Two Capes and a Cheese Factory

I am starting to get very behind on this blog and hope to catch up over the next few weeks. We have been really busy the past 2 weeks with my parents visiting us in Washington state, but before I can post about that I want to finish writing about the rest of the places we visited in Oregon.

After leaving Newport, OR we headed up to Tillamook — home to the famous Tillamook Cheese Factory. I was excited to take this factory tour as I have seen other Fulltime Families post about visiting this place. Unfortunately the factory tours were not available while we were there because they are in the process of building a new visitor center. In the meantime they have a temporary visitor center set up where you can still go and sample cheese and view the few displays that are set up. It’s still not the same as touring the actual factory so I hope to return to the area someday and try again.

Sampling cheese

Yummy ice cream!

While in the Tillamook area we stayed at Cape Lookout State Park. This park is right on the ocean and we watched some spectacular sunsets from there. It wasn’t a very big rig friendly park though, we barely fit in the site. We also felt a little uncomfortable being surrounded by tents and smaller RVs. People kept walking by our site and commenting about how big our RV is and wondering out loud why we would need something that big for camping. Meanwhile we were inside working or doing school hearing these conversations right outside the window, wishing we had a big sign up to let people know we are not camping, this is our house that we happen to take with us everywhere we go. I also heard people wondering out loud why we would take a cat camping. Yes, we felt like quite the spectacle at this place and were happy to leave there and move on to somewhere else where we fit in a little better.

This is a picture of our site. The pathway right next to us goes to the restroom so people had to walk by us often. Also, notice the sink waste disposal in our “yard”? That is where all the tent campers had to come to wash their dishes. It was awkward for them and us because they felt uncomfortable having to walk right into our site to wash their dishes. I made the best of it though while I was sitting outside and struck up conversations with everyone that was willing to talk to me. I actually met some very nice people that way!

It was during our stay there that Chris & I started considering that maybe we should downsize. We thought downsizing from a 2000 sq ft house to a 400 sq ft RV was good, but we could fit better at state parks if we were even smaller. Of course as soon as our kids heard us discussing this they immediately objected by letting us know how much they love their big bedroom. 😉 They love our home on wheels and to be honest, so do I.

Anyway, other than feeling like circus clowns at this park, we really loved the beach which was a short walk from our site where we enjoyed some gorgeous sunsets!