Alan and Sandra's RV Travels: Tillamook, Oregon

Tillamook has been our base camp for the past week while we explored all around the area. Below are some of the pictures from the places we visited while here.

Oceanside, OR and Cape Meares:

Oceanside is a small beach town along the Pacific coast. Tillamook is 10 miles away on the other side of the bay. It's just a short drive to the ocean and a really pretty beach. The first day we drove to Oceanside, there was so much fog on the coast you couldn't see anything! Plus, it was windy, cold and the fog was like a heavy mist.

You can tell I was headed for the car. It was 54 degrees!

The Octopus Tree.

This is the Octopus Tree located along the coast at Cape Meares. From the information board located at the sight I learned that it is not known exactly what caused the odd shape. The tree is more than 46 feet in circumference and has no central trunk. Instead, limbs extend horizontally from the base as much as 16 feet before turning upward. It is 105' tall and is estimated to be 250 to 300 years old.

The skies were clear on our second trip to the beach......we got to see what we missed on our first trip there.

These houses sit up on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

In picture below you can see the entrance to a "cave" that goes through this massive rock. Look at the bottom of the rock near the middle and you will see a small opening. You can walk through the rock to get to the other side of the beach.

The picture below was taken with the flash on the camera. It was darker inside the cave than this actually shows. We had a flashlight with us and used it to see how to step on or over some of the rocks on the floor of the cave.

These are some pictures that we took on our trip up to Cape Meares. It is also what we could not see AT ALL when we were up here a few days before.

So Pretty!

Lighthouse at Cape Meares

At the very top.

Another famous view up here.

Tillamook Air Museum:

This is a different type of air museum. The building is the highlight. The museum is housed in a former military Blimp hangar, called "Hangar B", which is the largest clear-span wooden structure in the world.

The hangar building is 1,072 feet long and 296 feet wide. It is over 6 acres big. "Hangar A" was destroyed by fire in 1992.

During WW II, the U.S. Navy stationed eight blimps at the Tillamook Naval Air Station. The blimps were used for anti-submarine coast patrol and convoy escort.

The two vertical beams at each end of the hangar are concrete. All of the interior framing and roof spars are wood. The roof is metal.

Only the 4 concrete beams are what is left standing at the sight of Hangar A after the fire.

These pictures below were posted on the wall in the museum. They show the progress of the hangars while being built.

Below are pictures we took inside the hangar.

The "Mini Guppie" (airplane below) which is located outside the museum was open to the visitors at the museum. We went inside and it looked a lot bigger from outside.

Now that is one ugly plane.

Inside the plane.

Tillamook Cheese Factory:

Since all the brochures and all the blogs we read said the Tillamook Cheese Factory was a "must see", we decided we had better go. During the week when we would be driving by the cheese factory, the parking lot was always FULL and there was even a special parking area for RV's.

It was a self-guided tour of the cheese production and then they gave you samples of their cheese. We went early because we had been told the later in the day, the lines for the tour and cheese samples got very long. There was a retail outlet store where you could buy their cheese as well as other products and another area where you could buy bowls or cones of their ice cream There was also a gift shop on the premises. We have been eating the Tillamook Ice Cream since we got to the northwest so we knew their ice cream was VERY good.

There really wasn't much going on in the cheese production area the morning we were there. We bought a couple of small packages of their cheese. It was like any other good quality cheese.

They hadn't been opened long so there were no lines to wait in.

However, before we left the lines were beginning to form.

This is another area in the retail store where they sell other items.

Below are pictures of some of the production areas.

This is where the large blocks of cheese are being cut into small blocks.

The viewing area above the production lines.

Speaking of cheese, ice cream, milk or any other dairy product......There are MANY dairy farms in the area. I'm sure most, if not all are to supply this cheese factory with the raw material needed for their production. One afternoon as we were driving along a country road I saw what looked like cows going down an embankment and under the road. We turned around and sure enough at this dairy farm there was a tunnel going under the road for the cows to get from the buildings at the dairy back out to the pastures. We pulled onto the dairy property in order to get this picture. You can see where the cows walk under the road. That is not actually water under the bridge.....just wet dirt. You can see the green pasture on the other side of the road.