Say "Cheese"

The Pelican Pub

Our next major foray was exploring up the Oregon coast north of Newport.  Since we got a late start, our first order of business was food.  We blew through Depoe Bay and Lincoln City and stopped at the Pelican Pub and Brewery in Pacific City (which is not really a city but a tiny hamlet that barely shows up on the map).  This is a highly rated microbrewery with hundreds of awards from national beer competitions which they have won since they opened in the mid-nineties.  The medals are all hung on the walls and make for an impressive display.  A couple of years ago they were voted the best brew-pub in the state.  It seemed like someplace worth the visit.

We had an order of calamari and a couple of beers.  The beers were really good, all those medals are probably deserved.  Then Vicki had cioppino, which she thought was just OK, and I had a burger with roasted poblano peppers and mozzarella cheese which, as burgers go, was certainly better than average.  So, a nice meal.  But here's the thing,  the tab with tip came to over $100.  Now I know we went in with our eyes open and had the option of walking out and going to McDonalds instead, so we have no one to blame but ourselves.  Still, a hamburger and a bowl of fish soup shouldn't cost that much.  It was a good lunch but we can't afford to go back any time soon.

Derelict barn and low clouds

North of Pacific City the 101 runs inland about 10 miles and passes through some very rural farm and ranch lands.  The day was a constant battle between sun and clouds, overcast one minute, hazy sunshine the next.  I stopped for a few photographs of derelict barns and low clouds crawling over the hillsides.

Munson Creek Falls

We pulled off the coast highway to visit Munson Creek Falls which has its own state park maybe 10 miles south of Tillamook.  The 67 acres for the park were sold to the state in the mid-90's by the Simpson Timber Company for just half of its appraised value and then the purchase was paid for by Paul Allen, who was apparently looking for some way to dispose of some of the embarrassing amounts of money he had acquired as one of the founders of Microsoft.  The parking lot for the falls is at the end of about 5 miles of gravel road and then there is a not unpleasant 1/4 mile hike to get to the falls themselves.  These tumble 319 feet over a cliff side, making this the highest waterfall in the Cascade range.  The creek is apparently an important salmon spawning ground and in the fall you can see them struggling upstream as you hike along the trail.

From, there we headed up to Tillamook, famous primarily for

Cheese Factory

cheddar cheese which, if you are in the US, you can probably buy at your local supermarket.  The dairy business in Tillamook county began in 1851 and the wet grasslands proved ideal for raising dairy cattle.  Getting rid of the resulting dairy products was somewhat problematic.  The road system was almost non-existant and overland transport was too slow for a product with such a limited shelf life.  So the farmers in the area got together and built the Morning Star, the first ocean going vessel built in the state, and began transporting their goods to Portland by sea.  The Morning Star now sits out in front of the Tillamook Cheese Factory and is the boat depicted on Tillamook Cheese packages.  It's about the length of our motohome.  It's hard to believe they could make money running cheese back and forth to Portland in something so small.

Part of the self guided tour

Morning Star

The local farmers eventually figured out the advantages of larger scale production and banded together to form the Tillamook County Creamery Association in 1909.  Over 100 years later, the co-op is still owned by the member farmers and has grown to absord almost every significant dairy farm operation in the state.  Their main factory is still in the city of Tillimook and you can take a self-guided tour at your leisure, looking down on the production facilities from an overhead platform.

40 lb blocks of cheddar get sliced up

 They aslo make other dairy products including a premiun ice cream which we sampled at the ice cream parlour there at the factory which they funnel you through at the end of your tour.  It was good, but not as good as we remembered some of the ice cream we had in Maine tasting last summer.  The custard base was excellent but it was hard to appreciate the Blackberry flavor in the Blackberry ice cream I had.  You have to get east of Illinois to find it, but if you ever have a chance to try a scoop of Giffords Black Raspberry ice cream, do not pass it up. 

On the way back south we needed a few things, so we stopped in at a local grocery store and got some milk, eggs, bread, a couple of 9mm Berettas and an AK47.

Local business sells groceries and other useful items

Road Trip to Bandon

When we came to the Oregon coast in 2009 we stopped one day and had what seemed to be the best fish and chips we've ever eaten at a little shack on the Bandon wharf.  Even though Bandon is just over 100 miles from where we are staying, we felt it was worth the drive to go back and see if our memories were being honest with us.

Heceta Head Light

We headed south on the coast highway past Cape Perpetua and through the 11.5 foot tall tunnel, then stopped at the top of the next hill to take a couple of pictures.  Last summer I told you about the Nubble Light at Cape Neddick, Maine, which was felt to be the epitome of all light houses and was included on the data disk sent into deep space with the Voyager probe.  But for my money, Heceta Head Light is even more iconic as light houses go.  It sits halfway up a mountain, jutting out high above the ocean to flash out a light signal visible for God knows how many miles.  Our viewpoint was a pullout on the highway just below Sea Lion Cave, across a small inlet from from the Hecita Head Light.  Nubble is nice, but I think Heceta is at least as much the embodiment of what a lighthouse is all about.

Restored Coquille Light

We continued south past the Suislaw National Forest and drove through Reedsport where we had hit the coast on Hwy 38 a few days earlier, then continued south into new territory.  We passed through North Bend and Coos Bay, then just before Bandon we pulled off at Bullards Beach State Park where we visited the Coquille River Light.  No one is going to award any prizes to this small lighthouse which sits across the Coquille River from Bandon but it is picturesque enough.  It was the last US Coastguard lighthouse built along the Oregon coast and operated from 1896 to 1939.  A fire largely destroyed Bandon in 1936 and with the subsequent lack of significant shipping in the area the light was shut down as unnecessary.  It was replaced some years later by a small automated light placed on the jetty on the Bandon side of the river.  The Coquille River Light was allowed to fall into ruin until a local restoration project picked it up in 1976.  It is now an interpretive center staffed by RV work

Replacement light on the south jetty

campers who are given free parking for their rigs at the Bullards Beach campground in exchange for spending a few hours a week answering tourist questions inside the lighthouse.  I assume they get some kind of training, but maybe they just make the answers up.  We certainly wouldn't know the difference.

The Bandon Fish Market and Chowder House

Finally we went back to Hwy 101, crossed the Coquille River Bridge and entered Bandon.  A large sign welcomes you to the Old Town area where the Bandon wharf is located and we parked just about 50 yds from the Bandon Fish Market where the Fish and Chips are produced.  For fifty years this place has made cod and halibut fried fish and chips.  There are a few other things on the menu.  They've added salmon fish and chips since we were last here and had some fresh tuna that particular day.  They've also added the option of having your fish grilled instead of deep fried, but that's not what we had driven 100 miles for.  I had a cup of clam chowder and Vicki ordered a cup of

Perfect fish and chips (and so-so coleslaw)

smoked salmon chowder, and we each had an order of cod fish and chips.  It was pretty much as we remembered it.  The batter was light and crispy and the fish was moist and so soft it almost melted in your mouth.  I don't know how they do that.  I mean, if it were simple, everybody's fish would taste like this.  I had thought that the secret was that the fish were fresh off the boat, caught the same day, but on asking I learned that this particular cod had come from Alaska.  So I don't know what their secret is, but I may have to drive the 100 miles again to consider the question further before we leave the state.

Across the street from the Fish Market sits the Cranberry Sweets and More store where they make fruit fudges and pates (apparently a fancy way of saying jelly candies).  These are delicious, if somewhat expensive (they averaged about $22 or $23 a pound) .  We each got a few of ounces things that looked good to us along with two chocolate dipped cherries and moved on.

Sunset Bay State Park (with my phone panorama)

Cape Arago

On the way back north we stopped at a number of state parks and waysides.  In particular, we drove the Cape Arago Highway which hugs the coast over a section where 101 does not.  This took us to Sunset Bay State Park, which is a beautiful little round inlet with a large sand beach protected by high cliffs around about 3/4 of its circumference.  This is a favorite spot for locals and tourists alike and gets over 1.5 million visitors a year.  A few miles further along is Cape Arago where Francis Drake is supposed to have sheltered the Golden Hind from storms in 1579 while he was searching for the western end of the fabled Northwest Passage.

Watching the show at the Elquarium

When we got to Reedsport, we turned right and drove a few miles back out Hwy 38 to visit the Dean Creek elk viewing area or, as I like to call it, the Oregon Coast Elkquarium.  This is a 1080 acre preserve with a herd of about 100 Roosevelt Elk that stay in the area all year.  They're wild (sort of) but the area is fertilized and maintained to provide plenty of food so they don't need to  migrate away to forage.  Next to the highway is a  large marshy grassland where they can be viewed from a raised gazebo platform with handicapped accessibility.  May and June are calving season and the pregnant females all head up into the mountains for some privacy, so what we saw was a small herd of mostly males feeding leisurely about a hundred yards from the viewing platform.  They all had fuzzy little antlers which will grow throughout the summer to become 6 foot wide racks by September when they start banging their heads together over the women.  Thus it has always been.

