Another hot, sunny day here on Saturday (13 Sept) in Tillamook, OR.  We’ve been told that this nice weather is highly unusual for this time of year.  We decided to get out and enjoy it for most of the day.

But first, here’s a morning picture of our RV site at the Elks RV Park. It’s nice having full hook-ups and a good internet connection for a change.  We have WiFi through the park and also have good AT&T 4G signal on the iPhones.  We haven’t even turned on the MiFi JetPack with Verizon.

The RV Park hostess provided a map yesterday at check-in that was chock full of tourist attractions and activities, so with map in hand, we headed out for another day-trip.

We decided to take a loop (tip was courtesy of our neighbor Susie Claxton) by going South from the RV Park which is just off Hwy 101 and then turning West to skirt along the coast going North again on Three Capes Road.  We left the park at 10 AM.  Shortly after driving South, we saw a sign for Munson Creek Falls to the East.  We decided to check it out… you can never get enough falls, right?  It was only 1-1/2 miles off our intended route on a mostly bumpy dirt road.  Once in the turn-around parking lot, we saw that it was a 1/4 mile hike.  We felt up to that.

The trail was nice and reminded us of being back in the Hoh Rainforest again.  We were the first people there, but it was short-lived.  As soon as we got on the trail we saw about 4 other vehicles pull into the parking area too.

The trail was closed just a little ways before the bottom of the falls.  This is as close as we could get (pic below).  We said, “Ooh, Aah”, took a picture, and headed back.  We passed the many other folks along the trail that were coming in while stopping to answer the common question: “What kind of dog is that?”

After the falls, we got back on Hwy 101 for a short distance before turning West as planned.  We skirted the coast on the unusually wavy and bumpy road in dire need of repair.  We passed the seemingly popular Whiskey Creek Fish Hatchery, there were absolutely no parking spots left, even the sides of the road were full of cars, so we drove on.

We kept our eyes open for a place to stop and eat breakfast, but found nothing.  We didn’t eat before we left this morning 🙁

We stopped at this nice beach that was being enjoyed by lots of folks out for the weekend.  There were signs posted that said not to approach the sea lions, but we didn’t see any.

We then drove to Cape Meares.  It turns out the road past this point was closed, so we would have to double back a ways to get to Tillamook… still no sign of a restaurant or cafe to get breakfast at.

But, here’s a sign that describes Cape Meares:

And a highly ornate informational kiosk in the parking area for the Cape Meares Lighthouse.

We walked down to the lighthouse and took pictures of the scenery along the way.

Here I tried to zoom in on some sea lions or other such related critters that were hanging out on the rocky coastline below.

View from near the lighthouse.

We took turns taking the free tour through the lighthouse.  They didn’t allow dogs.

 

I took some pictures inside the lighthouse:

 

The floor above that surrounds the light had glass inserts in the floor.

View from inside the lighthouse at the top.

We took a different trail back up to the parking lot.

We looked real hard… but didn’t get to see any whales,  Stilla was disappointed.

Back at the parking lot, there was a relatively short path that led up the hill to an Octopus Tree.  Here’s the informational placard.

Pretty cool in a weird kind of way.

We then took the long way around to get back to Hwy 101 because of the road closure… still didn’t see a place to get breakfast!  So when we got into the town of Tillamook, we spotted a Pancake House that served breakfast all day.  We found a spot out front, put up the sun-visors, and cracked the windows for Coach while we went in and got a late breakfast finally.

After breakfast, er lunch, we debated on whether to go to the Cheese Factory or the Air Museum.  We figured the Cheese Factory definitely didn’t allow dogs, so we drove to the Air Museum to see if they were dog-friendly.  They weren’t.  But we found out they have a nice cafe just inside their doorway and it’s only a $7 entrance fee for veterans.  But it was too hot to leave Coach in the Silverado so we headed back to the RV Park with the thought we could leave Coach in the air-conditioned Motorhome.  But, I think we were both feeling tired and lethargic from the big breakfast, so we just hung out at the Park the rest of the day instead of going back.  There’s always tomorrow, right?

I spent time in the afternoon-evening to catch up on my blog post for the trip down here.  And here I am again this morning (Sunday) catching up on this blog post for Saturday.  Time to close this post and head out for more adventures…

C U tomorrow!