Sonya's Blog - Day 320 - Tillamook

Sonya’s Blog - Day 320 - May 7th - Tillamook

We decided to go visit Tillamook today, which is famous for its cheese factory. We had passed through it, on our way to Cannon Beach, but we really don’t like stopping with the RV. We decided, we would rather make a trip back and take our time, than be rushed on our traveling day. So, today is the day that we will make the trek.

Tillamook is about an hour south of Cannon Beach. The first part of the drive, is the most spectacular. Immediately upon leaving Cannon Beach the road starts to climb up, up, up the side of Neahkahnie Mountain. There are several viewpoints, as you head up and we stopped at one to get a view. It was beautiful. The road is actually cut into the side of the mountain, because the mountain drops right down into the ocean, so there was nowhere else to build the road. It is kind of crazy and there were information plaques with pictures of them building the road, which looked like a crazy experience.

The highway takes us through several quaint coastal towns, on our way to Tillamook. It was a lovely drive and we were in Tillamook in no time. We headed right into the factory, bought an ice cream each, and took the self-guided tour. It is officially called the Tillamook County Creamery Association and is a dairy cooperative, which includes 110 dairy farms, mostly within Tillamook County. It started off in the early 1900’s with 10 farms and is now a multi-million dollar operation, that has stayed true to it’s local cooperative roots. They started out producting butter and then cheese, but now produce ice cream and other dairy products as well. Their main business is cheese and they have won several cheese-making awards. The assembly line was running, while we were there, so we got to see the cheese packing in action. Here are some pictures:

The Vats where the cheese is started:

After we were done our tour, we went downstairs and tested the cheeses. I then headed out to get Kizmet out of the truck, while everyone else decided on which cheeses to buy. I walked Kizmet around. Look at these awesome lilies that are growing everywhere, there are a lot in people's yards in Cannon Beach as well. Just gorgeous:

When we were done, we headed down the road to the Blue Heron French Cheese Company. This is just a tourist trap, conveniently located down the road from the Tillamook cheese factory. They don’t even make their cheese in Oregon, so there you have it. They did have a neat, little shop, but that was about it.

I thought this was hilarious, but forgot to get a picture of it before we left town. Luckily there was one on the internet, so I could put it on my blog.

There wasn’t that much more to do in Tillamook, but we did find a grocery store to get some groceries. The grocery store in Cannon Beach is pretty tiny and has a very limited selection. We made sure we got enough food to get us through the next few days and we headed back to camp. We thought about stopping on the beach, on the way back, but it was super windy and didn’t look like it would be pleasant. We went back to camp instead, which is much more sheltered, so the wind wasn’t too bad. The boys started a fire, well Isaac did while Blake supervised. Issac chopped the wood and set up the whole fire and then started it with one match, what a boy scout!

We had supper and a campfire, until it started to rain. We then went in, cleaned up and then Isaac, Blake and I hopped into our bed and watched half of True Lies. We cannot watch movies in the main area right now, because the slide blocks the TV. So we have to watch them on the computer and our bed is the best place for this. It is going to be an interesting few weeks with that slide not working.

Sonya