Oregon Chill in the Land of Cheese

Barn quilts can be seen on many building walls throughout the town of Tillamook.

The folks in Oregon are so chill.

Today we sat through at least two minutes at a green light, three cars back, and nobody honked. And the chill must be rubbing off on me too because although I wondered what was going on I also did not honk. How uncharacteristic of me. Definitely a different plane of existence than I used to live on.

Milk Processing at Tillamook Creamery, phase one

This week we explored Tillamook, Oregon.  Land of cheeeeeeeeese. Yes we both love cheese and this stop has been on my radar for quite some time.

The crowds at Tillamook Creamery

We were so deep into our Oregon Chill that we were caught completely unprepared for the tourist insanity at the Tillamook Creamery visitor center. We heard the hamburgers were not to be missed - so I waited in line for 30 minutes to order our food, and then we waited for it to arrive another 45 minutes or so. The hamburgers were mediocre - definitely not worthy of the wait. The cheese tasting - well, it's the same awesome cheese you can buy at the grocery store - had I known that I would have skipped that line too. But the ice cream... oh my. The line was long but moved really quickly and was totally worth the wait. Many of the flavors served there are experimental or for some other reason not sold to the grocery store chains, so you can only get them there - don't miss this stop if you come by. There is RV parking but at midday it was filled with cars and there wasn't any staff to stop the car drivers from doing that, when we left at 4:00 there was room available for some rigs in that area of the lot. If you're coming in your RV get here early in the day (like dawn) or late in the afternoon and there should be parking for you. At midday forgetaboutit.

Just down the street was the Blue Heron French Cheese company, and they also had a tasting for cheese, but they additionally had tastings for wine, mustards, and locals' dips. We bought some blue cheese dressing that is out of this world. No lines, no waiting, and the lunch there was fabulous. They even had charging stations for electric vehicles - how forward thinking of them.

EV Charging Stations at Blue Heron

Of the two cheese factories the Blue Heron was hands-down my favorite. And it's a Harvest Host location, too, so if we come back this way we'll do the wine tasting and stay the night on their farm.

Some of the cheese offerings at the Blue Heron French Cheese company 

At both places dogs were welcome on the outside patios.

Blimp hangar in Tillamook

We also checked out an old blimp hangar from the 40's clearly visible from the highway; in fact it's probably clearly visible from space. This old half-dome wooden structure was built to house up to 6 blimps, which starting arriving before construction was complete and were pressed into immediate service spotting Japanese submarines and otherwise escorting our West Coast warships in their World War II duties.

Talk about some safe and dry RV parking! Plenty of space - no waiting!

We roll on for Portland next, to be followed by a tour through Washington state.

Internet Speed Comparison Old Mill RV Park, Garibaldi, OR Sampled 7/15/19 at 8:04pm
	MB down	MB up
Calyx (Sprint)	4.79	5.99
Google Fi	8.45	0.84
Jetpack (Verizon)	0	0
Park Wifi	0.6	0.9