Tillamook Creamery is a famous cheese factory located by the Oregon Coast. It originally started as a factory that only produces cheese, but slowly expanded into other dairy related territories such as ice cream and butter. Tillamook Creamery is also open to public to visit its assembly line and offer food and related products in its visitor area. Tillamook Creamery is only about 1.5 hours West of Portland and it was recently renovated in 2018, thus we wanted to visit the newly renovated creamery.
We left Portland around 9AM in the morning and it was raining really hard outside. The rain did not stop us from going to Tillamook Creamery, but we initially wanted to head to the coast to have some fun first before heading to the creamery. So since it was raining, we just headed straight to the creamery.
The drive to the creamery was simple and easy. We got there around 10:30AM and the parking lot was not even half full. We could tell Tillamook Creamery looked so different now with a much better looking exterior and much more tourist like. As we entered the facility, the ceiling was quite high and the hallway wall has a historical timeline of the creamery.
The left side of the creamery is where the food is. This is where we could get food and ice cream. The cafeteria is much larger than before with the entire wall of glass allowing natural light to come through. The lunch hour starts at 10:45AM, and we got the classic grill cheese with tomato soup and fries. The grill cheese was not so special but did taste good. The tomato soup was extraordinary. We liked it very much. It also had cheese curd in it.
The second floor of the facility is where tourists can overlook the assembly line and see how cheese is made. From the top, we could see assembly line workers at each station doing the inspection and packaging. Most of the process are automated but still required some manual inspection.
Before we left, we went to grab ice cream. The ice cream was very creamy with some special flavors. Some people chose to grab an ice cream blend, like milk shake, but we saw people having a hard time sucking up the creamy drink due to the thickness.
Overall, the newly renovated facility is much more tourist friendly and offers a lot more things to do and look at. It is definitely a great place to go after having a fun day at the coast.
Mirror Lake is a very popular trail for snowshoeing in Oregon. This is due to its close proximity to Portland and the trail is only about 2 miles long with little elevation gain. Mirror Lake trail head is located right by Skibowl off Highway 26, and it is only about 1 hour East to Portland. Due to the winter storm over Pacific Northwest, there has been a good amount of snow over the mountain and it was perfect for snowshoeing.
We left Portland around 7:30 AM in the morning when the sky was still a bit dark, but we wanted to get there early due to the long weekend and we expected a lot of cars heading to Mount Hood. As we were about 10 miles out from Mirror Lake trail head, the traffic stopped and was moving extremely slow. We were not sure why. As we moved along further, we realized it was because people were pulling over to the side to put on chains. We were driving an all wheel drive SUV and Mirror Lake trail head was only about 3 miles out, we did not bother to put on the chains.
We were able to get to Mirror Lake trail head quite easily without worrying about the snow on the road. However, the parking lot at Mirror Lake trail head was full and we had to find a parking space at Skibowl. We were extremely lucky to find a parking spot and it was only 9:30AM in the morning. There were so many people at Skibowl.
As we got off the car to purchase the parking pass, many people were simply just wondering around and we found out that the power was out at Skibowl's lift. Thus people were waiting for the power to recover.
We put on our snowshoes that we rented from REI for $18 per day and headed towards the Mirror Lake trail. As we walked further in into the trail, it was just beautiful. There were so much snow on the pine trees and it was a winter wonderland. From time to time, huge chunk of snow would fall down from the tree trunk. We were hit multiple times while we were on the trail.
It took us about an hour to get to Mirror Lake. The Mirror Lake was simply frozen and the snow accumulated on top of it. We did not walk onto the frozen lake of course as it would be dangerous.
Along the trail, we also saw many dogs enjoying the snow. However, we saw many dog poops along the trail, which was disappointing. We expected better from dog owners to take good care of these kind of things.
Overall, it was a great experience and we absolutely lover the snowshoeing at Mirror Lake. We recommend to get to Skibowl at least by 9AM in the morning to guarantee a parking space.
