Florence to Lincoln City, Oregon
Sunday, April 20
This morning dawned bright and beautiful in Florence...promising (maybe) a great day for a ride. This is the view we had when we stepped out on the balcony of our room.
After getting dressed, we went downstairs to eat breakfast. We stopped by this little waterfall in front of the hotel to take each other's pictures. After several shots, a lady came by and offered to take photos of both of us. We took her up on the offer and ended up being more pleased with her results than with anything we took.
After eating, we went back upstairs to pack and finish getting dressed; and, of course, to shoot the morning selfies...this time with shots of before and after getting "leathered up" and ready to ride.
Today's adventure proved to be as exciting and beautiful as those of previous days, with changing views of shorelines, mountains, and forests (and sometimes all of the above at the same time.)
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It wasn't long until the haze and distant clouds became dark clouds, winds, and rains of various intensities, but we motored on, mainly because we didn't have another choice.
During the different stages of our adventure, Barbara has taken photos through the windshield to show the road from my point of view. The following is a collage of shots taken throughout the journey today to show my narrower view as I negotiated the many curves while Barbara got to see the "big picture."
We were told by other riders both before and during our trip out west that the ride along the Oregon coast would provide some of the most beautiful sights in the country, and we found that to be very true today. Angry seas and broad vistas of redwoods, mountains, and coastlines almost overloaded our visual senses.
When we left Florence this morning we had every intention of arriving in Lincoln City in time for a morning church service. After all, we left early, and Lincoln City was only a couple of hours away. What we should have learned already, is that along the coast, miles and minutes don't even come close to equating. It would have been a slow enough drive anyway, but the rains slowed us down even more...especially on some of the sharp curves.
So, we changed our plans on the fly and Barbara started googling for the nearest church. And, we found one in Newport, about halfway between Florence and Lincoln City. It was starting to sprinkle and black clouds were looming on the horizon when we found the church, so we quickly covered Taz and went inside...heard a good sermon and some great music and met some really nice folks who were interested in our trip.
When church was over, we headed into the black clouds and more rain, but still enjoyed the beautiful sights along the way.
The trees in this photo are a little out of focus because of the speed we were going, but what we really wanted to show was the ocean beyond the trees.
When we were in the Greasy Spoon in Langlois yesterday, the folks who told us about the Elephant Rock and the Face Rock State Scenic View Point in Bandon also told us that we needed to stop in Depoe Bay to see a beautiful shoreline and eat the best food on the Oregon Coast at the Sea Hag Cafe. Well, we decided that since it was lunchtime and we were hungry as we wheeled into Depoe Bay, we'd just find that cafe and give it a try. We darn near missed the place, but were able to slow down enough to pull into a parking spot right in front of the Sea Hag.
There were lots of choices on the menu, but we settled on a clam chowder bread bowl for Barbara and fish and chips for me. When the food came and we took our first bites, we knew we had made the right choices. In fact, it was so good that we decided we wouldn't order either of those dishes again during this trip because it couldn't possibly get any better. The Sea Hag doesn't look like much either inside or out, but it is an absolute "must stop" for any traveler on the Oregon coast.
A few miles up the road the weather began to clear a little and we were better able to enjoy the scenery along the last few miles of the day's journey. Well, at least it quit raining, which was much better for us.
We finally rode into Lincoln City and found our hotel for a couple of nights. Our room wasn't ready when we got there, but the manager let us start a couple of loads of wash and I unloaded our luggage from Taz and the trailer and put it all on a rolling cart until we could get moved in.
The hotel had a beautiful fountain in front that just begged for someone with a camera to capture it for posterity, so we took it upon ourselves to meet that need.
Later, we went out for a bit to explore our surroundings, but soon returned to our room to rest and relax after a long and tiring ride.
+++++++
Monday, April 21
We were able to sleep in for a bit and take our time getting ready for today's ride to Tillamook, Oregon.
"Why Tillamook," one might ask, and the answer would be, "Simple, we heard about a cheese factory there and wanted to visit to compare it to the cheese factory we saw on Wisconsin when we took our first trip on Taz."
