Oregon is quite possibly the most beautiful state. The combination of coastline and cliffs, forests and farmland, it is practically perfect. It has also been gorgeously sunny since we’ve been here which works very much in this state’s favour. And it has lighthouses! And seafood! The list goes on and on.
We were up early this morning to catch the very low tide. It was clamming time on the Nehalem Bay mudflats. We had a blast treasure hunting for soft-shell clams. We found 100! We also dug up some unexpected crayfish that also live in the same area - weird! We put those back. We wrapped up cramming just as the tide turned and headed back to pack up camp.
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| Treasure! |
Our next stop - with hundreds of other tourists (we’re not sure where they all came from) - was Tillamook Creamery. This is a large scale, highly automated cheddar cheese factory. On the self-guided tour, we learned about their cheese production process from sourcing milk to shipping vacuum sealed cheese to a wide array of grocery stores across the USA. We sampled cheese - the truffle cheddar was my favourite; it tasted like garlic bread! What an impressive operation.
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| Inspired by a Canadian. |
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| Samples! |
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| Ready to learn about how a factory makes cheese. |
Next we stopped at the Blue Heron Cheese Company, which was just down the road. It was a bit of a letdown but the kids liked the petting zoo, though the animals were very uninterested in the snacks we purchased from the gift shop for $1 for them. They much preferred the fresh green grass growing just beyond their pen.
Our afternoon was spent searching for a different type of shellfish - Dungeness crabs! We rented three crab rings near Lincoln City right in time to catch high tide at 3:00pm. We tossed the rings in the ocean from the beach beside the pier behind Mo’s Restaurant. This was great fun. We caught dozens of small but feisty crabs, three almost keepers, and one male crab of sufficient size (our lone keeper). Ian was fantastic at sending the pots sailing into the surf and the boys took turns pulling the pots back in every eight or so minutes. We used chicken drumsticks as bait, which worked great except two were stolen off the beach by sneaky seagulls the minute our backs were turned. One was snatched right out of a crab trap and one out of our ziplock storage bag which the bird managed to open. Crazy but hilarious. Seagulls are such scrappy birds.
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| Let her fly! |
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| Just a boy waiting to catch a crab. |
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| Ali holding his first crab - upside down to keep him calm so he doesn’t pinch. |
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| Haul! |
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| We caught one! Woot! Woot! |
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| Here is our keeper. |
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| I caught five in one net! |
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| Chicken thief. |
After returning our pots, we continued down the coast, past Heceta Lighthouse to end up in campsite 328 G at Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park. We steamed up our clams and crab and had an ocean inspired feast. What a day!
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