Tillamook and Oceanside - October 18, 2008

It's Saturday the 18th.   Hanna, Jen, Ian,  Emily, and I drove to Tillamook, where we visited the Tillamook Cheese Factory and we also stopped at the Blue Heron Cheese tasting outlet.  Since it was Saturday, most of the operation at the Tillamook Cheese Factory was shut down, but at least we did get to see 50 lb blocks of cheese being wrapped and moving off on roller tracks to storage somewhere.    After helping to deplete the trays of cheese put our for tasting, of course we all had to stop at the Tillamook Ice Cream portion of the factory for an ice cream break.  

One of the reasons for going to Tillamook was to also go to the beach.    The map showed that if we followed Oregon Highway 131 to Netarts and Oceanside, we could find beaches.   After a short drive to Netarts we decided to push on to Oceanside a few miles farther along, as the only beach we could find in Netarts was at a resort.   But, at Oceanside we found a beautiful public beach with a wonderful view of Arch Rocks.    As we scrampled down a rocky path to the sand, Emily said this was not a good beach cause it was too windy and cool.   She is used to Southern Calif beaches.   But as we walked along the sand to the north end of the beach, a huge cliff that juts out into the ocean sheltered us from the wind.   We stayed there for about an hour and we had a great time.    There is a tunnel that goes through the cliff from the south side where we were to the northside of the cliff.   Hanna, Ian, Emily and I went through, but didn't go on farther onto the rocky beach on the north side, as the tide was too high and the footing was too uneven for Emily.     We returned to the south side of the cliff, where Emily and Ian had fun building sand castles and looking for stuff in the sand.    Hanna decided to go back through the tunnel and explore the beach north of the cliff.  When she returned, she mentioned that she had talked to some people who had visited Germany.     Once again, we were blessed with beautiful weather, full sun, no clouds and all-in-all, a great day.