This farm is a bit famous, as the family that owns it are the stars of the TLC reality show “Little People Big World“. I have only seen a few episodes of this show but the Roloffs seem like a hardworking, loving, and fun family – and we were lucky enough to see them in person and take a tour of their farm.

Admission to the farm is free, but parking is a small fee. You can also pay to take one or both of the tractor ride tours around their property. Pumpkins are 35 cents a pound.

We took both the tours and they were guided by close friends of the family. One of the tours was driven by Zach Roloff himself:

Here’s Matt Roloff (in the red):

and Amy Roloff (middle of photo, black vest white shirt… lots of people lined up to meet the supermom):

Yes they were filming that day. As a former video major in college, camera crews and equipment always interest me so I was just as fascinated with the production as everything else going on. The Roloff property is a-maz-ing. Those are some lucky kids. I mean for the twin boys’ birthday one year their dad got them a life-sized pirate ship to play on.

They also have an absurdly-detailed Wild West village, a full castle, numerous forts, sand volleyball court, regulation size soccer field, heated pool, and who knows what else. And not all of these were bought on their reality show royalties either. It was inspiring and visually exhausting to see all the vision and work put forth. It’s a place you would never need to leave, their own little world. Here’s just a few photos from the tour:

Bridge to Nowhere

Oh right, the whole reason we came. Pumpkins!

Our friend Andrew:

I found a good one!

Roloff Farm is only open to the public during the month of October each year, so make your plans to visit!

Our destination, Cape Meares, is both a park and a light house. Admission to both is free.

The light house is no longer working.. apparently nowadays with GPS they aren’t really needed anymore. But we got to walk around the giant lamp and admire the craftsmanship. A guide explained how it was ordered from France and shipped across the seas for months, and craned above the cliffs to where it is now. Wow!

There is a gift shop in the base of the light house with knick knacks. But the best part of Cape Meares is the scenery overlooking Tillamook Bay.

Closeby is a path to what they call the “Octopus Tree” – a remarkable multi-trunked Sitka Spruce with a trunk circumference of about 50 feet. It is quite large in person.

After the park we had to head back to Portland, but there are other things to do in & near Tillamook – notably an air museum which looks fascinating. If I went back I would definitely spend time walking around the town also, or check out one of the beaches.

The tour is self-guided and pretty brief, but interesting. I would not recommend making the trek out to Tillamook just for the cheese factory. You would probably be a bit disappointed. However there is plenty to see in Tillamook in addition to the factory so plan a day around it. Here’s photos from the factory:

Outside Entrance:

Big cheese hunks come from who knows where and go into this room to be cut and packaged into smaller bricks. I was surprised how much human interaction is involved with the process – I thought factories were all but robots nowadays. It’s kinda refreshing.

Here’s a quick video of the room – it happens very fast!

On the wall in the tour I spotted this sweet photo of who I assume is/was the owner:

Guess what else Tillamook makes? ICE CREAM!

Yay Tillamook! Not sure how I got stuck being the cow…

Tomorrow I’ll post about what else we did in Tillamook.

Why? We had the pleasure of participating in the 2nd event presented by Portland’s Dill Pickle Club: The “How Are Things Made?” Tour.

This was an event that is right up our alleys. We love watching shows like How It’s Made. In St. Louis Peter and I lived by the Anheuser Busch brewery so I had many opportunities to go on its factory tour and always found it interesting. Pretty much any opportunity I have to see behind-the-scenes production of any product, event, job, etc I will jump on. It gives you insight and respect for how something we often take for granted comes together.

On our tour we visited 3 places:

• Intel
• Pendleton Woolen Mills
• Port of Portland Marine Terminal 6

We also enjoyed a brief conversation/lecture from Dr. Randall Bluffstone, Chair of Economics Dept. over at Portland State University.

So I will get to the tours in a moment but I just have to say that being in a big yellow cheese wagon is exactly the same as it was growing up, only I have gotten bigger and the seats haven’t. But it was fun nostalgia.

Intel

The Intel tour in Hillsboro, OR was very sterile. Which I guess is fitting when I think about it. The tour was like a slick slice of a science museum experience, and we learned about what goes into making the processor chips and how much they have progressed over the years. It was really fascinating. But we didn’t get to see any actual production. I think the building the tour was at was nothing but office drones anyway. It would have been nice to at least see a video of a chip being made.

There was a Q&A portion of the tour. Our group was very interested in things like environmental impacts and foreign relations. I asked a question about how many chips Intel makes and the speaker did not know the answer.

