Finally, some pictures to accompany my Oregon Coast travelogue post from the beginning of this month. Nothing earth-shaking here, just what you’d expect.

Their big sign on Highway 101. You can’t miss it.

Click through for the rest of the pictures

The packaging production line at Tillamook Cheese. It doesn’t run on weekends.

Big blocks of cheese (40 pounds or so?) being extruded into plastic bags. The blocks then proceed along a conveyor belt to end up in the automated storage warehouse.

The end of the beach at Oceanside, where the tunnel entrance looms out of the rock like some old prohibited bunker.

The entrance up close. "Caution. Falling rock."

After oh, I don’t know, 25 yards or so, you pop out on the rocky "secret" beach. Here’s the tunnel exit, considerably less developed than the entrance.

The "secret" beach. The rocks in the distance (one and half of them, anyway) are "Three Arch Rock."

Here’s a small version of a really amateur "stitch" job I did of the Fishtails Café in Newport. (Ignore the cars.) Click on it for a larger version. The building really is dually-segmented like that, with the main entrance in the red-brown door on the left half.

A sea lion hanging out on the dock below the Port Dock One pier and Restaurant.

This probably needs no explanation, huh?

Rogue’s gift shop (the tasting room is upstairs, which we didn’t visit this trip).

More of the gift shop.

The distiller in Rogue’s House of Spirits just across the marina from the Brewery. This is actually behind chain link and barbed wire (to the customers) but I poked the camera lens through the links.

The Mount Rushmore Of… is a new blog that is one of those obvious-in-hindsight ideas I wish I’d thought up, because it satisfies the "Top X List" jones of twitchy web surfers everywhere.

Everyone knows what Mount Rushmore is, right?  Mount Rushmore is a National Memorial featuring the sculptures of the heads of the most influential Presidents of the first 150 years of the United States.  The Mount Rushmore Of takes that same principle and asks the question of who’s head should be carved in stone for other subjects, like:

• Who is on the Mount Rushmore of Baseball?
• Who is on the Mount Rushmore of Punk Rock?
• And so on…

Debate encouraged. Naturally.

Incidentally, Neal Stewart, the mastermind behind it, also writes the highly entertaining Turkey Sandwich Report. Oh yeah, he works in beer, too—a marketer, but I don’t hold that against him.

I’m referring to Ashland, Oregon, naturally, and something I found out from this article (via Jack Bog) (emphasis mine):

Ashland city ordinances allow nudity anywhere in town, but genitalia must be covered in city parks and the downtown commercial district.

I was pretty surprised when I read that; I don’t remember a single naked person while in Ashland last year. But overall—that’s pretty crazy; I had no idea it was that liberal of a town.

You can bet I’ll be reading the Bend city code pretty closely the next few days to see what our local ordinances say about the subject.

(The article overall is about a fruitcake "activist" who likes to wander around around (nearly) nude, and the city of Ashland’s refusal to allow her to be in their Fourth of July parade. She’s claiming "discrimination" against her by the Ashland Chamber of Commerce, claims she’s "not trying to get attention" (riiiiiiiiight), and for good measure even throws in a hint of creepy pedophilia in there. Seriously, she sounds mental. I’d deny her, too.)

We spent the weekend on the Coast, and while I don’t feel like writing a 2000+ word recap like I did for our Ashland trip last year, I wanted to highlight some of it—the (shall we say) less obvious things. So I thought I’d present it more travel guide style.

(Inspired largely by the Fodor’s Pacific Northwest guidebook I picked up from the library for ideas. It covers a lot of ground but is still frustratingly sparse.)

Tillamook, Oregon

First thing to note: Tillamook smells like cows. Lots of cows. To me it’s not at all unpleasant since I grew up around cows; to others, it depends. Sometimes it smells only like cows, sometimes there’s also a bit of cow manure in there too.

The Tillamook Cheese Factory – This is the thing to see when in Tillamook. Open seven days a week, from 8 until 8 during the summer (8 until 6 the rest of the year), tours are self-guided and best of all, free. Kids will love it, as you get great views of the vats, production, and packaging lines—but note, the packaging line (the biggest part with the most moving parts) only operates from Monday through Friday. So if you come on a weekend (like we did), you’ll just see a lot of inactive machinery.

