Oregon - Day 12 - Tillamook

Nehalem Bay State Campground, Manzanita

Thursday, 12 May 2022

It was pouring rain all morning - really pouring.  Dext didn't want to leave the RV to go for walks, and I practically had to drag him out every time.  Plus, the weather report warned of a gale warning to sea, and we definitely got some of that wind on land.  Very messy.

I saw lots of skunk cabbage both in last night's campground and along the road.  It doesn't smell very good but sure is pretty.  After years of seeing it in Alaska, to me it means spring is here.

skunk cabbage

On the road

today's route

I passed the Jacobsen Salt Co. that apparently specializes in "finishing salts," which I had to look up because I'd never heard this term.  It refers to any salt that has a special texture or flavor that would be lost if it were added during the cooking process.  This company seems to have been included in Bon Appétit and now has a fan club (so to speak).

A sign said I was on the Trees to Sea Oregon Scenic Byway.  Pretty accurate name.

Just outside of Tillamook, I crossed a river labeled "The Hoquarton."  Not "Hoquarton River," but simply "The Hoquarton."  I can't find anything online that explains why it was labeled like this.

The town of Tillamook was less than 10 miles from the campground, and I was aiming for the Tillamook Creamery on the far edge of town.  I really liked their products while I was living in the Pacific Northwest, but they're often hard to find in other places.  This factory is a place I've wanted to visit for many years, and rainy today is finally the day.

Tillamook Creamery

The main floor of the building is both a very large gift shop, selling everything from t-shirts and cookbooks to yogurt and ice cream, and also a place with chairs and tables where you can eat the locally-made sausage and cheese and crackers you've just bought.  There are also displays explaining the history and structure of the creamery, but the main information is on the 2nd floor.

A bit from their 1st-floor displays:

They're proud to have been a farmer-owned co-op since 1909.  They advertise that because they don't answer to outside shareholders, they don't have to focus on making profits for them.  Instead, they say they aim at producing products they can be proud of, knowing that quality will usually result in returns for them, the farmers.

And there's this:

I hadn't heard of this term and looked it up.  A global non-profit organization makes the award determination based on criteria like meeting standards for social sustainability, environmental and transparency concerns.  They have to be recertified every 3 years to keep their award.

I never saw a butter churn like this.

How advertising has changed:

At the top of the stairs, the real exhibits began.  And for something billed as a "self-guided tour," amazingly it was exactly as advertised.  Their signs sometimes said the same things in several different ways, to give people a good chance to understand.  But understanding shouldn't have been much of a problem, as the signs were written in English on about a 5th grade level.  And they not only wrote down what the process was, they had diagrams to illustrate what the words said, and they were right by the windows looking down into the factory so we could see the machines (which were labeled with big signs) that they were talking about.

But first they started with the cows, which makes sense, since cheese is made from milk which comes from cows.

It takes 10 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of cheese, which means to me there must be an awful lot of cows out there producing milk.  (As a side note, if folks are upset about the effect on climate change of us eating beef, this seems to show they should also be upset about us eating dairy products.  Both require cows.)

Okay, here's the short version of the cheese-making process: milk is turned into curds and whey (Little Miss Muffet, anyone?).  The whey is drained off for use in other products; the curds are processed and then compacted into 40-pound blocks.  The blocks are aged for varying lengths of time, depending on the sharpness of the taste of the cheese.  The blocks are then cut into varying sizes (half-pound to 2 pounds) for retail sale, and they're bagged and sealed.

Here's the illustrated version:

This is what the milk is filling into.

diagram of machine pictured above

You can see what I mean about the explanations on their signs and the illustration matching the machines.  Very helpful.

There was a very large machine at the back of the factory floor labeled with a large sign "Cheddarmaster."  I didn't think a photo of the machine would come out, but here's their explanation of it.

The diagrams below show the multiple layers
the curds run through.

Imagine this one is lined up better with the one above.

As they said on the sign, the whey is drained off and this is what they do with it:

Finishing the process:

The line leading down from the left side said:
"Sensing forks measure the depth of the curds."
The line from the right side said: "6 agitators
stir in the salt."

So lest folks think all that salt is too much,
they explain it helps pull out the whey.

After being salted, the curds are suctioned into a blockforming tower.

Captions for the drawing at right.

Pretend like the lines leading right
are actually leading left to the
captions at left.

Then the 40-pound blocks head to cold storage for aging.

Sixty days to 5 years later, the final process is cutting and packaging the aged cheese.

The line leading to the left is for a caption reading:
"The first push-plate pushes the cheese block through vertical wires
along the long side into fifths."
The line leading to the right goes to a caption reading:
"A second push-plate pushes the cheese through wires
the other way into fourths."

The new smaller blocks are automatically weighed and adjusted.

The checking staff removes slices from overweight blocks and adds slices to underweight blocks.  Any cheese left over gets reused as shredded cheese.

And finally the cut-up blocks get bagged.

Those bags are the right color and logo for the type of cheese  - mild, sharp, etc.  Then they're vacuum-sealed and ready for the stores.

It was all very interesting.  My photos didn't come out as well as I'd hoped, but I had to shoot around other tourists (who were leaning on the signs instead of reading them) to look through the windows.

Anyway, I was glad I went.

It was raining harder than ever when I went back outside, but I took the dogs out ( a real shame we can't have an indoor bathroom for them), and they found things to sniff despite the rain.  I'd intended to do laundry in town but couldn't bring myself to haul clothes around in the pouring rain and decided I could hold off a few more days.

Back on the road

By the time we'd worked our way up the coast to Bay City, I could see only about a quarter-mile out over the water.

We went through a few more small towns and got to the campground just as the rain stopped.  Incredible luck because I needed to empty my waste tanks and was dreading having to do it in the rain.  Then the sun came out and mostly stayed out - amazing after days of rain.

By the time we got settled, and I had a shower, we ended up with a cabin full of drying items: 2 towels from drying the dogs off earlier, 2 towels and a washcloth from my shower, another towel from washing out my underwear since I didn't go to the laundromat, and 2 pairs of said underwear.  It was hard to move around in there while things dried.

I saw a notice posted that there'd been a recent sighting of a bear nearby and asked the camp hosts.  They told me a ranger had spotted one near the park entrance 2 weeks earlier but it had taken off back up the hill where it belonged.  I guess they thought I was nervous, but I was just curious.  And I like to be prepared, since both my idiot dogs think they're bear dogs, based on their earlier behavior.