While we were watching the Elk, this rather bedraggled Blue Heron flew into the marsh to do a little fishing.  We've seen a few of these over the years in various shades of blue.  This guy looks pretty grey to me.

Greyish Blue Heron

We finally arrived back at our motorhome at about a quarter past eight to discover that our rig was running on battery power.  The 50 amp circuit breaker at our electric post had quit working.  I knocked on the manager's door and told him about it and after a brief inspection he agreed that the circuit breaker had not "tripped", it had failed and would need to be replaced.  He offered to do it that night, but we had a 30 amp converter cord and with the motorhome plugged into the 30 amp breaker it seemed to work fine, so we left it like that overnight and he came over and replaced the 50 amp breaker the next morning.  I don't know when the next morning exactly.  I certainly didn't get out of bed to watch.

Bonus Pics

Heceta Head with the lighthouse halfway up the mountain on the left and the keepers house on the right

 

Wood carvings on the Bandon wharf.

Formation flying

View from Shore Acres State Park

Sunset Bay

Fuzzy antlers

Group of mostly males

Coming to the Coast

From Sutherlin we headed out on the 138 again, this time in the Monaco with our car trailing behind us.  When we got to Elkton, we took Hwy 38 west and in a little over an hour found our selves on the Oregon coast where we are scheduled to spend a month enjoying the spectacular scenery, abundant seafood and cool summer weather.  When we reached the coast highway, we turned north, grousing about how our GPS seemed to be malfunctioning. When we left Sutherlin for some reason it wanted us to take US 20 from I-5 instead of OR 38.  We figured it was dealers choice and the GPS would figure it out eventually, but it consistently refused to recalculate the route even though we were by now only a few miles from our campground.  We sailed past the Oregon Dunes and through Florence, ignored the Sea Lions Cave for the moment and rolled down the hill to find this...

The GPS, which knows how tall our motorhome is, was not malfunctioning, it was trying to tell us our 12.5 foot rig was about to meet an 11.5 foot tunnel and wanted us to go back the way we came.  Of course it didn't come out and say "There is a low tunnel on your route", nooo... it just told us to go 200 miles out of our way for no very well spelled out reason.  We were disconcerted momentarily until we noticed that the 11.5 foot figure only applied if you hugged the tunnel wall as you went through.  In the center the height was over 16 feet.  We probably could have stayed in our own lane, but there was no one coming toward us, so we just lined ourselves up on the double yellow line and sailed through with no problem.  Suddenly the GPS told us we were only 20 miles from our destination rather than the 238 miles it had previously been insisting on.

Special exhibit

Our first couple of days on the coast were pretty grey and dismal, so we opted for some indoor activities, such as the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport.  This was actually our third visit to the aquarium.  The first time was when our son was little.  The second was 6 years ago after we had shipped him off to college and were traveling on our own again for the first time in many years.  So we had seen it all before, but it's still a fun place to visit.

They had a special exhibit that was not suppose to open until the following day, but I guess they figured it was finished and ready to go so they went ahead and opened the doors a day early.  It was ostensibly about shipwrecks but was really more of a  primer on underwater archeology.  It was mildly interesting but clearly geared for a younger crowd. 

Unauthorized snack

We meandered through and looked at the fishies and jellies.  This guy looks like he snuck himself an unauthorized snack.  One problem with the aquarium is that all your photos are taken through 2 inch thick plexiglass which plays havoc with your camera's autofocus and even if you focus manually, the stuff isn't very clean.  At least at the hands-on tidepool exhibit, you're looking directly at the water.

Outside they have a seabird aviary.  They had a

Tide pool area

few atlantic puffins and guillimots like we saw last summer in Maine (story here), but they also had tufted puffins which are more of a west coast phenomenon and, as such, are much more fashion obsessed.  There are also outdoor enclosures for seals, sea lions and otters, but they have the same plexiglass problem the fishes have.

Tufted puffins giving me the eye

When we got out of the aquarium the harbor had misted up a little, making for some interesting photos.  Be that as it may, we are hoping for some better weather as the month progresses.

Bonus Pics

Newport marina

Yaquina Bay Bridge

Another puffin

Sea otter through plexiglass

Lion fish

Seals from our 2009 visit (when it was sunny).