The Dale's Trails: Rainy Days, a “Spruce Goose”, and Cutting the Cheese

This post is a mixture from 5/19 through 5/21/10. We have had several rainy days, one steady rain day, the others off and on.

We saw the smallest navigable harbor in Depoe Bay. As boaters we can appreciate the cut in from the ocean to the harbor.

Some of the beaches here look like logging grave yards with all of the “drift wood” (whole trees) that drifted up onto shore. Really neat to see and convenient for an on the beach campfire. I still think it is strange how each beach here is different. Some have sand, some have cobbles, some with tide pools, and some with logs.

When we were walking a beach looking into the tide pools, where I could stay for days and days, I saw this funny looking bird. I then stumbled onto a seal pup resting on shore. Mom was no where in sight, so I had to meet the pup up close.

Evergreen Air Museum is the home for the Spruce Goose, the largest wooden sea plane that Howard Hughes built and only flown once. Hughes kept this plane in climate controlled storage from the late 1940’s to 1976 when he died at a tune of 1 million dollars a year. This museum was a walk down memory lane for Tommy, especially the helicopter section. They had on display the 1st helicopter he flew in, an H23. H13, like on the show Mash was also in his unit. He does like his airplanes but loves his helicopters, especially the Hueys. Hueys do something to him. He loves the look and the sound of them. They are workhorses and he worked and flew in them for most of his career. He also knows how important that distinctive sound that they make is, and it is distinctive, to the Vietnam Vets.

Tillamook cheese factory is the largest cheese factory in Oregon and was a yummy stop for us. We made cheese sampling our lunch after we took a tour. Of course pounds of it came home with us. They also make ice cream. We had enough dairy in one day to last us a month.

The D River is the worlds smallest river at a whopping 120 ft long.

We crossed the 45th parallel which is the half way point from the equator to the North Pole. Even though it was rainy here I really hated to leave. The beauty of the water, cliffs, tide pools and towns made me want to stay. I think I could live here – in the summers of course.

On towards Washington State today. We crossed into WA by way of Rt 101 and had to cross 2 bridges and a causeway. One bridge was so long it needed 2 support structures at either end and the causeway was so long you couldn’t see where it ended. To our friends Snookie and Bob this should be a flashback since you traveled this exact road one year ago - almost to the day!

We stayed at Bruceport Park, a county park right on the Willapa Bay. What a fantastic county park campground. A stroll through the woods, lined with pretty little white flowers in the middle of the path, brought us to the beach for wonderful sunset and eagle sightings. We noticed at 9pm how light it was still outside. The more north you go, the more daylight as you approach the summer solstice. We found ourselves making shadow figures on the RV during the sunset.