Day 12: No Cheese For You!

Ride:  Manzanita to Cape Lookout State Park

Distance:  48.7 miles

Woke up to a nice dry camp this morning and my efforts at "coon-proofing" my food seems to have worked.

A big thanks to Matt from Fairbanks who gave me some local salmon a friend had caught and canned - it paired well with the garlic-oregano-Parmesan boiled red potatoes last night:

The beauty of getting on the road at 7, is that there is not a lot of traffic so you can enjoy the little towns that you roll through.  Nehalem, Wheeler, Garibaldi, and Bay City seemed like sleepy beach towns that put you right on the water.

I skipped the tour of the Tillamook cheese factory - even though there was talk of FREE CHEESE.  But no tour, no cheese for me.  

These guys (who are apparently still alive) need no introduction - FREEBIRD!

In downtown Tillamook (still humming the intro to FREEBIRD), I took a right onto SR 131 to head out to Cape Mears.  But Bayocean Rd. was closed so I stayed on 131 to Netarts and then went north as far as Oceanside to see what I might be missing out on:

Right before I got to Oceanside, I saw something interesting going on in the marina parking lot,  so I applied the breaks, turned into the lot and "Howsered" my way over the see what was up:

Crabs!  These guys had an "exceptional day" and were cooking up their haul right there in the parking lot.  Nice!

 Once again, nice folks who were interested in my trip and gave me some tips for places to explore as I move south.

Well now I just had to have some seafood!  So I pedaled a bit further up the road and found Roseanne's Cafe and had a tasty cup of crab bisque and coffee:

Views from the restaurant were pretty swell too 

Camp tonight is at Cape Lookout State Park.  Another gem!  My site is just off the beach in the trees - can you hear the surf?

M

Beach is nice too: