Tillamook, OR to Beaverton, OR: April 13

April 13

We began the day with Mass. I think that is a record—going to church twice in one vacation. We went to Sacred Heart in Tillamook. The people were very welcoming and friendly, and the parish bulletin listed a host of wonderful activities and ministries. We suspect that the parish ignores the priest as much as possible and does its own thing. The celebrant was not a pastor, but a parish administrator, so there was something going on a little unusual.

My guess from the accent was that the priest was from South Africa. Tom said he thought it was an affected accent. He was a little pudgy, and quite short and wore a chasuble with a high stiff color. When he sat down, half of his head disappeared into the collar, and all I could think of was a turtle pulling his head part way into his shell. (I didn’t say anything to Tom until after Mass, as I didn’t want him also thinking about turtles.) The priest seemed to think he was Martin Luther King, Jr., reincarnated—but he wasn’t. He preached with great emphasis, usually in the wrong places, raising his voice to thundering levels, then dropping it to a whisper. If he had put words around the delivery that fit with it, it could have been good. It wasn’t.

It seemed that the assembly paid little attention to him while he preached.

At the start of Mass there did not appear to be anyone in the Church under the age of 75—we felt young. A few families with children wandered in late. The choir seemed a bit older than the rest of the assembly, but enthusiastic, in a laid back sort of way. Nothing was sung in an upbeat tempo, perhaps because that was not feasible.

Our first official vacation event of the day was our long anticipated tour of the Tillamook Cheese Factory.

The ship in front of the building is a replica of the “Morning Star of Tillamook,” a two masted schooner built by farmers in 1854 to transport butter to Portland. This is considered the forerunner of the present company, and it’s image is found on the Tillamook labels.



Tillamook Cheese Factory is a 99 year old farmer owned cooperative of more than 150 dairy farms in the Tillamook area.

The cooperative makes cheddar and pepper jack cheese, ice cream in a zillion flavors, butter and other dairy products seven days a week. Their products can be found in many Whole Foods stores and on Johnny Rocket cheeseburgers.



Their cold storage area at the factory holds 50 million pounds of cheese. We decided that in the event of a national disaster, we would head for the Tillamook factory and wait it out there.

Facts we had not previously known:
It takes 5 quarts of milk to make one pound of cheddar cheese.
The orange color in some cheese is from anise. Seems like it would also add taste, but apparently doesn’t.

It was a self guided tour and very interesting. We tend to like those best as we can add our own commentary. We decided neither of us would care to work the cheese line. It is very repetitive work and in at least one line position requires hoisting and turning 40 pound blocks of cheese very frequently.

The tasting room was the best part of the tour. Tillimook cheddar is excellent, and the aged cheddar is of course the best. The pepper jack is nicely buttery and the peppers not very hot. They also had cheese curds (from which the aged cheese is made.) to taste, which we weren’t sure about tasting, but they are quite good. They taste like soft mild cheddar, but with a weird consistency.

We bought a bag of mixed cheese squares to take to the room for dinner. The prices are great at the factory store, and a lot of local folks seemed to be buying as well as tourists.

Although there was a gray, threatening sky, and it was a little misty, but we decided to try the Three Capes Scenic Loop, which passes by Cape Meares, Cape Lookout, and Cape Kiwanda.

Along the way, at Ocean Bay Spit, we passed an area of mud flats (low tide of course—does Oregon ever have high tide?). It sounds awful, but was really very beautiful. As we reached nearer the ocean, and there was actually water near the bank, we passed fishermen all along the bank, some leaning against their cars to fish (not much space there on which to stand) and others more relaxed in canvas folding chairs. One fisherman, who caught our attention, was leaning against a pick up truck that had been towing a log splitter. We wondered if someone at home thought he was out splitting logs instead of fishing.

We found another place with a lighthouse at Cape Meares!




View from path down to the lighthouse. Just to the right of this view, is where the peregrines are nesting on the cliffside (details later in entry):

Cape Meares Light House is only 38 feet tall (Oregon’s shortest), but built on a cliff so that it is 240 feet above the water and its light can be seen for 21 miles.

Tom standing inside the lighthouse next to the lens, talking to the docent (I took these with his camera and made him give me the pictures):

I have no more pictures at this lighthouse stop because my camera battery died and the spare was up a long steep hill in the car. Neither of us wanted to retrieve it and return. Although the lighthouse is atop a cliff, the parking lot is on one higher yet. In years to come, I think I will refer to this trip as the hill climbing travels.

At a lookout above the lighthouse we talked with a couple of “birders” who explained the birds in the area. It is a favorite bird watching spot. The wife had a telescope trained on a pair of nesting peregrines, which we both saw, with a little help. The husband had his telescope rigged with a video camera. While we were there he managed to record the transfer of egg sitting duties from the male to female, which they found quite exciting. The female peregrine appeared to be much bigger than her mate, and they told us the female is 1/3 larger than the male.

It was lovely of the couple to share the telescope with us and answer all the questions that everyone had. They have the perfect avocation and personalites (and patience) to go with it.

Just in front of Cape Meares Light House are two small rocky outcrop islands called Peak and Pyramid Islands. Near them, bobbing on the ocean’s surface and calling out raucously, were “rafts” of murres, small pelagic (only come ashore to nest) water birds. Tom has good pictures of them, check out his blog entry for this date when he posts. The bird watching couple told us the murres would soon fly to the top of the two islands to lay eggs, but were not doing so at present because a couple of eagles were sitting at the far end of the island hoping for a murre feast. Sooner or later the urge would overcome the fear and the murres would land on the islands, probably by the end of the month.

When the murres are nesting on the islands, they reach a density of seven birds per square feet. That sounds a bit cozy.

With the bird watchers’ assistance, we also saw black oyster catchers, which look like large black crows with long red beaks, which we had heard about but not seen. They do not actually eat oysters, it seems.

At Oceanside Beach along the route of the Oregon Islands:

There is a marvelous beach at Cape Kiwanda, right in town. You can walk from a pub, across the parking lot to the beach. There are huge rocks out from shore, like big monoliths.

There were surfers in wet suits and a few foolish folks trying to swim in regular bathing suits. They seemed to do a lot of jumping about on the sand when they left the water. It was cool enough that I wished I had opted for my heavy coat instead of my light jacket.

At the end of the beach a short walk away was a huge dune. The tiny specks on the dune are people attempting to climb it and children running down the face, I think uncontrollably at that point. There were also some rolling downhill, which looked like fun, but wasn’t tempting enough to try.

As we ended the cape tour, we headed inland for a detour toward Portland.

We stopped along the way in McMinnville so Tom could sample some of the Panther Creek wines.

We plan a couple of relaxing days in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland.