Tag Archives: Elks

Moving Day (Florence, OR)

2014/09/16 davidhobden@mac.com

We said goodbye to our neighbors, Orman & Susie Claxton on Monday morning and were on the road by noon. Our destination for the day was the Elks RV Park near Florence, Oregon. We got the tip for this park from Orman & Susie and it was also mentioned by Mary Langord (Alpine Coach Association) on Facebook. Thanks guys… and it was great seeing you again O&S!

The sky was overcast when we left Tillamook and after a few miles it got worse. It seemed like we drove straight into a fog bank that stayed with us for most of the drive.

We pulled into a rest area with a view of the ocean (picture above) but it was too foggy to see very much. I noticed a couple that had stopped in the rest area in their car and they were taking pictures of our rig. The guy walked over to ask about how we towed the truck. It turns out the couple was from Switzerland and the guy was fascinated by the set up. I answered his questions, he spoke pretty good English. Then Stilla jumped in and we were all talking German. The Swiss couple was doing a 3 week whirlwind tour, trying to see as much as possible of the West coast in the short time they had. We parted ways after exchanging pleasantries.

Here are some pictures we snapped while heading down the Pacific Coast Byway:

I caught a picture of the billboard for the Sea Lion Caves that we heard about. We intend to visit there on Tuesday.

The sun actually peeked out once or twice during the trip. I couldn’t help but notice that lots of the trees on the beach-side of the road were all permanently deformed from the constant wind from the ocean.

The shocks on the Coach sure got a good workout today! Many stretches of Hwy 101 were full of bumps and dips.

At one point – after missing a nice looking pull-off with a view because we were traveling too fast to get slowed down – a second pull-off came into view around a corner… I made a split-second decision to turn in. After I was already committed to the entrance, I saw the sign “Not Recommended for RVs or Trailers”. Now, I ask you, Why can’t they put those signs before the entrance? Anyway, we had to disconnect and jockey around to get back out of there, and darn it – the view wasn’t even worth it. This makes the second time in our travels over the last 4 months that we had to unhook the truck to get turned around somewhere. Oh well, Life is still Good 🙂

We did another stop later at this pull-off where we could look down the cliffs at the ocean. It remained foggy, cold, and sometimes drizzly all day.

We got to the park shortly before 4 PM. Travel distance for the day was about 110 miles.

It’s $20 per night for full hook-ups but no sewer. We can dump on the way out. We paid for two nights and made sure we had the option to extend if we wanted without having to move sites.

Our site at the Elks Lodge RV Park near Florence, OR

I’m starting to see a theme here on the West coast with these Elks Lodges and their RV Parks… this will be the second RV Park we’ve visited that is not physically located at the Elks Lodge itself. However, I understand that the Florence Elks Lodge that owns this park does in fact have more RV parking at their lodge in town. This park is really nice! Maybe even nicer than the one we just left in Tillamook.

For the rest of the day, we just chilled out and mostly stayed inside. I heated up some of those pre-cooked pork ribs for dinner by putting them in a pan on the stove… it worked out pretty well. It was just too chilly outside to break out the grill. Plus, who really likes to clean the grill up after all that BBQ sauce gets everywhere?

Well, that’s all for now folks… check back in to hear how our Tuesday sight-seeing goes… Stilla is still on the look out for whales, and we hope to check sea lions off our list if we visit the caves as planned.

Oregon

Day 2, Tillamook, OR

2014/09/14 davidhobden@mac.com 2 Comments

Welcome to another hot and sunny day (Sunday, 14 Sept) in Tillamook, Oregon. Today we wanted to get out and see the Air Museum and the local cheese factory… and we did! Follow along on our fun-filled day with lots of pictures 🙂

Stilla did the Skype thing to Germany with her brother and sister-in-law, Stefan & Annerose while I finished up the previous days blog post and had breakfast. We got a late start, but finally got on the road around 11 AM. We set the thermostat for 72 degrees and left the air conditioners on for little Coach since we knew he wouldn’t be allowed into any of our proposed destinations for the day.

Our site on Sunday morning at the Tillamook RV Park

Our first stop was the Tillamook Air Museum. We had stopped by there yesterday to check on rates, hours, and dog-friendliness so you may remember these next two pictures I posted already.

Signage for the Air Museum at the corner of Hwy 101 and Long Prairie Rd.

Here’s the giant hangar as viewed from Hwy 101 aka The Pacific Coast Highway.

My friend Wikipedia provides more information on the museum. If you are as interested as I am about this stuff, go to this Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillamook_Air_Museum

The Air Museum also has it’s own website which is a great source for specific aircraft information: http://www.tillamookair.com/aircraft/ Go ahead, click on the link… don’t be afraid.

Here is the hangar door as viewed from the inside.

I noticed this basketball hoop mounted above the hangar door. Someone had a good sense of humor, it’s probably 200 feet from the ground. I’d like to see the person that could make that jump shot.

Interior view of the massive hangar.

The museum offered a discount for military and veterans, so we got in for $7 each. We went into their theater and viewed the 16 minute video on the history of this unique structure. After watching the film, we spent a long time in the adjoining room that was loaded with dioramas, models, picture boards, and display cases of historical stuff that was related to the hangar and/or WWII. Sorry, no pictures here… I had to limit the size of today’s post somehow, right?

Here is a picture of a picture depicting what it looked like back in the day when the blimps were inside.

Although you can’t tell from this picture… This was a HUGE billboard mounted on an inside wall of the hangar depicting the varied sizes of blimps. This hangar was originally built for the K-Class.

There were originally two of these hangars here. We learned that the other hangar was destroyed in a spectacular fire. It was being used to store hay from the adjacent farms at the time.

The following pictures are of some of the aircraft we viewed:

We met up again with our neighbor’s from the RV Park… Orman and Susie Claxton! I mentioned in an earlier post, that we know them from the Alpine Coach Association Group and recent Redmond FMCA Rally that we attended together. We noticed their coach, a Beaver, when we first pulled into the park so we made sure to park next to them. We kept bumping into them throughout the day… not a bad thing.

One interesting tidbit we discovered while walking through the museum hangar, is that they have RV’s stored here in the back half. I figured it must be a way to increase their income. Wouldn’t it be cool if they let you camp there with hook-ups?

We then walked outside to view the funny looking plane… it was like the proverbial elephant in the room. Behold a Mini-Guppy.

For you mechanical techno-geeks out there, they had some cool engine displays… some of them cut-outs. These were really cool.

How about an old V8? Neat, huh?

Here’s proof that you can put anything on a trailer these days.

We visited the snack bar for an espresso.

And then wandered through the gift shop. Didn’t find anything I couldn’t live without.

Neat picture of a picture again… this guy flew through the hangar back in 1950 as part of an air show stunt.

After we got our fill of all things aviation related – we headed over to the Tillamook Cheese Factory on the other side of town. It was certainly a popular place as evidenced by the overflowing parking lot. There were even a few rows of Motorhomes parked on the outside edges.

I just had to join others in getting my picture taken in the VW bus that was part of the lobby display.

View of the inner workings at the cheese factory… pics didn’t take so well through the glass panes. I remember thinking it’s a good thing we weren’t looking at a sausage factory 🙂

The upstairs hallway with the factory viewing windows on both sides.

There was a long line at the cheese sampling stations.

As a matter of fact, there were long lines everywhere here, in the lobby store, the cafe, the snack bar, the ice cream counter, etc., What a popular tourist trap, er, I mean, attraction.

I bought one of these Oregon Coast 101 stickers to add to my collection on the inside of the basement doors of the Urban Escape Vehicle.

We saw Orman & Susie Claxton again with ice-cream in hand while we were here, but no picture this time.

And I almost bought this T-shirt, but decided it wasn’t in the budget.

Next, we drove back into town to check out the Blue Heron Cheese Company. We had seen an advertisement for free wine and cheese tasting.

There were a couple of cool vehicles on display outside the building.

We met up with Orman & Susie again! We sampled some wines together and ended up buying a bottle called “Blue Heron Riesling”.

We got back to the RV Park with plenty of time left to enjoy the sunshine and walk Coach through the campground. He was VERY happy to see us again after being cooped up all alone for the day 🙁 Everything was fine with him and there were no “surprises” in the Motorhome. Good dog.

View of the lower picnic grounds area at the Tillamook Elks RV Park.

View of the BBQ grill shelter in the lower picnic area at the Tillamook Elks RV Park.

View of the lower picnic grounds at the Tillamook Elks RV Park.

This park has the biggest set of horseshoe pits I’ve ever seen. Or are these possibly grave sites? HMMM.

View of the horseshoe pits on the lower picnic grounds at the Tillamook Elks RV Park.

View between the two rows of RVs at the Tillamook Elks RV Park.

View of the community multi-use house at the Tillamook Elks RV Park.

We spent a little time talking to Orman & Susie as the sun went down. We got a few tips from them on future places to visit and recommendations on RV Parks. Thanks Orman & Susie! Hope to see you down the road again soon. It got cold pretty quick after the sun went down, so we retired to our respective Coaches to call it a night.

I did some research, and called ahead to the Elks Lodge in Florence, OR to reserve a spot for tomorrow. So another moving day is on tap for Monday. See you tomorrow.

Oregon

Day 1, Tillamook, OR

2014/09/14 davidhobden@mac.com

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!

Oregon

Moving Day (Tillamook, OR)

2014/09/14 davidhobden@mac.com 1 Comment

It’s time to move on again today, Friday (12 Sept). We’ve really enjoyed this state park. Would definitely come here again to Cape Disappointment if the opportunity arises in the future.

