Trip Report: Portland to Tillamook, OR

Portland to Tillamook

After we left Dallas we flew into Portland and picked up our rental Ford Edge. For anyone in the market - this is NOT a good choice. At 30k miles it sounded like it was about to fall apart. Lucky for us, it never did. It also had bad spacing for the cup holders - ill designed cup holders are a deal breaker for me. In Portland we ate at the Rogue Brewery with a friend. After circling downtown Portland for a while looking for parking (HELLOOOO what kind of UPS store doesn't have a loading zone out front?!) We finally nabbed a spot and picked up the tent and camping gear we had mailed out to the UPS store and went to Walmart to buy a cooler, chairs, and food for the trip before heading on to the town of Tillamook, home of the best cheddar cheese in the West.

Unfortunately by the time we got in to Tillamook the cheese factory was closed for the night, so we went up the road to Garibaldi and stayed in a hotel while we sorted out our car. The last roadtrip/camping journey we took of this magnitude, we really had worked out a great way to pack the car. Our time rearranging our gear in the parking lot at the hotel proved to us that this trip wasn't going to go as easily. Another strike against the Ford Edge - there was no way to situate the cooler so that I could turn from the front seat into the back seat and fish out the jelly to make PB and Js while Brett drove. Instead, lunches consisted of a warped Chinese-fire-drill of Brett pulling over somewhere and me running to the other side of the car and digging out the jelly before hopping back in to find the bread, paper towels, and PB. I woud also complain at this point that the dashboard wasn't flat enough for adequately jelly-ing two sandwiches at once (strike 3 against the Ford Edge). :D But of such are memories made!