The Pacific
North West. I travelled over to Oregon today. The coastline is very
impressive. Very rugged in places but really pretty. It was good to see the
ocean again. I have been land locked for quite awhile now. I started at the
very top left or North Western corner at Astoria, intending to drive down
highway 101 all the way to California but after about 130 miles I gave that
away as a bad joke. It is a lovely drive with some nice scenery but there are
literally 100’s of small towns all almost interlinking along this road. The
average speed was about 30-40 mph. The road is very winding and hilly and
lots of sets of traffic lights in the towns etc and it seemed to be taking
forever to get anywhere.
During the
drive, I saw a hanger in the distance with the words AIR MUSEUM painted on the
roof. I thought, well, I have to have a look at that. After a few minutes of driving
straight at this hanger, it hadn’t seemed to have gotten any closer. It was then
I realised how big this thing must be. It turned out to be the old Tillamook
Naval Air Station built during WW2 to house blimps. This thing is HUGE. I mean
HUUUUUGE!! I went inside and watched the mandatory movie that all these museums
have and found out that due to steel shortages during the war, the whole
framework for this building was made out of locally produced timber, there
being no shortage of that around here. There had been two of these hangars up
until the 1992 when a fire destroyed the second one. 17 of these timber blimp hangars
were built and placed around the United States. There were about 12
fully airworthy planes in this hangar today and it still only took up the first half
of it, with lots of room around them. The blimps that these hangers were built for used to patrol the coastal
waters of Oregon and California on the lookout for Japanese submarines.
The timber framework is incredibly impressive.
The Cafe inside
Unfortunately,
I am on the final leg of my adventure now. I am continuing down the west coast
getting ever closer to LA. I will see what tomorrow brings.
Love that retro cafe...maybe you could go back and pop a few of those stools in your pocket?? xx
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