We met a nice couple that was camped next to us, they come here every year from Eatonville, WA. My neighbor’s name was Brian, but I don’t think I caught his wife’s name. Brian was interested in tips on diesel pushers and was full of questions. He was thinking of getting a Class A in the future. I tried to be as informative as I could without seeming biased… hard for us Alpine Coach owners, eh? Anyway, safe travels Brian – good luck with your search and I hope I was able to help.

Before we packed up, we took another morning walk. I noticed a little-used trail behind our camping circle, so we followed it through the woods towards the cliffs as we swatted away spider webs across the path.

We ended up finding a couple of hidden caves.

And then, I’m convinced we found the remains of an old ship wreck hidden in the trees near the cliffs. The remaining wood is covered with moss and pine needles… What do you think? Stilla won’t believe me.

We continued on the hidden path and came out onto the beach again.

Once on the beach, we came upon someone’s idea of a beach fort. They must have spent some time on this… it even had a “garden” in the front “yard”.

After our morning’s exploits, we finished packing up and then drove the Coach to the park entrance, Stilla followed in the Silverado. We connected the truck up to the Coach once we were at a wide, straight section in the road. We successfully navigated under all the low-hanging branches and came through unscathed again.

We headed South on Hwy 101 again after exiting the park. Then we crossed over the Columbia River into Oregon via the Astoria-Megler Bridge that I posted about yesterday. After going through Astoria we started looking on-line for RV Parks. We didn’t have cell service for the last two days at Cape Disappointment on either the iPhones with AT&T or the MiFi Jetpack with Verizon so I hadn’t done any prior planning. I quickly determined that Tillamook had an Elks Lodge so I called their number to ask if they had RV parking and it turns out that they have their own RV park just South of town that is separate from their downtown Lodge. Wow! Who knew? So I called ahead to make sure they had room. Dixie, the camp-hostess said, “Come on in!”

Our first rest stop was above Smugglers Cove after the town of Cannon Beach. We enjoyed the views and took a couple pictures.

And here’s the obligatory “selfie”.

Here’s a few pictures of our second and final rest stop for the day. Nice views, eh? I think it was overlooking Devils Cauldron, also not far South of Cannon Beach.

Here’s the entrance to the Elks Park, located ~5 miles South of Tillamook. Total travel distance for the day was just under 90 miles.

View of the rigs in the Elks RV Park.

As soon as we pulled in, we met the Camp Hostess, Dixie. She rolled up in her golf cart to greet us. She told us to pick a spot and stop by once we got settled to pay the $20 per day donation. However, before I parked the Coach for the next couple days, I wanted to get fuel – I was on 1/4 tank. It’s always best to keep the tank as full as possible at all times to prevent moisture from condensation building up in the tank and possibly even causing algae to grow. This can wreak havoc on your fuel system and especially filters. I had been on the look out for a decent fuel station the entire trip today that would accommodate the Coach while I was still towing the truck, but only saw one place back in Tillamook. But, naturally I was already past it before I realized it would have worked for us. I mentioned my need to get fuel to Dixie, and she recommended a place just back up the road that I must have missed. So we disconnected the truck and parked it in the spot we wanted and headed back out to fuel up. We found the country store / gas station alright and topped off. Diesel was $3.99 a gallon! Here in Oregon, a gas station attendant has to pump your fuel by state law. The attendant said this was the first time he pumped so much into one vehicle.

After returning to the RV Park and setting up. We turned on the AC(s) so we could leave little Coach in the Coach in order to go into town and partake of the Elks Lodge Friday dinner. One thing about Elks lodges across the country is that they all seem to offer a good meal every Friday for a good price and we heard from Dixie, that tonight’s specialty was a fish platter. This park has full hook-ups with 50amp service, so we could leave both air conditioners on… and it was so hot, we needed it. We also took the bicycles off the Silverado so we wouldn’t have any trouble in town finding a parking spot to fit into. And also, as I think I’ve mentioned before, the bike rack sticks out pretty far with the tailgate down and I don’t want to get a ticket from the local police.

BTW – We chose the RV site next to Orman and Susie Claxton who we know from the Alpine SoCal Association and Redmond FMCA Rally we recently attended. It’s a small RV world out here 🙂

Here’s a couple pics of the downtown Tillamook Elks Lodge #1437. The food was great! But I didn’t like the slot machines in the bar area we frequented before dinner… they didn’t give me any money! 🙂

For tomorrow (Saturday) we already got a lot of tips on things to do and see in the area: Munson Creek Falls; Tillamook Cheese Factory tour; Air Museum; 3 Capes; Octopus Tree; Cape Meares and Lighthouse… so stay tuned for our next adventure…

Urban Escape Vehicle .com

Tag Archives: Elks

Moving Day (Florence, OR)

Day 2, Tillamook, OR

Day 1, Tillamook, OR

Moving Day (Tillamook, OR)

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