Oct. 31, 2013 Tillamook, OR

Oct. 31, 2013 Tillamook, OR

 “Happy Birthday” to our daughter-in-law, Lori!  I just love buying Lori’s birthday cards, as every year, I seem to find an appropriate Halloween one!  Our family always loved Halloween, and it was so much fun for them to get dressed up and go trick or treating! We saw a lot of little ‘goblins’ in Tillamook today, so they really get into it, also.  Today was our last full day here, and it was drizzly off and on, so we decided to do the cultural and intellectual things available!  We went through the Air Museum where they built and stored the helium blimps, especially used during WWII to help protect the west coast. From there we went to the Pioneer Museum, and it covered a lot of interesting things of the early settlement of Oregon.  The lady that was at the desk, when we arrived, married a man from Viroqua, WI, very near where I (Marlene) was born and raised until I was 18 years old. She was adorable and made sure we saw everything that was there!  We ate lunch at the Pelican Brew Pub, which consisted of a bowl of clam chowder and their amber beer……it was ‘nearly 5:00 in Wisconsin’! We had eaten at their restaurant yesterday in Pacific City, which was probably the best place we have eaten out, thus far on the trip.  It was right on the ocean, with a haystack rock out their back door! What a view.  Now, to get back to the rest of our day…..we went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory for their ice cream sugar cone in a dish.  Our last stop of the day was at the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center, and they had a group of knitters in for the afternoon.  The day went quickly, but we did get everything done, that we wanted to.  Tomorrow we leave for Depoe Bay, OR.

Pelican Brew Pub & Restaurant in Pacific City OR

Our view during dinner at the Pelican Restaurant

Tillamook Air Museum

Pioneer Museum (Old Courthouse)

Latimer Quilt & Textile Center

Knitting Group

Happy Halloween!

Oct. 30, 2013 Tillamook, OR/Cape Meares State Park

Oct. 30, 2013 Tillamook, OR/Cape Meares State Park

They are predicting rain tonight, so we journeyed over to the coast and did the Three Capes Loop Drive.  Cape Meares State Park was most interesting and beautiful.  It has the Cape Meares Lighthouse, which is only 38 feet high, and it sits high atop a tall 200 foot headland that faces the ocean.  It was commissioned in 1890 and decommissioned in 1963.  It is the shortest lighthouse in Oregon.  From Cape Meares State Park, you can also see the Three Arches Rocks located just offshore.  The Three Arch Rocks National Wildlife Refuge was the first NWR west of the Mississippi, and it is home to the largest breeding colony of tufted puffins along the coast. The Octopus Tree, is also located in this state park, and is most unusual, in that it is 46’ in circumference with no central trunk.  The limbs extend horizontally from the base as much as 16’ before they turn upward.  It is 105’ tall and estimated to be 250 to 300 years old.  We loaded some caches and I’ll post a picture at one cache site called, The Great Divide’.  This is where the ocean and the bay are divided by a narrow strip of land and it provided us with a great view from where the cache was located.  We found 18 caches today.  We had another banner day!  

Three Arches Rocks NWR, a man and his dog

Welcome to Cape Meares State Park OR

Lighthouse at Cape Meares State Park

Octopus Tree at Cape Meares SP

The Great Divide

  

Oct. 29, 2013 Tillamook OR/coastal drive

Oct, 29, 2013 Tillamook, OR

We traveled the upper Hwy. 101 coastline drive today with our truck, as we couldn't stop so easily with the motor home at the places we wanted to see.  We loaded a few geo-caches and did some of them that were on our way, but our main goal was to check out the small towns that are along the coast, and the prominent scenic overviews.  The ones that we enjoyed were the Three Graces, rock formations near Rockaway Beach, and the charming little town of Cannon Beach.  It is home of the famous Haystack Rock, that towers 235 feet on the beach. Most of the homes in Cannon Beach are finished with shingle siding, which gives them a unique character appeal, and the town was named such, because a cannon was washed up on the beach in 1846.  We are finally caught up with our blog, as it's been a bit difficult with lack of good internet reception.  I forgot to mention, that we did return to the Tillamook Cheese Factory this morning for their curds.  Luckily, they had samples out and we had the opportunity to taste before we buy!  We're glad of that.  They just didn't compare to WI cheese curds!  They were dry, grainy and not squeaky at all!  It was no hardship to walk away.

Breath-taking view/drive Hwy. 101

View of Cannon Beach & Haystack Rock

Room with a view!

Charming Cannon Beach, OR

Sunset on Three Graces

'Enhanced Sunset'

Oct. 28, 2013 Cape Disappointment/Tillamook, OR

Oct. 28, 2013 Cape Disappointment WA/Tillamook OR

We left Cape Disappointment this morning, feeling enriched in the knowledge of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  It was a wonderful journey!  We had a very scenic drive again, down the upper coast of Oregon, and we have a campsite south of Tillamook, OR for four nights.  We arrived early enough to hike to the Munson Creek Falls.  They are about 312 feet high, and they are the longest falls along the coast.  It was very damp along the trail, and what we had been previously seeing as moss on the trees, it now appears to be hair!  We drove over to the ocean, to catch sight of what we are to expect in our next few days. We look forward to what everyone tells us, that Oregon has the most beautiful coastline!  We went into Tillamook, and had to check out the largest cheese factory in the state.  I felt a little guilty about buying Oregon cheese, being from WI and we are the Dairy State.  We have nearly depleted our supply of WI cheese, so we’ll give our palates a test and see how the two compare. They were out of cheese curds, so we’ll have to go back. The cheese factory had a replica of The Morning Star ship that was built in 1854 to carry local products to market.  We did notice a lot of small dairy farms with ‘happy cows’ grazing out in the fertile and green pastures.  That’s a sign of great cheese! We are also seeing barn quilts on the buildings, so I hope to get a few pictures of them.  That must mean there is a quilt shop nearby?

312 Feet Munson Falls

Trail to Munson Falls

Jim on the hiking trail 

Tillamook Cheese & the Morning Star Ship.  

Oct. 27, 2013 Cape Disappointment State Park Ilwaco WA

Oct. 27, 2013  Cape Disappointment State Park

We woke up to rain this morning.  That was not predicted!  We waited around until noon, when the rain stopped and the sun came out.  We thought we’d try to see if we could find a nice trail in the park that we could do.  We did, and it was paved!  It is a bike/hike path, so it was perfect for our wet day!  We did a few geo-caches, and ended up in Long Beach again for dinner.  We were there last week and had a wonderful meal.  We noticed that they had tv’s, and we can’t get local channels where we are, so we thought we’d go and see if we could watch the Packer game today.  We were sitting at a small table next to a younger couple from Seattle, and we had a great time with them.  They are Seahawk fans, but they did want the Packers to win.  I told them that I am a Seahawk’s fan, unless they are playing the Packers! This ends our stay on Cape Disappointment and we’ll move on tomorrow to Tillamook, OR.  We’re ready! 

Paved hike/bike trail 

Summit view of the ocean

Clever boat name in Ilwaco Harbor

Condor Sculpture in Ilwaco Harbor

Oct. 26, 2013 Cape Disappointment SP

Oct. 26, 2013 Cape Disappointment State Park WA

The sun is shining!  We have had overcast skies since we got here, but we shouldn’t complain.  Seattle has been socked in with heavy fog for two weeks now.  We have had a little fog in the mornings, but it hasn’t hampered anything we wanted to do.  We walked to the beach around noon and the Pelicans have arrived!  They were busy eating the ‘little creatures brought in by the high tide’.  We have two days left before we leave here, so we decided to hike over to the North Head Lighthouse.  It was very damp, but the trail was good for the most part.  It was like walking through a jungle, and with the heavy moss cover and ferns, it gave an eerie affect. We had to maneuver around and over a lot of tree roots, but overall, it was in good shape.  We met one couple on the whole trek over there and back, which was just about 5 miles round trip.  It is rated as a difficult hike, as it had elevation climbs of 834 feet.  It got our hearts pumping, but it was good for us.  The lighthouse was wonderful, as all lighthouses are.  There is something about them that seems so stately.  North Head Lighthouse was erected in 1898 and is still functioning.  We saw two frogs and seven snakes on our hike!  None of the snakes ‘talked back at us’, like the ones in AZ, but it always startles a person when you see one.  They were all of the garter snake variety, so they were more afraid of us than we were of them.  We need to make the most of tomorrow, as we move to the Tillamook, OR area on Monday.  We’ll be ready to go, but it’s been a great stay. 

Pelicans on the beach

Glorified part of our hiking trail

Mushrooms on an old mossy decayed log

Stairs on our hiking trail

North Head Lighthouse 1898

Oct.25, 2013 Cape Disappointment/Astoria OR

Oct. 25, 2013  Cape Disappointment/Astoria OR

We were advised by some locals to go to Astoria and visit the Fort Clatsop National Park there, so we did that today.  It is our nation’s newest national park (2005), and it was wonderful.  This is the wintering place for Lewis and Clark, as they had to stay in the area until spring before they could start back east after their expedition to the ocean.  We saw both videos the park had to offer, and walked through the fort that was a replica of what was built back in 1805.  From there we went to Fort Stevens, and did some hiking and geo-caching there  This particular fort didn’t seem to be as well kept up, as the others. We did stop at Fort Columbia in Chinook, WA on our way to Astoria, and we were impressed with that.  They still had the guns in tact there, where all the other forts, they were taken out.  We picked up an Oregon milepost book for the coastline and Hwy. 101 and I noticed that Astoria had a microbrewery. We drove downtown Astoria after our fort tours, and found  the Wet Dog Café and Astoria Brewing Company on the wharf.  What a neat area!  It was on the port of the Columbia River and all the big ships were in the harbor.  There was a lot of activity on the wharf, and this was the place to be!  We met ‘John Foyston’, and his wife, Kathy, who lived in Portland, OR. John had lived in Janesville and Madison in his early years, so he was familiar with WI. He was at the brew pub to ‘talk about beer’.  We didn’t stick around long enough for that, but we enjoyed talking with them.  I forgot to mention that we had SUN today!  We are to have sunny days tomorrow and Sunday, so we hope to hike the trails in our park before we leave on Monday.  We bought our park pass for the Oregon state parks, so we’re covered there.

Fort Columbia State Park Chinook WA

Fort Clatsop National Park Astoria OR

Inside of the fort

Dugout canoe like Lewis and Clark used

'

Jim and 'John' at the Wet Dog Cafe/Astoria Brewing Co. 

  

Oct. 24, 2013 Cape Disappointment SP/Long Beach Peninsula

Oct. 24, 2013  Cape Disappointment/Long Beach Peninsula

It’s another overcast, dreary day, but we can’t let that stop us.  We have limited time here and so much to explore, so we headed north to the Long Beach Peninsula.  It is advertised as ‘The World’s Longest Beach’.  Maybe it is, but that’s about all it has.  We expected the charming quaintness of Door Co. in Wisconsin, but we mostly saw quite old and modest homes, and very few upscale or modern homes, and things were on the edge of trashy.  We did see several hotels, much like we have seen at Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks, NC., and I’m sure they are full in the summertime.  We mostly geo-cached today and found twenty-five of them, and two DNF’s.  One that we couldn’t find turned out to be ‘a matter of timing again’!  I noticed a small group of people further away from us, more toward the ocean.  It looked like a man and his girlfriend, and a camera crew and a couple of extra ladies.  When they finished, they came closer toward us, and I just had to ask what they were doing.  My first thought was that he was going to propose to her, and he hired this group to tape it.  As it turns out, they are filming for a Reality TV program on Home and Garden, and it will air in about a month.  They are doing beachfront homes, and this couple is to choose from three that are shown them.  They all seemed very friendly and willing to talk about their taping.  Jim just kept looking for the geo-cache that we couldn’t find, and was surprised that I was bold enough to gather my information.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We ended our day with a great meal of halibut in Long Beach at a nice little restaurant.  

Welcome to Long Beach Peninsula

Grey Whale skeleton - our geo-cache site

Reality TV crew

Salty old fisherman woodcarving

Oct. 23, 2013 Cape Disappointment SP

Oct. 23, 2013 Cape Disappointment State Park

We were fogged in this morning, so we went to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center to see what it had to offer.  It was quite extensive and informative, and we did watch the video they had, also.  I was still wondering why this is called “Cape Disappointment” because I thought it reflected how Lewis and Clark felt when they found the ocean, and I couldn’t understand how they could  be unhappy with this area, and they accomplished what they set out to do!  I saw a banner in the center, with the picture of English fur trader, and explorer, Captain John Meares, who had sailed in 1788 to this area looking for the passage into the country.   He thought it was a bay, so he turned back disappointed, for not finding the river, and therefore, named it Cape Disappointment..  It was President Thomas Jefferson who instructed Lewis and Clark, in 1803 after the Louisiana Purchase, to explore a way, by land to reach the ocean.  They came down the Columbia River and ended at Cape Disappointment in 1805.  We hiked up to the Cape Disappointment lighthouse and it was an exhilarating jaunt! One can only imagine the hardships they endured on their more than two year trek across the country, not to mention their return trip. Even though we were fogged in today, we were enlightened!  The lighthouse at Cape Disappointment, being built in 1856, is the oldest functioning lighthouse on the west coast.

