Cape Meares

There’s more to Tillamook than Cheese: There’s Ice Cream… Pacific Coast Series #22

/ Curt Mekemson / 30 Comments
Unless you live in Oregon or have traveled through the state on the Pacific Coast Highway, it’s likely that you think of cheese or ice cream when you hear the word Tillamook rather than the town or region. The products are distributed widely throughout the US. The Tillamook Creamery produces 170,000 pounds of cheese and 18,000 gallons of ice cream every day and has a cold storage facility capable of aging 50 million pounds of cheese at once. It has a secondary creamery in the town of Boardman on the Colombia River east of Portland that produces another 300,000 pounds of cheese a day.

Peggy and I normally include Tillamook on our route when we travel up the Oregon Coast. We are big fans of the ice cream. Both of the containers above are in the process of being eaten! They were given to us by our niece, Christina, last week when we visited her in Olympia. She knows our taste in ice cream. Our weekly Date Day treat for years has been a substantial bowl of Tillamook’s vanilla ice cream topped with hot fudge and whipped cream. Peggy likes to add a sprinkle of Heath Bar English Toffee Bits to hers. I sometimes substitute Irish cream liquor for the hot fudge. Whatever we add, the total package adds up to decadence.

We also like Tillamook’s cheese. I often have its pepper jack on hand. But there are so many excellent cheeses out there, most of what we eat comes from different creameries. Our trip up the Pacific Coast over the past three months qualified as a cheese lover’s dream— and we took full advantage of it.

The entrance to the visitor center at the Tillamook Creamery. A large restaurant and ice cream parlor is on the left. Visitors are invited to watch the processing of cheese on the right. There is also a large gift shop where anything the creamery produces is for sale. With over 1.3 million visitors annually, the creamery is one of Oregon’s top tourist destinations. On a busy summer day, up to 17,000 visitors will tour the facility.
It all starts with cows, and, when you walk into the entrance, Tilly the Cow is there to greet you. The creamery is actually a cooperative owned by local dairy farmer families that go back several generations. One example of the importance of cattle in the region was that the herds had a special evacuation route across the coastal mountains during World War II in case of a Japanese invasion.
My fellow blogger and friend Crystal Trulove of the blog, Conscious Engagement, came over from Portland to visit us in Tillamook. Her best bud, Pedro, and his two sons Liam and Andre, joined us in chowing down on various flavors of ice cream at the creamery. Bone also made it into the photo. Crystal, who is a Cherokee, took Bone with her to visit the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. (BTW: For new followers of this blog, Tom Lovering, a friend of mine, and I found Bone when we were backpacking in 1977. Bone has been traveling with us and friends ever since. He has been to over 50 countries and had incredible adventures, including being blessed by the Pope, attending a Presidential Press Conference, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and being married at Burning Man to the beautiful Bonetta.)
We also visited the Tillamook Forest Center with Crystal, Pedro and the boys. Smokey the Bear greets visitors. An old donkey steam engine can be seen on the side. Crystal took this photo from a fire tower that is next to the Center.
The fire tower.
Peggy and Crystal snuggle up to Smokey. The bear looks like he has put on a few pounds. I’d say it’s middle age spread except Smokey has left middle age far behind. He turns 80 in August. Shouldn’t his fur be showing some grey hair?
The inside of the Tillamook Forest Center is crammed full of information on the forest industry and tells the story of how the area recovered from three devastating fires in the 40s and 50s
Tha attractive Wilson River flows by the Forest Center. A walking bridge across the river provides great views. This is looking down the river. (Photo by Crystal Trulove.)
Looking upstream from the bridge.
As might be expected, given that Tillamook is a few miles away from the spectacular Pacific Northwest coast, there is also great scenery in the area. We were staying at the Netarts Garden RV Resort on Netarts Bay and this was the view from our campground. The dots are seals— bellied up to the sand bar, so to speak.
A closer look…
And closer.
The Netarts Garden RV Resort lived up to its name by being covered with flowers such as these.
A Calla Lily…
And this rose.
You know what they say, however: A rose by any other name is still a rose. We found this wild one out on Cape Meares, which is just up the road from Netarts Bay.
The roses decorated a path leading up to the Cape Meares Lighthouse.
The lighthouse, framed by trees and bushes.
A signboard informed us that the French hand-ground Fresnel Lens is one of only two eight sided lights in the US. The other is in Hawaii.
The Cape Meares Lighthouse has the distinction of being the shortest lighthouse on the Oregon Coast.
The Octopus Tree is another well-know feature of Cape Meares. Whether created by nature or careful pruning by Native Americans, the sitka spruce has eight branches that travel outwards parallel to the ground and then shoot up into the air. (One of the original limbs has been cut off, in case you are counting.)
Peggy used me as model…
Sitka spruce cones.
Like so many other locations along the Pacific coast, there were towering seas stacks…
And plunging cliffs. Last time we were here, we watched baby murres flutter down to the ocean and their waiting fathers. That’s it for today. The next post will take us up to Olympia and Olympic National Park.

