Imagine Our RV Dreams: Tillamook, Oregon

We drove to Tillamook Elks RV Park which is separate from the Lodge that is in town. Nice property but it was $40/night for full hook ups or $20 to dry camp. $40/night was a bit pricey for an Elks RV Park but they did have a nice property but no amenities.

We drove in to town and went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory which was mobbed! It was a beautiful day and everyone and their brother wanted ice cream, including us!

They have a beautiful exhibit space and we could look through windows to the factory floor but there wasn’t much going on in the factory when we were there. The exhibits were interesting.

The Tillamook Way is a way of life—the way our farmer-owners have done things since 1909.

We cared for our farmer-owners, who cared for the land, which sustained healthier cows, which provided better milk. And better milk made better dairy products. It’s a simple recipe that we’ve followed for over a century and it has never failed.

Dairy cows eat a variety of foods to stay healthy and produce high-quality milk. Part of their feed, like corn cobs and husks, would end up in landfills if cows didn't munch on them. Think of it as recycling - everyone wins!

Corn is a high-energy ingredient that improves milk production. Cows get a mix of corn silage, ground flaked corn, and corn distillers grain.

Food processing waste, for example potato peels and corn cobs, provide cows with nutrition instead of ending up in landfills.

Bales of grass are a great source of fiber and nutrition for cows.

Vitamins and minerals make up a small, but very important part of the feed.

Cows need places to rest and roam

Farmers design their barns for their cows' comfort. In the wet winter months or the heat of summer, cows enjoy the shelter and shade of freestall barns, where they sleep or chew their cud on clean, dry bedding. After all, cows spend 60% of the time resting and digesting.

They also have plenty of space to eat, socialize, exercise - and perhaps even get a self-serve brush massage!

There are different ways to milk a cow

Well-cared for dairy cows make more milk. At peak production, a Holstein cow can produce as much as 15 gallons of milk a day. That's about 150 pounds!

Some farmers milk cows at specific times in specialized rooms called milking parlors. The systems are partially automated, but workers have to attach the milking units.

Others use a fully automated self-service system. Cows walk in when they want to get milked by robots.

Now to some free samples: Medium Cheddar, Sharp Cheddar, and Colby Jack

Tillamook County Creamery Association is a farmer-owned co-op. Always has been. Always will be. This means that a group of farming families in Tillamook County, on the coast of Oregon, own the company and benefit directly from its growth and success. Our headquarters, ownership and heritage, are and always will be, rooted in Tillamook, Oregon.

Salt does more than add flavor

We use about 165 pounds of salt for every 53,500 pound vat, piped into this room from the Salt Room behind-the-scenes.

As the final step in the cheddaring process, salt draws out more whey and slows the production of lactic acid.

Less whey means less moisture, which helps our cheddars age better.

8 blockforming towers make cheese under pressure

Each stainless steel blockforming tower holds 800 pounds of cheese curds.

Suction pulls the curds into the top of a tower. Surrounded by a vacuum chamber that draws out air and when, the curds get dense, compressing even more under all that weight.

When the tower is full, a platform drops the column of curd. A guillotine cuts off the bottom, and the cheese gets pushed in a bag and onto the conveyor. This happens every two minutes.

Each tower holds 800 pounds of curds - enough to make 20 of the big 40-pound blocks. (We call the big blocks "forties," but they actually weigh 41-42 pounds.)

The high-speed machine seals up to 120 packages a minute.

After a heat bath, the packages pass through a metal detector for safety. If anything is detected, the package is automatically rejected.

35 million pounds of cheese stays cool at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

A robot selects each pallet based on how long it has aged.

When it's ready, workers bring pallets of cheese to the De-Boxing Room.

The "forties" go through a debagger machine.

Then the cheese gets packaged for sale. I think I was craving ice cream at this point so enough of the exhibits! We went downstairs and got 2 scoops of ice cream each for $7.

The design of the building offers the option to open the registers in the building or on nice days, they open the windows and sell ice cream from the outside of the building.

There is also a large store where they sell all of the cheese and dairy items along with souvenirs.

We found our way to the end of the line and waited to get our ice cream.

This beautiful visitor's center opened in June 2018 replacing the old one. They get around 1.3 million visitors annually.

Next we stopped at the Blue Heron French Cheese company where they had a nice shop. This location is also a Harvest Host site for RV'ers to spend a night.

Back at the RV I finally got to eat the dungeness crab I bought in Newport.

I have all my tools and some Old Bay spice for dipping. YUM!

The next day we went out for a walk at the Elks RV park and picked three sandwich bags of blackberries from the plants on the property. Many of the berries on the bushes were not ripe yet.

The property was loaded with blackberry bushes!

Then we went to the Tillamook County Fair.

We ate more Tillamook ice cream, looked at the exhibits, talked with a few guys about the blimp hanger in Tillamook and the two in our home town of Tustin, California. We then went to the grandstands and watched some horse races.

Everyone we talked to said we HAD to stay and watch the Pig-N-Ford races.

This zany race combines Ford Model T’s, pigs and a dirt track at the Tillamook County Fairgrounds. Traditions grow deep roots in Oregon but few are as simultaneously silly and serious as the annual Pig-N-Ford races. Like the name suggests, this tradition involves two things: pigs and Model-T Fords. It started at the Tillamook County fair in 1925. For nearly a century, every generation since has adamantly held this tradition and passed it forward to the next.

Here is a YouTube video that shows the event better than any photos can do!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwTaZ5xoCrg

Some of the Model-T cars

The drivers have to shut down their car engines, run to the pen and pick up a piglet, go back to their car and crank start it, jump in and race around the track while holding the piglet.

After a lap around the track they have to turn off their engine, put their piglet back in the pen and pick up a different piglet and restart their engine and race around the track again.