Monday, May 15, 2017

Full Schedule on Our Last Coast Day

We have one more day to spend on the Oregon coast before we head in-land. So we planned a full schedule that included a loop drive that will start by heading north along Highway 101. This section of the highway is several miles away from the ocean, and we found ourselves in the middle of a forest instead of at the beach. Our first stop was on a questionable road, but we finally found the parking lot hidden among tall trees. A quarter-mile hike through the woods brought us to Munson Creek Falls. At 319 feet, it is the highest waterfall on the coast. There were too many trees to get a picture of the entire fall, but it was a beautiful start to our day.

Besides tall waterfalls, Denisa is always interested in the flowers that show up along our hikes. The bright fuchsia-colored blooms were hard to miss on this trail. We could see that the flowers fade and leave a berry-shaped center. A little research found that this will be a yummy trail this summer when these ripen to yellow-rose-colored salmonberries.

While the waterfall was hard to find because it was hidden in the trees, we saw the next attraction miles before we arrived. This hangar is the largest wooden clear-span structure ever built. There are 7.5 acres under this roof, that was built in 1943. It has now been re-purposed as the Tillamook Naval Air Station Museum.

Below is a picture of this building in its hey-day. It was used to store the blimps that patrolled the coast during World War II, looking for enemy submarines in the Pacific.

The main reason we took this drive north up the coast is to tour the Tillamook Cheese factory. We have been seeing Tillamook cheese and ice cream in all the grocery stores lately. We love a good factory tour, and they have a reputation for being the best. In fact, this is one of the top ten visitor attractions in all of Oregon, with 1.3 million tourists visiting here every year (up to 10,000 people per day). What we didn't know is that all this success means the Tillamook Cheese factory is building a brand new visitor center. So right now they are tearing down the old center, with its viewing windows that overlooked the cheese and ice cream factory lines. They have erected a temporary visitor center that features plastic cows and some facts about cheese. It's pretty sad when the favorite picture of the long-awaited cheese tour is of this old cheese delivery van.

There were samples of six different Tillamook cheeses, but it certainly was a disappointing tour. We'll have to come back after Summer 2018 when the brand new visitor center and tour are completed. In the meantime, we bought some Tillamook cheese curds, Tillamook greek yogurt with Oregon blueberries and Oregon-made granola, and a teriyaki meat stick made right down the road here in Oregon. That will be our very Oregonian picnic for our road-trip day.

Since the famous Tillamook Cheese factory tour was a let-down, we were glad we also stopped in at Blue Heron French Cheese Company. A smaller company, they welcome visitors with lots of free samples. They also have a petting zoo for the younger visitors and some retirees from Oklahoma that really like animals. This peacock was parading the grounds to welcome visitors.

They also had a selection of goats, sheep, chickens, and donkeys. If you didn't want to buy cheese for yourself, they had goat food available for sale to feed these guys.

The cheese and ice cream industry is well supplied from the many dairies up and down Tillamook bay. It is so interesting to see dairy cows grazing in the tall grass pastures surrounded by the ocean and mountains.

Our next factory tour stop is at Pacific Oyster Company. Even though we're adventurous eaters, we don't seem to be brave enough to eat oysters. The Tillamook Bay is one of the biggest producers of these slimy delights, and this company is situated right on the bay.

There are big glass windows that gave us full-view of the shucking stations. These talented shuckers are paid by the pound, and we marveled at the speed that they could open and dislodge those oysters.

In the next room, another crew was packaging and sealing the freshest oysters on the planet. We were thankful for the plate glass between them and us, as we are guessing that fresh oyster air-freshener will never be a big seller.

There are tall piles of oyster shells right outside of the Pacific Oyster company as evidence that much work is being done here.

Now that we made it to Tillamook Bay, we are heading south along Three Cape Highway for our last day with the ocean. We also have a date with the eighth Oregon lighthouse. We are at Cape Meares State Park to see the shortest light of all. But it is situated on a sea cliff, that positions it high above the Pacific Ocean.

Admission is free to get inside the lighthouse. There is even a guided tour provided by more of those RVing volunteers that seem to flock to this state in the spring and summer.

Even though it is short, it is a mighty lighthouse. It is fitted with a large first-order fresnel lens that was made in France and shipped to the United States when this lighthouse opened in 1890. Each lighthouse has its own signature sequence of light flashes, and Cape Meares includes a red light.

The other attraction at Cape Meares is the Octopus Tree. Just as its name implies, this unusual Sitka Spruce has eight limbs coming off a single trunk. It's also the largest known Sitka Spruce in Oregon.

Just past the spruce is an unobstructed viewpoint over the cape. We were enjoying a beautiful blue sky day, with views far down the Pacific coast.

Offshore from this point is the Three Arch Rocks National Wildlife Refuge, the first national refuge west of the Mississippi River. It is home to the largest breeding colony of tufted puffins along the coast and close to 100,000 common murre.

We have already seen thousands of murre, but we were certainly hoping for a glimpse of those tufted puffins--comical-looking birds with their bright orange beaks. Google a picture of them just for a chuckle. But they haven't arrived to Three Arches yet. The zoomed picture proves that at least two of those sea boulders really do have arches, as we could see blue sky through the other side.

We obviously have a long list of stops to make during our last day on the coast. Guided by the Highway 101 Mile-by-Mile Guide, we pull into the Whiskey Creek Fish Hatchery. Entirely ran by volunteers, they raise 100,000 spring Chinook salmon every year in these long tanks.

We bought some fish food, and watched as the 4-inch salmon babies boiled to the top of the water to get their share of the feast.

There were some big-boy rainbow trout in another pond, who went into a feeding frenzy when we threw their food into the water.

Just a few miles down the road we see an assortment of hang-gliders right beside the highway. We are now stopped at Anderson's Viewpoint along the Three Capes Highway.

We talked to one of the glider pilots, who is flying a drone into the air to gather wind velocity information at different altitudes over the coast.

Mark is standing at the launch point where the pilots will step off in hopes that the prevailing winds will keep them in the air. They are watching those pink flags blowing in the breeze down the cliff, but it looks like the wind isn't going to be strong enough this afternoon to fly.

It's after 5:00 by the time we pull into our last stop of the day. That lone mountain in the ocean on the left is the iconic silhouette of Cape Kiwanda beach.

There are several options at this beach. One is to climb the massive sand dune at the end of the beach. On a day with fewer stops we might have had the energy to tackle that uphill hike. But today we're going to stay at water level.

It's hard to believe that there isn't enough wind to launch hang-gliders a few miles away, because it is cold and blustery here at Kiwanda Cove. We are glad to have some wind break compliments of the colored cliffs that are now highlighted by the lowering sun.

It's our last coast day, and it's low tide. So it looks like we've got to do a little evening tide-pooling. There are purple sea stars curled around closed green anemones all over the dry rocks.

We have seen the white gooseneck barnacles on sea rocks up and down the coast. We have only seen the white thumbnail-looking barnacle, and wondered how they got their gooseneck first name. Today we saw a section of barnacles that had fallen off the rocks and exposed the long orange neck that is usually tucked away under the surrounding mussel shells.

Our final tide pool picture has to be a perfectly purple sea star highlighted by the setting sun on a rock surrounded by lime green sea weed. That's beach color at its best!

We checked out the little Mexican food restaurant in Pacific City for supper and then headed back to the motor home. We've squeezed a lot into our last day (for a while) on the Pacific Coast. If you are as tired from reading about it as we are from living it, it's time to head in-land and get some rest!

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