The Cape Meares Lighthouse, an Octopus Tree, and the Three Rock Arches of Oregon

/ Curt Mekemson / 30 Comments

Cape Meares Lighthouse

At 38-feet tall, the Cape Meares Lighthouse is the shortest lighthouse in Oregon. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)

Towering cliffs, abundant sea life, a lighthouse, massive rocks rising out of the ocean, the Octopus Tree, and an old-growth forest of Sitka Spruce… How could we resist? With the sun tentatively breaking through the clouds, Peggy and I grabbed our cameras, packed our raingear, and headed out to Cape Meares, which is located about 30 minutes away from Tillamook, Oregon.

But first, our stomachs demanded lunch, so we stopped at the Pelican Brewing Company in Tillamook for a hamburger and, of course, a beer. Peggy and I shared a pint of tasteful ale. The Northwest is noted for its great craft beers and Pelican has some dandies. Several have won national and international awards.

Pelican Brewing Company

Good things were brewing at the Pelican Brewing Company in Tillamook, Oregon.

Curt Mekemson enjoying a pint at Pelican Brewing Company in Tillamook, Oregon.

Cheers! (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)

Having tamed our hunger and thirst, we headed out to the coast and were soon perched on an overlook admiring the Three Arch Rocks, so named because each one contains an arch. Of greater significance, the rocks are known for their large nesting colonies of Common Murres, Cormorants, Western Gulls, storm-petrels, auklets, Black Oystercatchers, Tufted Puffins, and Pigeon Guillemots. In 1907, Teddy Roosevelt declared the area a wildlife sanctuary, the first in the US west of the Mississippi. He did so on the recommendation of a pair of young conservationists, William Finley and Herman Bohlman, who had watched hunters decimate the sea lion population on the rocks, and even worse, observed local ‘sportsmen’ row out to the rocks on Sundays and use the birds for target practice, killing thousands.

 

Three Rock Arches near Cape Meares

Three Rock Arches as seen from an overlook just before the small town of Oceanside.

Three Rock Arches near Oceanside

Peggy used her telephoto to pull in the middle of the Three Arch Rocks. While you can’t see through the arch at this angle, you can see how big it is. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)

Three Rock Arches 1

A convenient pine provided a different perspective.

We drove on to the Cape Meares Lighthouse where a sign in the parking lot suggested a detour toward the Octopus Tree that sent our imaginations spiraling out of control. Was this a magic tree of fantasy lore? Would we be swept up in its tentacles? Naturally, we had to check it out. The tree turned out to be a Sitka Spruce with eight trunk-like limbs that once made it into Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The story behind its unique shape is that the local Tillamook Indians shaped it to grow that way, created a sacred site where elders could gather to make important decisions and Shamans would travel on their mystical journeys. A few yards away from the tree, a plunging cliff provided more views of the Three Arch Rocks, this time backlit by the sun. Peggy found a man operating a camera drone on the edge of the cliff, capturing pictures of the 200-foot drop off that we weren’t willing to lean out far enough to get.

