Oregon and Tillamook
June 28, 1998
Tillamook, Oregon claims the title of the “Milk Capital of Oregon.” As we drove into town in the afternoon, we watched Holstein cows waddle down the path toward the milking barn, their udders so full of milk that walking was a struggle. Cheese factories are chief attractions in the area. Yesterday they celebrated the kickoff of the Tillamook Rodeo with a very long parade. In a town of 4,000 citizens, it is possible to put on an extended parade by including practically everybody in town in the parade. As spectators arranged their lawn chairs in their favorite, sunny, spots along the main street, young men in sandals played catch with a football – narrowly missing spectators as they lunged to catch a pass -- too close to the side of the street. There was already a line in front of the hot dog stand. A heavy-set man gobbled a large hot dog, covered with mustard at 10:30 on Saturday morning. Then the long-awaited event began. You know: 4-H kids with their dogs; Boy Scouts in uniform; the small, rag-tag, city band; a farmer leading a massive, red bull down the street; out of step dance-school kids; a shiny, tandem-trailer, milk tank truck; the 160 pound rodeo queen (she may have been chosen based on her ability to eat more cheese at one sitting than any of the other contestants); a Coast Guard truck, pulling a life-saving boat; a bunch of old Shiners playing like kids and driving little cars in circles; folks showing off their shiny, classic ‘55 Chevy; a fire engine; lots of folks on horses; etc. The parade lasted at least 1 ½ hours and we watched the whole thing, mostly from a spot in front of a local restaurant that specializes in pancakes. It was a pretty hokey show, but also very interesting. Maybe you can get a feel for the character of a community by watching its parades. Pat could not believe that I stayed for the whole thing.
The town of Tillamook is located in a scenic, green, valley surrounded by 3,000-foot mountains. The mountainsides are a patchwork of different ages of forest. Recent cuttings leave brown scars with lots of stumps. Sitka spruce, western hemlock, and western red cedar here are sliced up into lumber to build homes in Texas, Tokyo and elsewhere. The Tillamook, Trask, and Wilson rivers run near town and flow into the wide, shallow, Tillamook Bay. This bay is protected from the pounding surf by a large spit of land where one developer, in the early 1900's, decided to build a resort, complete with a large hotel. Winter storms and huge waves wiped out the resort. Now there are no buildings on the spit.
The scenery along the coast near Tillamook is very spectacular as viewed through this flat-land, Texan’s eyes. The “Three Capes Scenic Drive” can be started from Tillamook. It winds over a rocky cape, down into beaches and bays, then up into the next cape. From high on Cape Meares, common murres (look much like a small penguin) can be observed roosting in large, dense colonies on the offshore rock islands, where predacious mammals cannot reach them. We also watched a pair of peregrine falcons, teasing each other during their playful flight. Pigeon guillemots, pelagic cormorants, Grant’s cormorants and western seagulls are also fairly abundant. At the Oregon State Aquarium in Newport, OR, we had previously observed guillemots, tufted puffins and murres flying underwater in chase of fish and other sea creatures that they eat. Crows and seagulls are the chief predators of baby murres. Parent murres dare not leave their eggs or young unattended for long or the progeny will become breakfast, dinner or lunch for the predators. Observed no ravens here.
From a trail on the cliff of Cape Meares, the Three Arch Rocks can be seen about 1 ½ miles offshore. Like other such offshore islands, they are protected as Wildlife Preserves to help conserve tufted puffins and other sea and shorebirds. These islands are referred to as arches because holes have been blasted through the base of each by the pounding waves. Also, these capes are an excellent location for viewing the occasional grey whale. Evidently, mother whales and their young move more slowly to their Alaskan, summer, feeding areas than males and females without young. We finally learned how to identify grey whales by the lack of a dorsal fin and the knuckled appearance of the back that can often be seen before they take their last dive into the deep. They usually take 2 small, short dives before they take the third, longer and deeper dive. At the ocean floor, they scoop up a mouthful of sand and strain out the food critters using their baleen, brush-teeth. Some even stay in Oregon waters throughout the summer and are referred to as residents. By such a definition, Pat and I can now claim residency in Oregon because we have been here about three weeks.
Cape Lookout is centrally located between the other two and is an Oregon State Park. A 2 ½ mile hike leads to the western tip of the cape where Tillamook Head can be seen (on a clear day) 42 miles to the north and Cape Foulweather 39 miles to the south. Further south is the third cape named Kiwanda.
The last two days, when we visited Cape Meares and Cape Lookout, the skies were clear and we could see great distances out into the Pacific Ocean and up and down the coast. We try to imagine what it would be like here during the violent winter storms or when a tsunami tidal wave hits the coast. But when you are sitting on a warm beach with the sun in your face, it is hard to imagine the violence that nature can inflict on these shores. As a matter of fact, the homes overlooking this beautiful ocean in one of the small, coastal towns such as Oceanside, have really spectacular views of the ocean, bay, beach and three arch rocks from their picture windows. Hang gliders leap off the high cliffs in the area and land on the beach far below. Folks on sailboards can be seen skimming across the ocean, occasionally hitting a large wave and becoming airborne.
“Could we live here?” I asked Pat. “Not where the hillside is too steep or the home too high on the cliff overlooking the water,” she replied. Oh well, we would probably get bored with the view after a few years anyway. But just in case we change our minds, we picked up a brochure for “The Capes” housing development.
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