Day 67 - Seaside, OR to Florence, OR

We had no real plan for the day except that we needed to make more progress than we did the day before where we only covered 12 miles. Eventually, we knew we would run into Tillamook, so we made a stop at the cheese factory and took the self guided tour.

I felt like I was watching I Love Lucy, but we cheese--the assembly line was relentless.

A bus built specifically for a picture op. Each kid took their turn.

After the cheese tour, we hopped back in the RV for a quick sandwich lunch and headed down the road to Yaquina (yah kwin nah) Head Lighthouse. Although shorter, the design of this lighthouse is exactly like Pigeon Point Lighthouse in Pescedaro, CA, the location of my college thesis project.

After parking at the visitor's center, we took a short walk down the road to the lighthouse.

Leaving Yaquina Head Lighthouse we continued to drive south. Kristen found The Gluten Free Place on Google and we were going to stop there for dinner, but oddly they were closed on a Tuesday? Anyway, we just left the RV outside here and walked over to Fred Meyer next door to load up once again on groceries. This place was huge and we all had different agendas once inside. My dad went to look for batteries, Kristen was shopping for lunch meat and I was originally going to stay with the RV. However, the meat cutting lady was taking for-ev-er so Kristen called be to stay with the meat lady while she shopped for everything else. I ordered a few more items, but the process was not going any faster and she kept repeating "this is only my second day" every few minutes. At some point, one of the other ladies finished helping other customers and she stepped in to assist in completing my order. If she had not so, I might still be there. We did get a lot of sandwich meat, but it should not have taken 45 minutes! I then went to find Kristen and met up with her in the check out line, but nobody knew where my dad was. Just as we were heading outside he walked in the front doors. Apparently, he thought we already left and went to the RV only to find out that we were not yet there. Once at the RV, we put everything away and made our sandwiches for dinner before we got moving again.

A quick stop at beautiful Brays Point.

Just a little after 7PM we arrived at Heceta Head Lighthouse. Before we hiked up the hill to the lighthouse, we had fun skipping rocks off the small inlet pond.

From the amount of greenery present, you could tell that it rains a lot here.

The trail somewhat fell apart on a perch that overlooked the lighthouse, but it turned out that is was a perfect pot to stop and take pictures. With it's original first order fresnel lens still in operation it is easy to see why this is the most photogenic lighthouse on the Oregon Coast.

Just before 9PM we rolled into our campground in Florence, OR. I was not excited to have to back in the RV uphill into our site, but I made it work after a couple of tries.

#Oregon #TillamookCheese #YaquinaHeadLighthouse #HecetaHeadLighthouse