So, around 11:30 am (told you we were taking our time) we took off up Highway 101. What we found out was that it takes a long time to get out of Lincoln City. An exaggeration would be to say that Lincoln City is two blocks wide and ten miles long, but that wouldn't be much of an exaggeration. Actually, what is known as Lincoln City is seven different communities, one after another on Highway 101, with each community sharing common city limit boundaries with its neighbors. Add in a bunch of traffic signals and traffic lanes that appear and disappear at random intervals, and one has a recipe for a longer than expected ride from one end of the town to another.
Having said all that, we worked our way out of town with the northbound traffic, pretty much leaving the shoreline behind us as we moved slightly inland.
We decided at the beginning of the ride today that we would look for special places along the way to take photos on the return trip. Otherwise, Barbara would just point and shoot whenever she saw something that looked particularly noteworthy.
We held to our word until we got into Tillamook, but when Barbara saw the football field and the sign proclaiming it the home of the Cheesemakers, I just had to slow down so she could get this shot.
"Cheesemaker's"...now there's a name to strike fear in the hearts of opposing schools!!!
We drove on through town and reached the Tillamook Cheese Factory. There was a self-guided tour through the plant, but first, we had to have a little photo phun with one of the displays.
We said earlier that we wanted to compare the Tillamook Cheese Factory to the plant we saw in Wisconsin. "Compare" is hardly the word to use...this was a huge contrast. Where the plant in Wisconsin was a small one-room family operation, Tillamook is a huge, highly mechanized operation with multiple vats.and assembly lines for processing the hundreds of 40-pound blocks of cheese daily.
While we found the processing rooms to be very interesting and the signage to be informative, our favorite part of the tour was the tasting room. where we were able to taste several different kinds of cheeses, including our favorite, the cheddar curds.
We decided that this site was interesting enough to share with the grandkids and our neighbors back in Mineola, so we bought some postcards to send out. While I was doing the postcards, Barbara did some more exploring and voted that she needed to sample some of the famous Tillamook ice cream...the sugar-free kind, of course, and she pronounced it very tasty.
We went outside to take a few more pictures and ended up talking to an elderly gentleman who had some questions about Taz. After explaining as much as we know about our Can-Am, the gentleman told us that he still rode his motorcycle, but since he was now 85 years old, he was thinking of getting a trike like Taz. You gotta admire that kind of spirit!
We left the Tillamook factory and drove back south on 101 to the Blue Heron Cheese Company. We thought it would be a smaller processing plant, but it was really just an outlet store for cheeses and many other fine food products. We ended up leaving some money on the counter as we walked out with some tasty products to take home with us.
On the way out of town, we saw an air museum on the east side of the highway. We had been told by someone along the way that the museum floor space is the equivalent of six football fields...large enough to hold some of the largest aircraft and dirigibles. Out in the field behind the building are some vertical posts, used for tying down the dirigibles that flew in to this field back in the day. We didn't have time to visit the museum today, but it will definitely be on the "to-do" list on the next visit to the area.
We found that this part of the country was more in the nature of farmland. There were lots of pastures, grazing land, and dairy farms...all important for the making of cheese.
The farther south we rode, the more the views changed back to what one might expect of land that was between the mountains and the shoreline.
Later, we came to a view point turnout where we stopped to see the ocean as we faced west, and the mountains as we faced east.
This was the view as we prepared to pull back onto 101 and headed south toward Lincoln City.
This is an area designated as a tsunami zone. We'd seen a number of these along the way and learned earlier in Lincoln City that low-lying areas within a few blocks of the ocean are designated as tsunami areas. Basically, if you are close to the shoreline and are going downhill, you are entering a tsunami area. If, however, you are in that area and driving uphill, you are leaving the tsunami area. Tsunamis have occurred along the Oregon coast, but the effects have been negligible except in a couple of instances involving small, shallow harbors.
The rest of our ride for the day was marked by more beautiful scenery. Boy, did God ever do some great work in the Pacific Northwest!!!
And finally, a patchwork of beautiful flowers and leaves. We don't know what it is, but it sure grabs your attention.
On the way back into Lincoln City we stopped at Burger King to grab a couple of chicken wraps and then returned to the Best Western to reflect on the day's ride and work on the journal/blog before starting to pack for tomorrow's new adventure.
“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” - Samuel Johnson
From the Best Western Plus Landmark Inn in Lincoln City, Oregon,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams/Gramsy
