It rained steadily all night and for most of the day. We weren’t able to ride bikes around the campground, so hit the road at about mid-morning. Even though we were hugging the coastline almost all day, the steady drizzle kept us from seeing too far out over the ocean. We still decided to take the slow route and pulled off of highway 101 to take some back roads and get a feel for the off-the-beaten path communities. Our favorite drive of the day was The Three Capes Drive. The cypress trees along the shore and the haystack rock formations in the ocean were beautiful nonetheless. (See today’s pic – as pathetically foggy it is). We did poke around a couple of local stores and had lunch at the Blue Heron Cheese Factory in Tillamook. Several years ago we had toured the Tillamook factory, so decided to visit the other cheese store this time. It was fun tasting the different cheeses, but they were out of their own Blue Heron brie – go figure! At several stops the locals were bemoaning the fact that they weren’t ready for the rains to begin. I think they haven’t had much of a summer this year. One fellow mentioned that in the last 18 hours his rain gauge showed 3 inches of rain – wowza! About mid-afternoon the rain finally stopped so by the time we pulled into the campground we were able to walk around without getting wet. We played game after game of Skip-bo and then at dusk decided to take our bikes for a spin and visit the beach. We had the place completely to ourselves and enjoyed the foggy stillness. We kept looking for Heceta Lighthouse, but couldn’t see it from the beach. If the weather holds and it isn’t too wet we might take the 6 mile hike to the lighthouse in the morning.
