Kathleen's Window: Tillamook, Cape Disappointment, and Into Olympic National Park

Monday, June 9, and Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The next morning in Tillamook, Greg was ready to go check out the ginormous blimp hanger across the airport from us. The Air Museum occupies the World War II blimp hanger. It was built to house nine blimps that were used to survey the coast for enemy ships and subs and help with convoy escorts. They purport it to be the largest clear-span wooden building in the world.

Photo from 1943-ish

Our RV parked near the end of the building for scale

Tiny Greg in the 120-foot tall doorway!

We watched the short informative film about its history and learned that two of the huge hangers were built here at the Tillamook Naval Air Station during the war. The other one burned down in the 80's while being used to store something like 130,000 hay bales. This one currently houses the museum and a couple dozen planes, jeeps, engines, and trainers from various eras. Outside, open for touring is the Mini-Guppy, a plane crafted to carry NASA engines for the space program. It is basically two plane fuselages welded together to make the hold extra high.

The Guppy

Look at all the Room! This would make a great RV!

The rest of the huge hanger stores boats and RV's! Anything to make money to keep the museum going. It must be a huge money pit. They have also put in a very modern gift shop and cafe. The displays were well done and informative with lots of warning signs about not touching the planes because most of them are still flown. They are on loan from other places. What I found fascinating was the history of the blimps in WWII, something I had never learned about. There were bases on all the seacoasts, and like the Liberty ships, the hangers and blimps were built rapidly to supply the war effort. There was a piece of the soft-sided blimp skin that could be handled. It was amazingly thin!

Former Texan Army trainer still used in air show acrobatics

A-7 Retired after the First Gulf War.

Most of the planes were independently owned and still flown

The sign said "DON'T TOUCH!"

Sue would have been busy!

Now you can touch - in the WWII cockpit simulator

Even Greg can't hurt this helicopter

After lunch we drove north through Tillamook searching out cheese factories. The first one we came to was The Blue Heron French Cheese Company. Inside we found a few cheese samples, a wine tasting bar, and a restaurant, but no tour. They specialize in brie, we sampled and bought some.

Blue Heron Cheese

Greg's true nature?

Nice Udders!

Down the road was the Tillamook Cheese Factory, with its huge parking lot, and hundreds of tourists milling around. We took the self guided tour that lets you look down through the big windows at the cheese vats, and the assembly lines. This is a small exhibition area. The rest of the factory is behind and inaccessible. We followed the crowd through the cheese sampling bar, like a salad bar. The line moved too fast to do more that spear each chunk with a toothpick, chew fast, swallow, and spear the next out of probably 10 different cheeses, that strangely all taste like they were made from the same base cheese. Greg was eying the Tillamook ice cream counter, until we realized that the long line probably meant a half hour wait. We bought a small brick of Swiss cheese, (which Greg found later in the day at Fred Meyer for half the price), and we left Tillamook. Okay, for everyone who asks, yes, we went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory!

"My cow has no face!"

Small packaging line for demonstration. Two bigger buildings adjoining do most of the work.

Next stop, Washington State. We followed the rest of the Oregon coast north, with a stop for groceries just before crossing over the mouth of the Columbia River on North America's longest continuous truss bridge. Then we drove out to Cape Disappointment State Park on the peninsula at the mouth of the Columbia River. Somewhere in this area Lewis and Clark found the Pacific Ocean and spent a miserable winter. We checked into our first Washington State Park. Sticker shock! We paid $35 for partial hook-ups, electric and water. Our internet was thready, and the best part of the stay was the short walk to the ocean beach, where we watched the sun set while we walked the windy, blustery beach. Oh, and showers!

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

Basalt outcrops

Flotsam

Sunset on the beach at Cape Disappointment

Moonrise

There were trails and lighthouses to explore, but we were feeling drawn to the wildness of Olympic National Park, so we left Tuesday morning and drove north through lumber towns, including Aberdeen, where Kurt Cobain grew up, and through massive acres of Weyerhauser logging properties. At Lake Quinault we reached the Olympic National Park and Forest, and I finally got my senior discount pass and heard about a cougar that had been run over in the road nearby. Something that had never happened before in this area, where cougars usually make themselves scarce. We didn't go looking for it.

We were anxious to find a spot for the night. The larger ocean-side campground Kalaloch wanted reservations, and from what we read was mostly in the woods with people playing musical chairs for bluff campsites as they are vacated. We stopped farther south at the South Beach campground. The sites are all along the short bluff on the beach. Every one has an ocean view. The only drawback is there is no water. We stocked up on extra water jugs before we left Cape Disappointment, so we were ready. With my new pass we only paid $5 a night, so we signed up for two and picked the best site at the far end of the campground on the bluff, by the woods. The weather was glorious! Blue sky, breeze and a view far out to sea.

Great campsite right on the bluff.

Looking north up the Olympic coast

The view south

We saw lots of seabirds and a few porpoises and sea otters

Today, Wednesday, started out with sun, but the beach is now socked in. Before the fog came in, we saw diving ducks, sea otters and porpoises. Greg took a long hike on the beach, perhaps the easiest beach to hike on ever, since the sand is so hard. He was tempted to ride his bike, but the tide is too far in. Tomorrow the forecast is for rain, so we will head inland to the Hoh Rainforest. Won't matter so much if we get rained on there. They have a campground, so it will be interesting to spend the night in the drippy forest!