Sitka Spruce forest at Cape Meares

We walked through a Sitka Spruce forest to get to the Octopus Tree.

Octopus Tree

The Octopus Tree is surrounded by a fence to keep it from eating people. Whoops, fake news. It’s surround by a fence to keep young and old kids from climbing on it.

Octopus Tree

The Tillamook Indians were said to place their canoes on the branches. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)

Three Rock Arches backlit

We were south of the cape looking north when we took the first photos of the Three Rock Arches. Here we were looking south with the rocks back lit by the sun. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)

Three Rock Arches backlit

This shot of the rocks gave the feeling of a lurking sea monster with the light showing through one of the arches serving as its eye.

Three Rock Arches

Two of the arches can be seen in this photo by Peggy. The rock on the left is the same one she took a close up of from the other direction.

Man with drone at Cape Meares.

The drone man who was capturing shots of the cliffs.

Walking back toward the lighthouse, we found more cliffs on the other side of the peninsula where the lighthouse sits. These featured a waterfall that tumbled down into the ocean. We also noticed white guano (bird poop) decorating the cliff sides, a sure sign that birds build their nests along the cliffs. Imagine being a young bird looking over the edge of your nest and pondering your fate.

Waterfalls 1

The waterfalls came tumbling down. The white spots on the opposite cliff show the sites of bird nests.

A sign at the site informed us that baby birds are either flyers or jumpers. Murrelet chicks, who are fliers, have been observed pacing back and forth in their nest for a couple of days, flapping their wings frantically, and nervously peering over the edge before they finally take the plunge. It’s worse for Common Murres. Their mom kicks them out of the nest when they are three weeks old… before they can fly! No Mom of the Year there.  They simply stand on the edge and jump, hoping that their stubby wings will guide them to them into the ocean instead of the rocks below. Dad patiently waits in the ocean where he will take over parenting responsibilities for a few weeks until the babies can fend for themselves. Meanwhile, a whole host of hungry predators are waiting below chanting “Crash! Crash! Crash!”

While I am on the subject of birds and food, I learned at Cape Meares that the Tufted Puffins have a barbed tongue that they use to spear fish. They can get three or so minnow-sized fish on their tongue at once. The first one is pushed up the tongue by the second and the second by the third. The barbs hold them in place until, I assume, baby birds wrest them free. I also found out that a pair of Peregrine Falcons were known to nest in the area. These birds are the fastest animals in the world. They fly high above their prey, fold their wings and literally fall, or dive, hitting speeds up to 250 miles per hour (402 KPH) before smacking into their dinner.

At 38-feet tall, The Cape Meares Lighthouse is known for being the shortest lighthouse in Oregon. Given that it stands on a 217-foot tall cliff, however, size probably doesn’t matter. The lighthouse was built on location but the first order Fresnel lens (pronounced ‘fraynel’) was wrestled up the cliff in 1899 using a wood crane built from local timber. The lens had been manufactured in France and shipped around Cape Horn and up the coast to Oregon. It was built with four primary lenses and four bull’s-eye lenses providing light that can be seen 21 miles out at sea.

Cape Meares

This T-Rex perspective of Cape Meares by the Fish and Wildlife Service provides a good view of the cliffs. The lighthouse is the white speck at the end of the lower ‘jaw.’ The Octopus Tree is on the upper end of the lower jaw. The waterfall was inside the lower jaw.

Cape Meares Lighthouse

The Trail down to the Cape Meares Lighthouse. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)

Fresnel Lens in Cape Meares Lighthouse

A close up of the Fresnel lens with its red bullseye.

Cape Meares Lighthouse 2

A final view of the Cape Meares Lighthouse.

 

NEXT POST: Peggy and I make our way through a rainforest to the highest waterfall on the Oregon Coast.

 

SaveSave