Midnight Fire Drill

We got up early once again and went across the street to the Mercantile for a breakfast sandwich and coffee (no Starbucks today). There weren’t many other people awake yet, but we did run into a man who lives in Portland and works in Fremont. He says he flies there every Monday and returns on Friday (quite the commute). We went for a 2.5 mile hike and Kevin got the chance to shoot some waterfalls. It was still raining but he managed to get some really beautiful shots anyway. We checked out, and headed for Oregon. We passed by South Bend, Washington where their claim to fame is being the “oyster capital of the world”. There were haystack high piles of oyster shells all over this town. Amazing! Kevin was driving too fast to get any good pictures. As we drove through Washington State, we saw a lot of “clear cut” areas where the loggers have stripped the land of all the trees. It is really ugly! We eventually crossed the bridge between Washington State and Oregon and landed in Astoria, Oregon. It was nice to be back on Oregon soil. I have to say that of all the places we have visited, this state seems to be the friendliest. Everywhere we’ve traveled in Oregon, the people have been extremely friendly and helpful to us. We even stopped in front of someone’s house today to look over the map and the homeowner came out and asked us if we were lost and needed directions.
The rains finally stopped today, and we have been able to take pictures along the Oregon coastline. Clumsy Janet took a tumble down a short hill but managed to protect the camera…oh yeah, and she’s ok. Thankfully no one saw it happen—how embarrassing! We were going to camp tonight but the largest campground in the area (with 295 campsites) was completely booked. The next place we checked out felt like we’d be camping in the local storage yard, so we decided to move on. We drove for about 11 hours today minus all the stops. Along the way we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese factory to do the self guided tour. It was a lot of fun! We got to see the cheese assembly line where they cut and package the cheese, and then got to taste a variety of cheeses. Our favorite cheese was the extra sharp white cheddar. Since we didn’t know where we were going to spend the night, we decided to just wing it and have ourselves an adventure. So, instead of trying to find a place to stay, we headed out to a lighthouse at Cape Mears and enjoyed finding things to photograph. Heading back out of Cape Mears, we stopped at Oceanside, Oregon and took some pictures of the ocean during the setting of the sun. We tried to book a motel room here, but the places were closed for the night, so we drove on down the road. It was very, very dark and Kevin did a great job of driving. We were crossing our fingers that no deer would run out in front of our car. It would have been very difficult to stop in time because it was hard to see too far in front of the car.
We finally found a place to stay in Lincoln City, Oregon which is right on the coast. We had settled into our room and were checking out our photos for the day when the fire alarm went off. The time was 2 minutes after midnight and everyone had to evacuate the hotel. We were grateful that we were still dressed and not in bed yet, as many of the guest came out in their pj’s (not a pretty sight). Some of the guests came with pets in tow and small children looking half awake. No one looked amused. Now we are back in the room and it is 12:29am. It’s time for bed. Oh! There was no fire, the inn keeper had accidentally hit the fire alarm and was very apologetic to everyone. Hey, maybe we’ll get a free room out of it! (ha!)