Uraling the Pacific Coast Highway - Day 55: Long Beach WA to Salem OR

Today started gloomy and overcast with a threat of rain.  I broke camp and got Valencia all packed up after cooking breakfast in the RV park.  By 9:30 AM I was back on US 101 southbound.

I must say, there wasn't many picture opportunities in Washington, for pictures of the ocean.  The gray skies and haze were not exactly helpful either for that matter.

Then, as I rode along in Oregon after crossing the long bridge into Astoria, things started to look up a bit.  One moment it was overcast:

then I entered a mountain tunnel and out the other side things were nice and sunny:

So there I was, near the Barview Jetty Park, taking a picture of these rock formation:

When suddenly I hear somebody hitting the horn on what I thought was a passing car.  I turned to follow the car and what I saw instead was the approach of two riders on motorcycles.  It was Gary and Deb from the Alaska Ferry!

We had us a short happy reunion, and rode together on towards the town of Tillamook about ten miles away.  After tanking up, they led the way to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and Creamery.  They're fans of the cheese and ice cream produced by this company and they were there to pick up both.

Quite the setup, the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  You can see the cheese being cut up and packaged from a viewing room:

 Those big blocks of cheese eventually make their way to the other end

of this large processing room, get sized up, and into their individual packets.

 Gary and Deb are huge fans also of the ice cream produced by 

Tillamook Creamery.

As ice cream was consumed along with some rather tasty pepperoni meat sticks, they told me about this nearby aviation museum, so that became our next destination.

I got there ahead of Gary and Deb as they had an errand to run.  The museum is established inside the large blimp hangar built by the US Navy during World War II as part of the Tillamook Naval Air Station.  The planes inside are apparently flyable by their owners.  Quite the display and assortment contained both within and outside as well.  I'll just show you some of the ones I found most interesting:

 The Guppy

 Seaplane, used to rescue downed aviators at sea

 A Chinese XJ-750, I think it also goes by the name of Chiang-Jang

A rougher cousin to Valencia's ancestors

 The only Russian plane I saw, I found the "camo" pattern interesting

 I wonder how many URAL rigs could fit inside this Guppy?

 This old blimp hangar is huge!

 A K Class Blimp outside the hangar during the war.  The blimp is 252 ft long.

 The Blimp Squadron inside the hangar....talk about a tight fit!

 Gary and Deb at the NAS sign outside the museum

 Gary and Deb prep to depart for points south, I was headed to Salem, OR

I am sure we'll find each other on the road as we're all, as of now anyways,

all heading south along the coast, towards the San Francisco Bay area.

It's really not very hard to find the museum.

The rest of the day was spent first riding towards McMinnville where I thought I'd checked out Howard Hughes Spruce Goose but I ended up bagging on the idea once I got near the town as it was rush hour and I was too tired to deal with it.

Instead, I headed into Salem and found a room at a Howard Johnson's hotel for the night.  Tomorrow, I plan to ride to Raceway Services to both return the second PowerArc ignition components to them and to have them check out the clutch drag issue I am experiencing when the engine is hot.  I hope they find whatever is causing it, its quite annoying at the end of the day, to deal with it.  Again, not a show stopper but definitely annoying.

Valencia ran great otherwise, but in the warmth of this marvelously sunny day in Oregon, you could tell she didn't like the heat.