Exploring more of the coast

We sure have been busy this week. On Thursday we decided to check out the coast south of Tillamook. The west coast has some amazing views.



And of course, what is a coast without a lighthouse. Unfortunately it is out of commission, but it still looked beautiful. The "octopus" tree was pretty impressive too.



So we kept on driving along the coast line and found these amazing sand dunes. I would have never imagined there would be any sand dunes around these cliffs.


We sure had a good time exploring the area.

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

Not to far from here is the Spruce Goose, an air boat that takes off and lands on water, built by Howard Hughes. This plane is so huge that you can't get it into one picture.


There were so many planes, helicopters and military vehicles, you really did not know where to look first. Here are some more pictures.


Aren't these planes just incredible? Next was the Aviation museum across the way.

Say Cheese!!!

Tillamook is known for its cheese and ice cream, so we went to check out the factory tour. For that it was a Tuesday, there sure were a lot of people there. It was very interesting to watch their packaging line.

Look at all that cheese. On the other side were the containers where the cheese is made.

We sampled their cheeses and ice cream and went on our merry way.

We found the coast!!!!

We left Graham yesterday to move on to Tillamook, OR. We chose to go the scenic route instead of taking I5 south. It was a gray and rainy day, which makes it not that much fun to drive. We made it to Highway 101 and I have to say I was surprised to see that it is only a two lane road. I would have thought that as well known and traveled as it is, it would have been a four lane road. The second surprise was that this coastal highway goes through a lot of hills and is very windy. It took us 5 hours to drive 220 miles, but the huge bridge that crosses the Columbia river was totally cool. It was too foggy to take a picture, so it always will be a mental picture. The state of Oregon forgot to welcome us with a big sign on the bridge and I was just a little bit annoyed. I like those big signs welcoming you to a new state.

We saw some beautiful scenery along the way and decided today to go back up to Seaside and drive down Highway 101 again to stop at some of these places.

I forgot just how much I missed the ocean and the beaches and the water here are so clean. Next we stopped at Haystack Rock and had a great lunch in a restaurant with full view of the big rock.

I could really fall in love with this place. There are some trees that look like they are growing sideways; I guess it must be windy here. And of course, we found another rock in the water. They seem to have quite a few here :-)

And then the strangest thing happen. We all know that it is a small world, but who would have thought that we would see Ute Czetli, our neighbor at Retama Village, at the next stop. It was to funny. She is here with her daughter and daughter's in-laws to check out the west coast. We talked for a few minutes and continued on our sight seeing tour.

These beaches are just so beautiful!!!! I think I am falling in love with this place and we have only seen so little of this amazing coastline.

As we have been driving around the area we have been seeing these beautiful flower and I finally got some good shots.


We had a great time today exploring the area and I am looking forward to tomorrow. There are so many more things to see. We are so blessed to be able to take this time to explore and enjoy this great country!!!!

Boeing

We decided to go see where Boeing builds all these big planes. It was a longer drive up to Everett, but we have time and it was something that Doug had not done in Seattle yet. I have to say that I like the HOV lanes they have in Seattle, it saved us a lot of time going through the city on the way there.

Boeing has some strange rules. You are not allowed to bring in your purse, cell phone or camera. I can understand the cell phone or camera, but not why I can't bring my purse. We got everything securely locked up and went on the tour. It was very impressive to me. The halls, that the planes are build in, are huge; everything is moved via overhead cranes or moving platforms. It truly is an assembly line that moves forward slowly. The engineering team has their workstations directly on the working floor, there is a lot of inventory stations for the different stages and parts of the planes and it seemed very well organized. I would not mind working for a company like that. It was the Thursday afternoon before the long holiday weekend, so there really was not that much work going on, unless there was a shift change while we were touring the plant. Here are some pictures that I was able to take outside from the Boeing museum.



Here are a couple of pictures from inside the museum.


4th of July came around so fast. I can't believe we have been here for nine days already. We were going to watch the fireworks on TV, but around 9 pm we started hearing the loud booms of firework outside. They sell them here on about every street corner. So we sat outside for about 30 minutes and watched the fireworks from the various neighborhoods all around us. It was amazing. You sure can't tell around here that there is a recession going on. They kept blowing up fireworks until almost midnight, but we decided not to stay outside the whole time.

Our Rabbit can swim!!!

Well, not really, but I can say that it did leave the road to get to Seattle. We had to go up to Sequim to take care of some business and on the way back decided to take the ferry back to Seattle.

It was amazing to watch all the people get of the ferry, which I assume are commuters, who do this on a daily basis. It took at least 15 minutes for everybody and all the cars, bicycles and bikes to get of the boat and this is at 6:30 pm. The ride to Seattle was pretty cool and over way to fast. It was sooooo windy and cold on deck, but I got some pictures taken before frost bite set in :-)


Well, I am finally caught up with all the entries. It is five in total including this one, so don't forget to scroll on down to check out what all we have been up to.

Mount Saint Helen

I had seen the destruction from Mount Saint Helen in 1981, while driving on I-5 North. A lot has changed since then, the trees have come back, but you can still see the path of destruction from 1980.

All along the way we have been seeing these beautiful flowers and I finally was able to get a good picture of them.

The visitor center at the Johnston Ridge Observatory is definitely worth seeing. The movie was pretty cool, explaining what happened and at the end they opened the curtains and you had this beautiful view of the mountain. You can clearly see the path of destruction this volcano took.


It was another great day of exploring and I am sure glad we came to see this area.