Trip Report
Leaving Eugene at 8:00 a.m., 39 Obsidians and friends traveled by way of Corvallis and Dallas to Tillamook on Monday, June 26. Our rest stop was at the Dallas City Park where we had coffee and goodies furnished by the leader, Bette Hack. We then continued on to Tillamook arriving about 12:15.
Our train, the Oregon Coastline Express, left at 1:00 p.m. and we ate our lunch and ordered soft drinks, coffee, tea and cocoa from the two hostesses aboard the train. Our railroad car was furnished with tables, carpets and view windows for our trip along the coast through woodsy areas and by Tillamook Bay, through Garibaldi with a stop at Rockaway Beach by the ocean, and on to Wheeler. Then back to Rockaway Beach for overnight at the Silver Sand Motel on the beach where we all enjoyed a brilliant orange sunset.
On Tuesday we left the motel at 8:30 a.m. and stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory where we shopped and ate ice cream cones and looked at the displays. Then we returned to the train station and boarded the "Little Toot," a train made up of several cabooses which have been converted to a tour train with seats. A switcher engine pulls the Burlington Northern green and white striped cabooses over the 5-mile round trip journey. We passed through dairy country and a working lumber mill and then marveled at the size of the W.W. II blimp hangars, the world's largest clear span wooden structures. One of the hangars is leased to General Electric and houses their tethered Aerostat Program which includes a large blimp and a cyclocrane. The other hangar houses a train workshop where the old trains are brought in and converted (at a very expensive price) for use by tour companies.
We left Tillamook and drove to Cape Lookout Park for lunch and had beautiful clear warm weather for enjoying this beautiful picnic spot. We drove the Three Capes Scenic Route (Cape Meares, Cape Lookout, Cape Kiwanda) to Lincoln City where we stopped at the new factory outlet stores for some shopping. For dinner, most of us stopped at Moe's at Taft and the bus driver and 8 others stopped at Over the Waves in Lincoln City. We arrived home a little after 9:30 p.m.
Our skillful and helpful bus driver was Alan with Charter Bus Lines of Oregon. Those enjoying this coast excursion were Murray and Wilda Agate, Ingrid Carmichael, Clair Cooley, Virginia DeMers, Phyllis Early, Bill Eaton, Doris Frese, Gladys Grancorvitz, Jan Gund, Dorothy Hayes, Miki Hutchison, Beatrice Hill, Jane Hilt, Lillian Johnson, Virginia Kapsa, Helen Knowlton, Bea LeFevre, Dorothy Leland, Helen Lynch, Bruce, Jennelle and Joan Moorhead, Frances Newsom, Janice Pattison, Bonnie Rickard, Lois Schreiner, Grace, Nadine and June Smith, Ethel and Robin Steussy, Louise Thurber, Dorothy Turner, Lanelda Watts, Mildred Weatherby, Bob Wilson, Fran Witzel and Bette Hack (leader).
