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Down the coast to the coastal redwoods in CA. We stopped by this privately run redwoods park because it had been advertising its ski lift through the tree tops for the last 50 miles.
The famous anatomically correct Babe the blue ox. Paul Bunion had a speaker somewhere and a guy hidden in the building with cameras to talk to visitors, the hand waves a few degrees.
These foxgloves outside were planted but this is what was growing thick up and down all the highways wild in Washington
It had taken us 3 days to get across Oregon when I had only budgeted 1 or 2 days. All of my friends from the area told me months in advance to avoid the 101 at all costs around the 4th of July and they were right! They said campgrounds would be booked months in advance as well as all motel rooms because the coast is where everyone in the state tries to vacation. Unfortunately due to time arangements to be in Washington when we were we ended up being here at the worst possible time. I figured we’d just blast across Oregon and miss all the crowds and try to make it to California as fast as possible, boy was I wrong.. Traffic was so bad that in a day of motoring we barely made it 60 miles one day and had our only motorcycle accident the next. It took much longer to get across Oregon than we anticipated so we didnt get to stop to see as many things as we wanted, but at least the scenery was pretty good. Maybe we need to come back another time at a better season. Not too many pics because we kept trying to push on and make up lots of lost time.
Further down the road a view of the OR coast just north of CA.
We hiked back up to where our bike was parked and there was our helmets sitting on the sidewalk next to the bike, What the hell? Someone had been messing with the bike! We ran over and a guy sitting in the shade came up to us and told us what had happened, they had backed into the bike with their SUV and knocked it over @#$% Both of our helmets were dinged from falling off the seat
My Yellowstone bottle had taken the brunt of the fall, I’m so glad none of the bike ended up like this.
Only body damage, a nicked fender. Damnit I just fixed that! I had another one in the exact same place untill our wreck when the insurance replaced the whole fender.
Great now Both turn signal lenses are broken, one from each SUV encounter. The 101 along the Oregon coast is awesome, there was a lot of light houses. We were so far behind schedule but we had to see at least one of them.
We timed it just right at the peak of low tide and got to explore the tide pools along the beach.
By the time the air museum closed and kicked us out it was getting late, we had to turn back to Tillamook Oregon and find a place to stay. Ok, mom & pop place with apartments on the upper floor and ice cold unheated pool $70, big improvement from the gouging the night before in Seaside. Cece had been wanting crab for days, we had to get some now before we leave the coast. Guy at the front desk of our motel recommended a nice place a ways north of Tillamook overhanging a cliff right on the ocean that had live lobster and dungenous crab. That thing was bigger than she was, HUGE!
I went with something a little more tame, seafood pasta.
She thought this was loads of fun LOL
I’m a big engine guy, I could have spent days in this place looking through everything. I had to go out through the rail yard to get a closer look at this thing. A working one of these was going up and down a tourist railway along the coast, since it took us all day to ride 50 miles it passed us a bunch of times. I’ve never seen a steam engine in this configuration, it looks like a huge Moto Guzzi.
Its a giant V Twin under the boiler with an open crank like the old hit and miss engines were. The hit and miss ones were like this for easier access for maintenance and lubrication, but got more dirt contamination and faster wear so they needed more maintenance…
Open drive, yikes! This obviously is from the time when railway safety was self policed 😉
Rolls Royce Merlin After the cheese factory we tried to haul butt down the road to finally get some miles under our belt today. Doing under 100 in a day just isnt going to work. Well a bit south out of town on the 101 when we were just getting into a groove we spotted the Tillamook Air Museum. Theres absolutely no missing it, its an enormous building. I thought OK, our mileage for today is already shot anyway, lets stop to check it out. We watched the film on the history of the place, after it was shut down by the Navy space was leased out for private industry, at one time it housed a lumber yard, a saw mill, and a paper mill all at the same time under one roof. This is hangar B, A was destroyed in a fire after something like a million bales of hay went up. Pictures just dont convey how truly enormous this building is, you could fit a couple office buildings inside.
I’m not much of an expert on flying things and by now all my pictures of the plaques identifying what things were are all scrambled out of order. If you know what these are let me know and I’ll update the post. Back on the road. We really picked a bad day to be trying to get anywhere along the coast. Highway 101 goes through several small towns and all of them were having their local 4th of July parades so traffic was at a standstill for miles and miles. We went through 3 or 4 parades at a snails pace while roasting on the hot bike.
Finally got to Tillamook! We had made a grand total of about 50 miles in 6 hours hah.
Tillamook is my favorite cheese! I refuse to eat that individually wrapped plastic crap they pass off as cheese in my sandwiches. I rediscovered it in my 20’s. My mom said when I was little I wouldn’t eat anything else, she would make fresh bread for us every week with tillamook. When she went back to college and called home 4 yr old me said dad was feeding us nasty sandwiches. LOL She was upset thinking hed let the food get moldy or something, no dad bought the cheaper Kraft stuff with store bought white bread. Gross! 😉
Yet another aquarium. At the hotel we were given a voucher for one free thing of seal food so we had to go to Seaside Aquarium, its one of the last privately owned ones in the country. 28lb lobster! holy crap!
Exploring town. Seaside is a bit like a permanent carnival midway. Arcades, bumper cars, rental 4,6,8 man pettal cars, all the usual carnie miday games to seperate you from your money and the most unhealthy food ever like funnel cake or cotton candy. Never been in a town thats like a year round fair.
Some really impressive hotels here.
Lots of tourist and trinket shops. Messing arround in one of the hat shops. I would totally wear this snowboarding 😉
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