I guess there can no longer be any doubt that winter has finally come to the NW. It started to rain the day before I took off from Portland, and it hasn't really stopped since. Yesterday started out with rain, just a continuation from the night before, and then just kept raining for the rest of the day, then on through the night, and then all through today too. Looks like it is going to wet out here for a couple more days.
   It hasn't been all that bad though. My mornings are pretty much the same, get up, shower, grab some breakfast while reading email and the comics.  There isn't any free WiFi out at the state park for the computer of course, but my portable WiFi thingy does actually work out here, even though the signal is less that one would like.
    But getting back to what has been happening; I went into Astoria yesterday slightly after noon and went to the Maritime Museum there. I've been to it several times before, but there always seems to be something new to see, plus it is even fun to go back and reread some of the display signs again and take another look at the displays themselves. They did have a few new things of course, including a whole new display explaining about the shark fishery that ran out of the Astoria area during WWII. It seems that the U. S. Air Force had figured out that the night vision of  its pilots could be enhanced if they consumed large doses of vitamin A. Now this was a time way ahead of someone figuring out how to synthesize vitamin A, but it turns out that shark livers are very high in it, you just have to find them, catch them, take out their livers, convert them into cod liver oil and wa-la.... you have a great source of natural vitamin A, just what you need.
    It seems like it was a perfect match for the Astoria fishing fleet. They needed a source of income since they were just starting to come out of the depression, and they were currently in the midst of a war where everything was scarce and very expensive. So they started fishing for sharks, and since the government was paying around $380 for every 42 lb. can of liver they could find, they could make a pretty good living at it. That would be more than $10 per lb. in todays money, so it was a very lucrative living for a lot of people who needed it.
    But that wasn't all there was to see at the museum. There was a bunch of new stuff in the Native American area having to do with trapping and salmon fishing and some new stuff in the salmon fisheries section. Nothing new that I could see in the Coast Guard display, but it is always cool to go back and read what they have in there.
    One of the best things though was found in the gift shop where they had a couple of new and different Coast Guard shot glasses in stock, as well as a new one for the Maritime Museum itself.
    Very wet this morning, but I was up early enough to be out the trailer door before noon. I drove south on Hwy 101 heading for Tillamook and the cheese factory there. I spent a couple of hours watching them cut and wrap hundreds of pounds of aged cheddar while right next door they were making hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of new cheese. It is a very modern facility there with room to store and age more than 3 million pounds of cheese at one time. But I remember the first visit I had at the old factory when all the cheddaring and separation of curds and whey was all done in long troughs buy several guys with these huge arms from turning over and cutting up the batches by hand.
   Of course for me the best part is after you look at all the machines and read all the displays. That would be out at the gift shop and tasting area where you can try out a bunch of their cheese varieties before going on in where you can buy them in packages sized from 2 oz. little bits all the way up to 20 lb. wheels of aged sharp cheddar. But even that isn't the best part, that is taken up with the ice cream section where you can go in and buy a double dip in a waffle cone for less than $4.00. Now that may actually seem like a lot of money for an ice cream cone, but by the time they hand pack it into one of their home made cones, you basically have a full pint hanging out there at the end of your arm. I had 'Wild Berry Blackberry' and Oregon Coast Blueberry and it was wonderful.
    It was a great way to spend a couple hours on a rainy afternoon, but it was still raining hard when I came out around 4:30. It was to late by then to go to the Tillamook Air Museum, but I did go locate it so I would know how to get there next time. I also wanted to see if they had a big parking lot there in case I didn't get back to it this week. Since it does have a lot of room, I figure it will be easy enough to stop by there next Monday on my way down the coast to a new camp spot.
    I drove back towards Fort Stevens after that, but stopped when I got to the town of Seaside and went to a movie instead. I went and saw the new movie 'Fury' staring Brad Pitt and a couple other well known actors. It was a good 'Boy's Night Out' movie even if there were no other guys out there with me. A powerful movie, but very graphic in it's depiction of the horrors of war. Maybe if more of our politicians had actually experienced what war was really like, they would be less inclined to get us into another one. Not that I have any direct experience with it either, but then I always knew it was something I really didn't want to see up close and personnel.
    I am hoping that the rain will slow down somewhat in the next couple of days. While it is okay to spend time outside while it is misting or raining lightly, it has been really coming down at times these last few days. It is also hard to take a camera out in it to take pictures. Guess it will turn out what ever way it does, not much that I can do to make it change.
    For now though; here are a bunch of photo's from about a week ago when I went up the Columbia River gorge and took some pictures at Multnomah Falls. They are all pretty much of the same subject so there won't be much commentary. I did have a problem picking only a couple of good one's out though....so I'm just going to post all the ones I liked.... because I can. This is only half of them, the rest will show up in the next post.

Multnomah Falls along the Columbia River - Oct 16, 2014



 



 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

brk*