A Day in Tillamook

 

So we woke up today to expected Rain, it is amazing how it turns from sunny to rainy in a blink of an eye, though from the looks of the weather down East I will take the rain over the snow. Since it was wet weather we decided to go and see the air museum in Tillamook.  These pictures are taken from a lookout point along Hwy 101.  There are lots of vista points and this was a good picture of the coast line.

There are a large number of bridges, tunnels and rock walls also along the highway. Oswald West born in Canada was the Govenor of Oregon from 1910 to 1914. he established Oregon's beach highway law, proclaiming the entire Pacific coastline — today's highway 101- to be a public highway, thereby preserving scenery for future generations. He also established a law protecting public access to the high-water line, which means that unlike California no one can own a beach in Oregon. So you can have your ocean front property but everyone can have access to the beach.

 

When we got to Tillamook we headed right to the Air Museum.

 
In 1942 the US Navy began construction on 17 wooden hangers on the US East & West coastlines to house K-Class blimps which were being used for anti-submarine coast patrol and convoy escort. Two hangers were built in Tillamook. Stationed at Naval Air Station Tillamook was Squadron ZP-33 with a complement of 8 K-ships. The K-ships were 252 feet long and filled with 425,000 cu ft of helium. With a range of 2,000 miles and an ability to stay aloft for 3 days, they were well suited for coast patrol and convoy escort.  The hanger itself is 1,072 feet long and over 192 feet tall, that is over 15 stories and it is 296 feet wide.  It covers 7 acres of land, which is enough for 6 football fields.  The doors are 120 ft high, with 6 sections each weighing 30 tons. They sections roll on railroad tracks. 

Inside the museum there are over 30 airplanes and most of them still in flyable condition. There was a A-7 Corsair II, which I remember seeing on the TV show Baa Baa Blacksheep with Robert Conrad. There was also a F14- Tomcat just like on Top Gun. Len of course had to get a picture of some of the army jeeps on display.

 

After the air museum we tried to visit the pioneer museum but it was closed until March 11, so we will have to go back next week. So instead we headed to the Blue Heron Cheese factory which makes its own Brie, and then to the Tillamook Cheese factory to see how the good stuff is all made.  The factory is set up in two parts, the one side shows you how the actual cheese is made, with the kettles and turning the curds into large blocks.  Then the other side shows how the large blocks, get cut up, weighed, and then packaged. So after we filled up on Cheese Curds, white garlic cheddar and smoked sharp cheddar we went to the Tillamook Smoke house. We bought some beef and pork jerky and a new pepperoni called hunter’s sausage. The girl at the store warned us about it because it is pickled. Surprisingly it is pretty tasty. We made it back before dark, had supper and finished off the evening by starting the Sons of Anarchy series.

These are the kettles that the milk gets cooked in and the renet is added to start the milk turning into chees.

After the chees turns to curds it is seasoned and then the curds are pressed into large blocks, which are then bagged and vacummed sealed.

The cheese is then stored for anywhere from 3 months to 9 months depending on what kind of cheese it is. After it is aged it comes back to the factory to be cut and packaged.

The blocks get cut twice. The outer skins gets cut off first. We think that that cheese goes to get made into shredded cheese. It then gets pushed through the cutter on one side and then gets cut again to make it into  8oz,  1lb or 2lb loafs.

After it is cut, they take the pieces of cheese apart and place them on the conveyour belt to start the weighing process.

If the cheese is the right weight it stays on the middle of the conveyour belt. If it is the wrong weight it gets kicked to either side where these ladies take it off.

These ladies take a small presliced piece of cheese and add it to the block so that it weighs the correct amount. I still have not found a block that has an extra piece on it. After they add the cheese the fit it back into the conveyor belt.

This is where the cheese meets the plactic wrap.

The wrap completely covers the cheese and it gets sealed.

This lady seemed to have the most difficult job, trying to keep the packaged cheese on the conveyor belt and doing quality checks to make sure it is sealed properly.

Here she is trying to fix the sealer, it malfunctioned twice, casuing the line to go down. This line did not seem to have a vacumn sealer, the other line at the back did, it was doing the big 5lb costco loaves. This packager didn't seem to vacumn seal even though we didn't see any cheese in the store that wasn't sealed. We couldn't figure out the mystery.