Waking up warm and toasty made a huge difference! We packed everything up and hit the road for the other side of the State Park. We went to the Fort Stevens Historical Area, home to some more Batteries and a small museum.
The coolest battery was Battery 245. It was the last one built and is built into the ground and not visible at all from the top. It was open and so you could walk through about 200′ of underground tunnels with a crazy echo. It was pretty crazy and it kept hitting me that these facilities were full of soldiers not that long ago.
We wandered on to a friend’s favorite bakery (Pacific Way Bakery) in Gearhart, but it was closed (only open Wednesday through Monday or something like that). Luckily, we also had to stop by McMennimins for a passport stamp and claimed our prizes of a magnet and a new glass. We shared a celebratory basket of Cajun Tots.
No trip through this land is complete without a visit to the greatest cheese factory there is. The Tillamook Chese Factory is an excellent destination for learning about how cheese is made and sampling. It usually ends with an ice cream cone as well!
Our destination for the night was Cape Lookout State Park. It’s further west from highway 101, so it’s a bit more off the beaten path than most camp grounds, but totally worth it! There were no hookup spots left, so we picked the next best spot and ran from battery power. It worked pretty well!
The park itself is on a long spit and is all campground and beach. I realized later that the only way to have access to that specific beach was via the state park. There was plenty of room, but even on a busy day it would still be far less crowded than some of the more major coastal cities beach access points.
We caught the very last glimpse of the sunset. Samuel had an excellent night, and it felt like we were finally getting the hang of things!