Tillamook

So Saturday we decided that it would be fun to take a day trip to Tillamook just as a family. We have been wanting to do a few things there with the kids and since the weather looked nice and it was a 3 day weekend we took a day off from working the homestead to enjoy the day and each other. We started our morning early by leaving the house at 7:15 ish and went to Maggie's Buns, a fun little restaurant that has these really big and tasty cinnamon buns. It is in Forest Grove about 5 minutes from our house. To our surprise there was no one sitting inside so we decided to sit there and eat. Usually it is crowded. It sounds like we go there a lot but we haven't really. Maybe 4 times in the last 1.5 years. From there it took about 1 hour to get to Tillmook, OR. We got to the Tillamook Cheese Factory shortly after it opened and started the tour. They were actually making Colby Jack cheese at that time. We didn't see them making the curds but we saw how it all goes from the curds to the big 41 pound blocks of cheese and then how it gets packaged and stored in the warehouse to age it. Then on the other side they were taking the aged cheeses and cutting the big blocks and making the small blocks of cheese. It was all very interesting and we spent a lot of time looking, reading and talking about it all. Lily was just mooing the whole time since there was a life size cow statue there.
After the self guided tour we got in line to try all the different kinds of cheeses. That was fun and they finally got to try the squeaky cheese that we had been telling them all about. We bought some for a snack later in the day and then ended our time there with waffle cones for Ethan's birthday treat. Man or man were we glad to have just ordered singles. They were huge. !!!! All the kids really enjoyed the cones but I think Lily did the most. Once she got her hands around my cone she had a death grip on in and wouldn't let go. She was very sweet though and kept letting me have a very, very quick lick.  I had to help her out though with all the drips. Many people got some good laughs as well as all of us. We were all very full afterwards and didn't need lunch for a long time.

 We went to the Blue heron petting farm after that which was just down the street and they had some rather large goats, some with horns. WOW They were big. They had  some llamas and an Emu, as well as chickens. That was fun but we didn't stick around to long for that. After the petting farm we went into town, just a few minutes away and parked on the street across from the Pioneer Museum. We had read about it from the Tillamook Cheese Factory website. It looked very fascinating and the kids are all into Pioneer stuff right now. It was just $4 for adults and the kids are free. Can't beat that. We were there for a few hours actually. We all had fun looking at all the of

 the old things that it had. There were three floors of items. The main floor had the Tillamook Pioneers and some of their things, a military room which the boys loved, a pioneer room and a workshop/barn room and everything like a plow, bear trap, wheel hoe, all kinds of equipment, an inside of a house with a second story like an old bed. There was so much to look at. So much detail to everything. The upper floor was a rock room, an old Victorian room, and a whole room with all these stuffed animals, from a Polar bear to the tiniest eggs. That was cool. The bottom floor had the earliest automobiles, including a wagon and sleigh, an old fashioned kitchen, the first cameras, the
first laundry machines (a wash board) and so on. Again it was all so fascinating and the kids loved it all.

 

After we left there we drove 20 minutes inland and went to the Tillamook Forestry Center. That is cool. We ate our lunch outside at a picnic table and then walked around inside, watched a movie about the Tillamook forest fires which was all so devastating but good in the end, and then the funnest part was going across the bridge and walking down to the river. They had some fun trails and the river felt good on a warm day. We walked up the tall tower that they had used to watch for forest fires which was a good hike up tons of stairs. We closed the place down at 5:00 and headed home which was about 35 minutes. I never realized how close it was to us. We were all exhausted but we had a wonderful day together learning and playing.