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse 

Dead Man's Cove - hike to the lighthouse

Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center

View of the center from the lighthouse

Oct. 22, 2013 Cape Disappointment State Park WA

Oct. 22, 2013  Cape Disappointment – campground

We had a nice drive down Hwy. 101 to Ilwaco, then south a short distance to Cape Disappointment State Park in the lower region of coastal Washington.  We are very happy with our first impression, and our site is excellent.  We are going to hate to leave here.  Once we got settled in, we walked a short distance to the ocean, and it was glorious!  It was nearing high tide, so our first glimpse of the ocean here was exciting to see.  We were within sight of one of the two lighthouses in the state park, as well, so after chatting with another couple for a while, we walked down the beach.  We read that fog is present 106 days out of the year….that’s nearly 1 in every 3 days!  We’ll take advantage of the sunny days, and geo-cache on the cloudy ones.  I’m glad I loaded those 90 caches at our last spot as we have no wifi or internet service to our coach. We found a place where our Verizon internet will receive and send out e-mails, so we’ll have to go back to the old way of doing this on ‘Word’ and transferring them to my blog when we can get online.   Jim is having a hard time setting the satellite dish up, also, but it might be because of the heavy cloud cover, or the many trees here.  This park has many hiking trails and we are anxious to check them out.  We need to start building up our stamina for the hikes in AZ when we get there!  

Campground view at Hoquiam WA

Ocean at high tide - Cape Disappointment SP

Lighthouse on Cape Disappointment

Oct. 21, 2013 Hoquiam WA

Oct. 21, 2013 Hoquiam WA

This was our last day here, so we did get our errands run, and we picked up some salmon.  I made some chowder and we told some people that we met here last night that we would join them tonight at the clubhouse and we'd bring a bottle of Wollersheim's Wine over for them to share with them.  Carolyn and Kent are great people, and we feel like we have known them longer than 2 days!  They are from Maryland and they are 'on the road' as well.  We shared stories of our trip and places to stay that we liked, and really enjoyed our conversations.  They wanted our blog, and we wish them a great trip.  We'll head out in the morning and look forward to our new territory.

Cheers!  Kent, Carolyn, Marlene & Jim 

Oct. 20, 2013 Hoquiam WA

Oct. 20, 2013 Hoquiam, WA

Happy Birthday, Lynn!  It's a quiet day for us, so I loaded about 90 caches for our trip this coming week. We are never sure when we get to a new place if we have internet or phone service, so I wanted to be sure we had the geo-caches covered.  We are excited to move farther south, as it looks very interesting and beautiful.  We reserved a site in Cape Disappointment State Park WA for six nights, arriving on Tuesday, Oct. 22nd.  This is the area where we hook up with Lewis and Clark again, and all the informational things in the area, regarding them.  We did get to see the Badger game yesterday and the Packer game is on today. Tomorrow we will stock up on groceries for our move, and get haircuts!  That seems to be one of the hardest things to get done while living on the road.  If we don't publish a blog for tomorrow, we want to wish Judy and Phil a 'Happy 18th Anniversary' tomorrow!  I'm not sure we will get out to see the Razor Clam Diggers before we leave here, but according to the logs on the caches I loaded for Cape Disappointment, they are down there, also.  No pictures to post today.

Oct. 19, 2013 Hoquiam/Westport

Oct. 19, 2013 Hoquiam/Westport WA
Today was another sunny day in Hoquiam WA and we had some geo-caches loaded, so we went south and west to Westport.  We stopped at three state parks and our main goal was to get to Westport.  It's right on the ocean, and your typical seaboard town.  We found two lighthouses, one was old (1898) and is Washington's tallest lighthouse at 107' tall.  It is the west coast's third tallest lighthouse.  The other lighthouse is the modern construction and it just doesn't have the character that the old ones have.  We drove to the ocean while in Westport and the parking lot was nearly full.  We wondered what was going on, and when we reached the top of the sand dunes, we could see a pretty good surf and a lot of surfers riding the waves!  Today we found 14 caches and two DNF's. We think one of them has been muggled as 5 people before us couldn't find it, either.  We reached 1301 caches found so far to date.  Our weather is hovering in the 60's for a high and in the 40's at night.  We'll take it!

This one is for you, Barb!  107 feet tall

Surfers at Westport WA

Modern lighthouse

Driftwood whales