Oregon Trip-Day 4-Monday

Our Last Day

On day four, our last day to play, Brian, Zoey and I headed out down along Highway 101, driving along the beautiful scenic Oregon Coast towards Tillamook. This is the famous overlook right before you enter the town of Manzanita. Gorgeous!

Tillamook Blue Heron

We drove into Tillamook to visit the Blue Heron where you can taste all thier delicious jams, dips, mustards and BBQ sauces with little pretzel sticks.

The place is converted from and old barn and is beautiful inside with cheese and wine tasting, as well as, a little deli to eat lunch and a gift shop.

Zoey loved the free taste testing. Our favorite was the sweet, fresh raspberry jam and Brian's was the spicy BBQ sauce and mustards.

I love how everything in Oregon has some history to it and becomes part of the landscaping without looking out of place.

Isn't nature beautiful? There are flowers growing up and out of this old truck...reclaiming it to natures side.

There was also a small petting zoo at the Blue Heron. Here is one of its inhabitants.

Tillamook is so beautiful. It is cow country and has lots of lush green grassy feilds. The sun was shining and everything was just glowing that morning.

Here is the veteran goat of the petting zoo.

"Are you talking to me?"

Here is Zoey's favorite goat. It was a "baaaad" boy and tried to lick her through the gate.

A video of Zoey petting the goat.

Here is a video of Zoey after she runs around the fence in the video above. This is what she finds on the other side...Boy is she in for trouble! If you listen closely, you can hear the groundskeeper finding us and giving us a warning to stay away from the geese because they bite when provoked. Woops, we got caught! He he.

On to the Tillamook Cheese Factory

Next, we went down the street to our other favorite Tillamook tourist spot, The Tillamook Cheese Factory.

We go here every time we visit Oregon for thier great food, gift shop, free "squeaky" cheese and incredible ice cream.

Here is Zoey with her little 'flower child' tiara and 'majic' wand that Mommy had to buy at the gift shop. Zoey loved the cow statues and decided she would climb over the little fence and try and climb up onto the back of the baby cow before I could stop her. Go cowgirl, go!

This is the cool 'glass window' factory where you can stand on the second floor and watch how the cheese is processed, cut into blocks and then, wrapped for shipping. Totally cool.

Here is a cute vidoe of us watching the people cutting cheese at the Cheese Factory.

Tillamook ice cream is the best in the world! My favorite is the black cherry and marionberry pie, I got Zoey the banana split and Brian had the Tillamook mudslide and vanilla.

Time to head to Portland Airport. Here are the Portland bridges and city skyline.

Here we are stuck in Portland traffic. Fun. We were starting to get worried that we wouldn't make our flight in time with returning the rental car and all.

This is Brian with his 'handy-dandy' cellphone that has GPS navagational features that got us through the maze of freeways and to the airport safely.

This is what Zoey did after all the french fries, grilled cheese sandwich and ice cream cone we fed her for lunch at the Cheese Factory.

Here I am still being silly and playing photographer. "Hi!"

Yeah, we made it to the airport in time! Too bad our flight was delayed 2 hours...woops! Ha Ha!

Good thing they had a fun little 'children's play area' with lego table, toys and big screen TV. Here is Zoey kicking it in her car seat watching cartoons.

and what are Mommy and Daddy doing?

Watching cartoons too on Daddy's 'handy-dandy' cell phone!

He gets a free phone upgrade every two years from Verizon with his service plan. This is one of the newest phones out-so cool. I love it because I get his old phone that looks just like this one minus the TV and GPS capabilities. I'm happy.

Here is Zoey who was going stir crazy and decided to climb into the stroller pouch. The Portland Airport was beautiful. It had open skylights all along the ceiling of the terminal, cool little giftshops and food avenues and even had a woman sitting and playing classical music on the piano. It was a really nice, relaxing two hour wait. The airplane ride home was fun for Zoey. Brian made sure she had a window seat this time and I showed her all the houses and cars and rivers in Oregon as we left and then, the Vegas city lights when we arrived back home.


It was such a great trip! We loved seeing everyone and we miss you all already! Thank you Dad and Mom for inviting us all up and letting us invade your beautiful home, for cooking us great BBQ meals, playing tour guide and finding the time to spend with each and every one of us!

Love, The Hotchners