A Day in Tillamook, OR

I love Oregon Coast. And when a town has my favorite ice-cream factory and cheese (two of my favorite things), you better believe we'll be spending some time there.

Tillamook is about two hours away form Portland. We've done day trips and toured the Tillamook Cheese Factory and then spent the day at a nearby beach, plenty of times. But, this time we spent a few days in Tillamook county, exploring, eating cheese and ice-cream and falling in love with this coastal community. 

I need Vitamin Sea regularly, or my soul hurts. The ocean has that effect on me. It's healing. Like, whole healing. Renewing and restoring in all areas of my life. We take those moments and bond with the boys and each other. We explore little towns and hike whatever trail locals suggest to do, and we are never disappointed. 

The morning we ventured into Tillamook, it was super low tide. So, before the Cheese Factory was open we went to explore nearby tide pools. There was a local lady that was collecting Agates and gave the boys a couple big stones and my husband was hooked! He was on a look out for the mother load. sigh... he got a few tiny ones that he's pretty proud of. The boys caught little crabs and found star fish, hermit crabs, tiny fish, and jelly fish. They loved this. 

Then we went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. They recently renovated it. It looks really nice inside, a lot of seating area to enjoy a good Tillamook cheese, cheeseburger. The menu got an upgrade as well, everything looks amazing. The icecream is out of the world. The kids cone size was as big as my kid's head. It's a must when you're in Tillamook for sure, even if you're driving by, just stop in and go taste some cheese. 

We then ventured out to see the light house that everyone was telling me we had to see. Sure, we rely on GPS and didn't see the sign to take a left instead we followed GPS and took a right. well, that road had collapsed six years ago and it's closed. So that was a bit of a waste of time. BUT, the scenic rout was all worth it. Cape Mears Scenic Point was absolutely breathtaking with the views! There we visited the Cape Meares Lighthouse. It's the shortest light house on the Oregon coast, but so cool! I love Light Houses. I mean, I get giddy with excitement. Especially when I get to tour them. We were able to go up and see the light and hear some of the history of the light house. On the other side of the parking lot is a short trail to the coolest tree I've seen. It's called the "octopus tree". It reminded me of the tree from the movie Pocahontas - that tree that talked to her. Yeah, it looks very similar. must see. 

Cool beaches to explore here are Netarts Bay, and Oceanside Beach. Netarts Bay took my breath away. (I wanna go back already) We stayed at Rockaway Beach ( you'll read all about that in my next post) 

At the end of each day I started to ask the boys what their favorite part of the day was. They loved the pool tides and crabs, flying the kite, eating ice-cream. But, MY favorite part was seeing that view from Cape Meares and visiting the light house. Wow, what a Creator we have! What beautiful scenes He has gifted us! I'm in awe! 

On my next post I'll tell ya all about the little town we stayed at, and the beaches we visited there. 

Personal Style Blurb: I shop for the boys at Gap, and H&M, and Zara. I love hand-me -downs and welcome those all the time as well. For a beach trip I really recommend getting water shoes for the kids to explore tide pools. they are really needed. I'll tag the ones I got the boys. 

Boys water shoes:

I love the "smile" Tee I have. I'm attaching this Amazon one, I love that there are color options.

I got this hat on Amazon, it's my favorite hat this summer. Absolutly perfect.

I got the ship Tee a few years ago, but here's a similar one

Against the blue sky the colorful, rainbow kites look really cool.

This one is cool too!

My boys have this one. They love it.