Thursday, June 2, 2011

June 2 - Touring around Tillamook

All the guide books say you have to stop and tour the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Today was the day for us and obviously a lot of other people. The factory has a large visitors parking lot and it was pretty full. You go in and can view the factory floor from a second floor gallery. You can see the packaging line which had a lot of movement and then the vats the cheese was made in. Also lots to read on the history of the factory.

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Sampling the cheese.

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And the ice cream.

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In the afternoon Stuart wanted to visit the Tillamook Air Museum. Jennie was not interested so she went for some retail therapy.

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The planes in the museum were interesting, around 40 mostly WWII planes (P-38 Lightning, Catalina flying boat, F14 Tomcat, P51 Mustang) but the highlight was the building itself. It is a WWII blimp hanger. The thing is massive, 1000 feet long, 15 stories high, 300 feet wide and no internal supports. It had over 7 acres of floor space and it is all made of wood due to the metal shortage during the war. It could hold 8 250 foot long blimps. After looking at the planes I just stood a one end for a while and just stared up. Makes you feel very small.

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To get some scale that circular item in the center at the back on the floor is a HUGE steam locomotive. Some pictures from their web site are below.

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Each of these blimps are over 150 feet long.

Very cool place.

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