My Pacific Northwest: Cannon Beach OR 04-10-2016

Taking some much needed get away time, Dave and I went to Cannon Beach, OR for the weekend. Along the way we saw a sign for a covered bridge, so we took a lovely short side trip to this covered bridge. I got to drive through it! I noticed there was a rope swing hanging underneath it, but it wasn't warm enough to try it out.

Cannon Beach is such a pretty mellow town. Lots of shopping, galleries, and of course that huge sandy beach. We had a pretty view of the ocean out of our hotel window and we could just step outside and go for a wander. Haystack Rock was a bit south of us, but not too far for a walk. I spent a lot of my time walking back and forth barefoot over the smooth sand.

The weather was cloudy with sunbreaks and warm the whole time. No rain!

I think this was called Tillamook Rock Lighthouse

I really wanted to see the tufted puffins that are supposed to nest on Haystack Rock. I looked through my zoom until my eyes watered, but only saw the penguin-like common murres, cormorants and gulls. Later when I zoomed in on my photos there were a couple puffins there! I guess it's kind of cheating to check them off my list since I didn't know I was actually seeing them. I'll have to go back with something more powerful.

Pair of tufted puffins barely discernable at center

Harlequin Ducks

There were so many cool things to see on the beach... sand dollars, razor clam and mussel shells, the occasional pretty rock.

Empty Armor

Another sight along all the tidelines, were these jelly fish. They are called Velellas and they have a little sail that scoots them all around the ocean. Sadly sometimes it scoots them up ashore, and they were there by the thousands! Very pretty and interesting jellies though.

Velella Velella

So many marooned sailor velellas

The people were interesting too and it was great to see so many of them enjoying such a variety of activities. Next to sand castle construction, kite flying seemed to be the most popular.

Here was a different take on sand castles! I don't know who built it, but later I saw a little kid further down the beach painstakingly trying to construct a cliff dwelling of his own.

After we left Cannon Beach we went south to check out the Tillamook Cheese Factory. We pulled over first for these pretty views of other rock stacks.

The Tillamook Cheese Factory was not exactly what I expected. It's basically a huge gift shop/café with a few observation windows from which you can see the cutting and packaging. It was pretty cool to see so much cheese! Yum! And there were samples at the end too. No savings on cheese in their grocery section either. I usually pay a couple dollars less by watching for sales at grocery stores. It wasn't too far out of the way though, and if we had been hungry I've heard the café is excellent.

To make our way north to Tacoma where we were going to an Iron Maiden concert on our last night, we took some back roads that my phone's map app showed. What a worthy drive! We saw tiny little communities up in the hills, gorgeous forests, winding rivers, and these elk that went up the hill when they saw us walking back for photos. For big animals they moved so quietly- like big ghosts through the trees. Don't worry- we weren't as close as these photos look and there was a small river in between us.