One of my favorite parts of this tour was the oversized computer with Windows 3.1 era boxes and a throwback Intel commercial shot on it.

Pendleton Woolen Mills

So this was the best tour of the day, but no photos were allowed. This place is in Washougal, Washingon, right across the river from Portland. Before the tour we were in the attached store with clothing and blankets and Peter and I were like “this stuff is lame.” After the tour we wanted to buy something because we were so impressed with what goes into making the materials.

First, from a technical standpoint, this tour is great because everyone gets to wear a headset that is tuned to a frequency that the guide’s microphone is on. Thus you never suffer from being in the back of the line or the guide having their back to you. Everyone can  adjust their volume to a level that suits them. EVERY TOUR EVER should do this :)

So during the tour we get to see fresh wool from the sheep’s back in bundles, learn about the methods of dying the wool, see it being combed and spun into thread, and see the thread on looms making fabric. We were walking through the mill, next to the giant deliciously 1960’s green machines that roll the threads, walking next to old school tables and safety posters from the 80s, and walking past consciously-ignoring-us employees on their breaks. Some of the looms were so old they use a patterned ticker-tape looking thing that “tells” it what pattern to weave. This mill’s daily operations don’t appear to have changed in the past several decades, but if it ain’t broke…

The QA in the factory really impressed us… as the loom weaves the fabric, it is examined for errors/holes/etc.. and it is examined a couple of times after. Every square inch sees human eyes. In fact the human element is present at every stage in the production.  You can read a little more about this and see some blurry photos here.

The blankets are all made in the USA at Pendleton factories but the clothing is all sewn overseas.

Port of Portland, Terminal 6

First off here’s some facts swiped right from the Wikipedia entry:

• Port of Portland’s marine terminals export the largest amount of wheat from the United States and third largest amount in the world.
• It is also the fifth largest port for tonnage, third largest auto import gateway in the country, the largest mineral bulk port on the U.S. west coast, and the 17th largest port for cargo containers in the United States.
• Around one thousand businesses and corporations are said to use the Port’s marine facilities.
• Imports and exports at the Port of Portland total about $14 billion USD, annually.

Port of Portland has four terminals. We saw Terminal 6, which has most of the storage containers and cars. I don’t know why it is called Terminal 6 if there are only four total, but you can probably google that.

So this terminal deals with a lot of heavy stuff. This tour was really enjoyable because our guide was nice, loud and knowledgeable. We seemed to be driving around the premises after daily work was done so we didn’t get to see a lot of stuff going on but it was fascinating to see the big machinery and vast use of land. These photos were taken from inside the school bus, and it was drizzling, so forgive me.

Those crane looking thingies are parked right on the edge of the land, overlooking the columbia river. They lift up the containers and place them off and on the barges.

Each of these containers is the size of a load on a full size semi truck.

This neat machine picks up these massive heavy containers like it’s no big deal. It was interesting seeing this approach… it makes the PODS approach seem a little rudimentary. Also that POD container is half the length of these containers.

And that concluded our day. Not pictured: Peter and I enjoying a brown bag lunch I packed us, suburban mom style. It even had a freakin ice pack and napkins in it. And it met all our food pyramid guidelines.

Our friend Courtney came to visit a couple of weeks ago and it was a great excuse to finally head west and make acquaintence with the Oregon coast. We decided to go to Cannon Beach. Just over an hour’s drive from Portland, we had a very pretty drive through the hills. It was a little alarming to see hillsides of tree stumps from recent logging… it’s not an industry prevalent in the midwest, so the mass tree graves kinda freak me out.

Anyway, unlike any other coasts I have been to, the Oregon coast doesn’t really give you any hints it exists til you’re right on top of it. It goes from tree-woods-wilderness to beach.

Our first stop in the town was at a kite shop. Kites are apparently a hot commodity on the Oregon coast because we saw several other kite shops the more we explored. Here’s some photos from our day at the beach.

Peter, myself, and Courtney:

Foggy Haystack Rock, famous for appearing in The Goonies and other films:

Courtney flying her kite:

After we left Cannon Beach to head back to Portland, there was a traffic jam on the only road out. We decided to make a u-turn and check out Seaside which is another beach town north of Cannon Beach. I had heard Seaside was a happening place and I know they have 4th of July stuff going on there. However I think we went the wrong way into town or missed the main strip because the town seemed rather rundown and the beach was not as exciting as Cannon beach.