While we were in Oregon I wanted to go see the Spruce Goose but got sidetracked the first day in Tillamook. This town on the very northwest coast of Oregon is famous for the Tillamook cheese that you can buy everywhere. 
We got sidetracked here,not because of cheese but, because of blimps. Tillamook is home to one of the few blimp hangers left in the US and is the largest wooden structure in the world. It is HUGE!! It is 1,072 ft long, 296 ft wide and 192 ft high. It covers 7 acres and the doors on each end are 120 ft high. .. Museum..The US Navy built 17 of these hangers in1942 with two being built at NAS Tillamook.The second was completed in 27 days, but was burned in 1992 and the one left now houses one of the top five privately owned aircraft collection in the nation with over 30 warbirds that are still flying. A very interesting place.
The next day we traveled to McMinnville OR and the Evergreen air & Space Museum.. Evergreen.. that is home to the famous Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known as the Spruce Goose. It is bigger than you can believe and is housed in a huge building and it dwarfs all the other planes that are there.
The museum is really neat with many airplanes in one building and outside and many NASA and space related displays in another building. There is also an IMAX theater there that has 2 or 3 different shows every day. Both museums were very interesting.They also had an art show going on with many weird metal sculptures. Very unique and wonderful.
As we headed north from Caspar Beach we were still on State Hwy 1 which still followed the edge of the continent. It is a very rugged, twisty, turny road along the coast that turns back inland to meet with US-101 again. The weather has been cool, cloudy and rain but, we left on dry roads and climbed the twisty roads through the beautiful redwood forests. This whole area north of San Francisco is also known as the Redwood Empire and sometimes referred to as the Lost Coast. It is a very rugged and beautiful area and was the road that the Little Green Truck liked the least so far. The climbing at slow speeds and twisty roads overheated the transmission so we had to stop on a hill in the middle of the woods with nothing but redwood forests around. We waited about 45 minutes, with only 2 cars passing us, for it to cool and started out again. Continued on the rest of the way to Hwy 101, stopping at the Drive Through Tree. The Ltlgrntruck wouldn't fit, so I walked through, brushing my head on the top most of the way through so it was about 6'5" and about the same wide, but still neat. Continued on to Eureka, CA. and stayed overnight at the fairgrounds where it started to rain again. Left the next morning on wet roads but no rain,yet. Arrived in Brookings, OR.where we stayed overnight. We went to the marina and watched some sea lions play We talked to a boater there that said they played there all the time and earlier in the year a mother and two babies stayed in the slip next to him until too many people started to come around. He also said the year has been the wettest and coldest that he could remember, just our luck, but we are still enjoying the new country, just wish it would dry a little and warm up. Left the Brookings area for the short drive to the Lincoln City area where we planned to stay for a week. Guess what, the whole week it rained. We did meet some fun people and Jan got to play cards every night. As you can tell, we do not look at all the tourist places, but like to see the back country, look at lighthouses and old buildings and meet people.
