 miles to go before we get to Pasadena. We've got lots of ground to cover before we reach our destination.