Tillamook And Cheese

Cannon Beach is quite close to the town of Tillamook, which is quite insignificant except for the fact that Tillamook is home to a rather famous cheese factory. We drove the hour South to the factory in the morning, because we wanted free cheese samples obviously, and managed to find parking no problem. Kizzy had to stay in the car, since they don’t allow dogs into the factory, and off we went. After a quick bathroom break and a look around the gift shop, we hopped right in line for ice cream. I mean, why wouldn’t we? I ordered a single scoop of marrionberry pie, which was really good. While we ate our ice creams, we headed upstairs where they had a viewing area overlooking the factory itself. It was almost lunch, but we got to see some of the employees doing heir stuff before they went off on break. Essentially, the cheese comes out in these big blocks that are then cut up into smaller pieces. Each smaller piece is weighed. If they’re too small or too large,

they are taken off the assembly line so they can be reformed. The ones that meet the standard are packaged and boxed before being sent out to stores. It’s a pretty repetitive process. There were also some plaques up there. I read a few of them. They talked mostly about the history of the cheese factory and the people that have been involved over the years. The company is a dairy cooperative and involves 110 dairy farms in the Tillamook area. When the company first opened in the early 1900’s, their main product was butter and had only 10 farms. It was mildly interesting, but it was all about cheese and there are only so many things you can read on cheese before becoming disinterested, in my opinion. Once I finished reading, I headed back downstairs to the cheese testing station. There were only a few samples that I liked, and most of them were cheddar, but it was still good

cheese. Mum went out to get Kizzy from the car as soon as she came down, leaving the boys and I to pick out some cheeses. I picked an aged cheddar, which was the most expensive one there, shockingly enough. We also bought some sausages, some cheese curds and a couple of snacks. I got really excited because they were selling sesame snaps. There happened to be another cheese company in the area, so we went to check that out once we finished up at Tillamook. This place is called the Blue Heron French Cheese Company and it was a bit of a tourist trap. They also didn’t speak french there, which was a little bit disappointing. Their shop was cool and we bought some stuff for Mother’s Day, but it wasn’t nearly as nice as Tillamook. There wasn’t much else to do in town after that so we just drove back to the campground after a quick stop at the grocery store. Back home, after dinner, the other three watched some of True Lies while I did more homework in my room. Peace out m8s.

#camping #cannonbeach #oregon