There are two gift shops, a café and, of course, a full range of flavors of Tillamook ice cream for sale. You can’t stop here and not get a cone.

Blue Heron French Cheese Company – Down Highway 101 a ways from the Tillamook Cheese Factory, Blue Heron specializes in French cheeses: Bries, Camemberts, blue cheeses, and the like. The have a charming gift shop/deli/wine bar with lots of samples of all sorts of foods: cheeses (naturally), dips, sauces, jams and jellies, wine tastings, and more. They also have a very decent beer selection by the bottle (not that I’m an expert for the area, but it could be the best in Tillamook for all I know).

There is also a "petting farm" for the kids; for 75 cents you can buy a small bag of animal food and feed it to the goats, donkeys, and miniature horses on the property.

Oceanside, Oregon (9 miles west of Tillamook)

This beachfront community strikes me as being almost entirely a vacation rental "town." Aside from a couple of restaurants (one of which was closed) and a gift shop, it looked like there were only vacation rentals and very nice houses. Odd, that.

Down on the beach, there’s a great find: a tunnel cut through the cliffside that juts out into the water, leading to a very secluded rocky beach on the other side. Great adventure for kids.

Roseanna’s Cafe – The only restaurant of note in Oceanside. It overlooks the beach and occupies a creaky old building built in 1915 or something. It was pretty good food, but we had a bit of a wait—they don’t take reservations. Other than that, it was worth the visit.

Newport, Oregon

Newport is my favorite city on the Oregon Coast (though Lincoln City and Pacific City are tied for a close second). There’s just so much to like about it: their Historic Bayfront, the Nye Beach district, the Oregon Coast Aquarium, good food, and of course, Rogue Ales.

Prepare for chillier weather than you’ll get elsewhere on the coast, though. Lincoln City was in the 70s (and maybe 80s) during the weekend, and Newport barely broke the 50s and low 60s.

Fishtails Café – This has to be the best-kept secret in Newport, because in my opinion it’s the best breakfast place in town. Though I had their excellent salmon hash, the breakfast they’re known for is their marionberry French toast. Check this out:

A favorite at Fishtails Café, we take our homemade bread rounds and stuff a slightly sweetened Cream Cheese mixture between two slices, dip it in Cream and Eggs and sautee it to a delicate golden and top it with our homemade Marionberry sauce.

It’s a steal at only $6.95 (I’m not kidding), and this thing is huge and freaking delicious. The restaurant itself is homey and charming and over in the South Beach section of town (across the bridge).

Port Dock One – This restaurant is located on the Historic Bayfront and overlooks, er, Port Dock One. The food is decent, but the real draw is the view. Not only of the Bay, but also of the sea lions that tend to sun themselves and nap on the piers below the main dock. It’s like every visit comes with a show.

Rogue – Being the only brewery in Newport, Rogue is of course big in the area. Most restaurants have Dead Guy Ale on tap, but you’ll definitely want to visit their Public House, also on the Bayfront. Not only are all the Rogue beers on tap (along with several from their Eugene and Issaquah breweries), but they also have their full line of Rogue Spirits, and good food. Plus, there’s an adults only section of the place decked out with video poker and pool tables, so they’re covering all the bases.

You can visit the actual Brewery itself in South Beach, where they also have a tasting room and restaurant and gift shop. Tours are available, as well.

And across the lot from the Brewery, in the South Beach marina area, is the Rogue Spirits Distillery (though their main one is in Portland). You can pop in here to check out their distilling operation (three years old) and get a drink from the bar. Beers and gift shop breweriana are also available.

Ugh, did I say I didn’t want to write 2000-plus words? I’m already approaching the halfway point for that with this post. So I’ll wrap it up for tonight, but I’ll probably have a bit more to write about Newport before all is said and done. And of course, I have some pictures, but I don’t have them on the computer yet so those will have to wait for a later post as well.