Not long after we entered Oregon, I looked out the car window and saw a spectacular sight: the TOP of the clouds! Seeing it from a plane is one thing, but seeing it from a car is quite surreal! The sea of clouds extended as far as we could see into the distance. There was a lot of oohing and ahhing over this incredible sight!
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| Dad on Cloud 9 ;) |
I don't think we were up particularly high - it's just that the bank of cloud was hanging extremely low over the coastline, as you can see in the following photos taken 3 hours later. This awe-inspiring view was my favourite on the whole trip...
On Thursday we had lunch in a small town that seemed to have an inordinate number of pizza joints and gone-out-of-business restaurants along the main thoroughfare. We eventually found a bustling seafood shack at a marina off the main highway, and warmed up with some fish and chips and clam chowder.
On Thursday and Friday nights, we stayed at a beachside motel in Yachats (which I had been calling "Yack-ats", but a laughing local told us was pronounced "Yaw-hots").
On Friday we left Roxy at the motel to do some work, while the rest of us retraced half an hour of the previous evening's drive to explore the town of Florence. We're pretty sure some of the most stunning coastal views were on this portion of the drive that we did three times, but on Thursday it was dark and on Friday it was foggy and raining, so we didn't get to see much of it!
We forgot our camera on the day trip to Florence, but it had a cute little historical district along the river. We had lunch at a British restaurant, wandered in and out of galleries and speciality shops, bought some kites, and finished up with a warm drink before heading back up to Yachats.
On Saturday, we left Yachats and headed north again. We had lunch at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, and then watched from the upstairs viewing room as hundreds of blocks of cheese travelled along the conveyor belts and were packaged up, supervised diligently by the assembly line workers. We read the signs detailing the history of dairy cooperatives and cheese production in the region, and finished up our visit with some cheap and yummy gelato.
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| Tillamook Cheddar production |
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| Giant blocks of cheese! |
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| "Cheese? No thanks, I'll have a handbag!" |
After leaving the factory we continued on to Cannon Beach, seemingly the most famous and oft-recommended spot on the Oregon coast. After we eventually found a spot to park, and wrestled our way through some shoulder-high grass and across a few sand dunes to access a beautiful empty beach, we put one of our new kites to good use. Flying a kite in such a peaceful and picturesque location, while waves rolled in and horses galloped past, was one of the absolute highlights of the trip for me.
From Cannon Beach we headed inland to Beaverton, near Portland, and stayed the night at a hotel there. On Sunday morning we went to a meeting nearby, and that afternoon we drove the rest of the way home.
And that was our 9 day road trip from Las Vegas to Vancouver via the California and Oregon coasts! Hope you enjoyed the drive. :)
