USA - Washington State and Oregon

We arrived in the US during the build up for a big storm and started travelling as the storm rolled across most of the North Western USA! Great timing. Having planned our trip to avoid snow we ended up setting out into snow and frozen rain and freezing temperatures. Oh dear.

We decided to camp in style for the first 2 nights that e owned the trailer.

We visited the Naval Undersea Museum at Keyport which is next to the Naval Undersea warfare center and not far from the Bangor Trident submarine base.

We visited the Naval Undersea Museum at Keyport, WA.

Paige enjoyed dress-ups.

Ash and Megan pretended to drive a submarine.

Our first day of travel with the trailer was a little testing due to the weather conditions.

The ice and snow was still treacherous for some.

 A couple of kilometres previously along the road we noticed another car almost toppled onto its side in the steep side ditch of the road. A closer look revealed it to be a police cruiser complete with sheepish looking police officer alongside!

Our first nights campsite at Illwaco, WA - we didn't miss the snow after all.

 We were very fortunate with this campsite as it is a RV resort for members only and you are not allowed to stay without reservations - but we did.

It was weird to stand on a sandy beach and see snow in the dunes and on the hills behind.



Haystack Rock on Canon Beach, OR.

 

On Canon Beach in Oregon.

 This beach is famous for a huge rock known as Haystack Rock which sits just offshore. It was fascinating for us because it had snow on the sand dunes just behind the actual waterfront.

The Oregon coastline is spectacular.

Our beach combing find on the beach near Nehalem Bay, OR.


There was limited snow at this park, but the creek was frozen along the edges and provided the kids with great entertainment. They were trying to see how big of a piece they could extract in one go so that then they could smash it on the pathway.

Nehalem Bay State Park, Oregon.

After leaving the sate park and their warm showers, we travelled through Tillamook where we couldn't resist the cheese factory - for its ice cream!

Paige enjoyed the Tillamook ice cream.

 We didn't make it far along the road when we spotted the air museum. It was hard to miss as the hangar was the largest building  of its kind that we have ever seen. It turned out to be an old blimp hangar.

Megan was excited to vist.



The kids 'flew' a plane.





I got to sit in a jet fighter cockpit - cross of one of my bucket list items!



This blimp overshadows a WW II bomber and a forty foot RV parked behind it, but is dwarfed by the hangar itself.

 

A twin rotored helicopter - weird.

An old F14 Tomcat for playing around on.

The mini-guppy transporter would take a number of our car and trailers.


That night we stopped at Cape Lookout - aptly named for us as we needed to lookout! for the storm that raged through and destroyed our awning.

The view over our next night of state park camping - Cape Lookout.

Ash stands next to The Devil's Churn.

These signs were a little disconcerting.

  We drove along to the largest sea lion colony in North America who all choose to live in a huge sea cave. To get to the cave you take an elevator 200 ft. down through solid rock.

The kids prepare to descend to Seal Cave.

Some of the sea lion colony.

It was quite late and still wet when we ended our sea lion tour, but we made it to a town called Florence.