Monday, November 16, 2009

Tillamook

So three months ago (on our not quite fully blogged vacation) we took part of our last day in Oregon to visit the Tillamook cheese factory. This was one of the highlights of our trip. It was an absolutely fascinating place. We learned a lot about the company, tried several different kinds of cheese, discovered we like our safe yellow flavors, and even had some fresh ice cream. Here are some of the photos we took while we were there.

This was a big attraction. Kylee loved sticking her face in the cow for a picture, and she also loved all the attention from the people waiting to do the same. This place was packed!


And of course Aedan got to be the farmer, with a little help from Dad.


Then we climbed a flight of stairs to what I imagine would be called the viewing deck, or something like that. They have huge windows up there that look down on the factory. We really had no idea what was going on most of the time, but it was fascinating to watch the cheese come out different machines, get cut, weighed, bagged, cut some more and packaged for the store. These were some HUGE chunks of cheese!!








At the end of our 'tour', we decided to treat ourselves to some fresh, Tillamook ice cream (despite the fact it was barely 10 am!). It's kinda hard to see in this pic, but look at how packed the ice cream stand was!!

When I ordered pumpkin ice cream, Brett looked at me like I'd gone mad. This is Brett, eating my pumpkin ice cream. :-) It was simply to die for, and the second I find some in the stores, it's coming home with me.

Kylee simply devoured her strawberry.

Aedan got tired of his strawberry fast...and drooled over Brett's mint chocolate chip.


All in all, this was a great stop in our weeklong trip, and I would recommend it to anyone who is on the Oregon coast.