Tasty Pot is a chain restaurant that specializes in Taiwanese hot pot dishes. It originated from Taiwan, but has expanded to North America with multiple locations across US on both East and West coast. It also has a restaurant located in Canada. Tasty Pot has recently expanded to Oregon and opened a new location at Beaverton, thus we decided to give it a try.
We got to Tasty Pot at Beaverton around 1PM in the afternoon. The restaurant was not entirely full but was still crowded. The waitress politely took us to an open table and gave us the menu. On the menu, there were 12 different hot pot dishes with 3 different prices. The cheapest was $14 and the most expensive one with lobster was $18. The expensive hot pot was also served with a larger pot. We ordered Beef and Curry hot pot and chose rice and black tea.
After about 5 minutes, the hot pot was delivered to us. The hot pot plate was quite unique and detailed. It definitely looked different from the one at boiling point. In addition, we could hardly spot the fire underneath the pot.
The Curry hot pot had very similar ingredient as the one at Boiling Point with fish balls, beef, imitated crab meat, cabbage, etc. The difference was that there was a raw egg placed in here and the curry taste though was much lighter. The Beef hot pot was similar to the one at Boiling Point as well, but less spicy. The additional ingredient in the Beef hot pot includes clam and taro. One thing that was different at Tasty pot was that there was a tomato in all the hot pot dishes.
Tasty Pot also served bubble tea as A-Cha brand. We did not order it however as we already got black tea from the lunch meal.
Overall, Tasty Pot was not bad and had the essentials of Taiwanese hot pot dish. Since it has a restaurant located in Oregon and Oregon does not have sales tax, we no longer need to drive 3 hours to go to Seattle to enjoy Taiwanese hot pot.
Valley of Fire State Park is the first state park in Nevada. It is located an hour East of Las Vegas and very close to Lake Mead. Valley of Fire State Park is not as famous as Red Rock Canyon National Park, but it does offer an amazing view of cool land formation just like Red Rock National Park. Valley of Fire State Park is a very popular park for local people. When we were at Las Vegas last time, Valley of Fire State Park was the place the the taxi driver highly recommend.
As we were visiting Death Valley National Park, we had more time on our hand and decided to check out Valley of Fire State Park. We got to the entrance of the park around 9AM in the morning. The entrance fee was $10 for the day. The first place we stopped at was at the Bee Hives. There wasn't any trails here, but it was a great spot for photography. We had a full view of the red rocks around us and there were many special and cool rocks with holes that we could use as frames to take pictures with.
The next place that we wanted to visit is the famous Fire Wave trail. As we were driving on the road, we saw a group of Bighorn Sheep on the side of the road! What are the chances? It was amazing to see these sheep and they were eating and crossing the road. We did not dare to get off the car to get close to them because we were worried that they might get aggressive. We really loved that fact that we could see wild animals at Valley of Fire State Park.
Fire Wave trail was an amazing trail and we loved the color of the rock along the trail. We enjoyed it so much that we actually get wondered off the trail a bit without knowing it. The next trial we did was White Domes trail. This was another wonderful trail with its own uniqueness to it. It also had beautiful colors on the rock and we could not get our eyes off from it.
Then we drove to Fire Canyon view point. From the view point, we could see the land formation of the red rocks from the top. We could see that the bottom of the rocks had white color, but it became red at the top. We could even see the clear cut line between red and white color. While we were there, it was extremely quiet and felt like a zen moment.
The last trail we did was the Mouse Tank trail, or the Petroglyph Canyon trail. This was the trail with petroglyphs from the primitives on the rocks along the trail. It was a wonderful experience to see these petroglyphs.
It was a great experience visiting Valley of Fire State Park. We were so excited and happy that we visited this place. In fact, we actually think that Valley of Fire State Park is more interesting than Death Valley National Park. Thus we highly recommend to visit Valley of Fire State Park when time permits!
Mouse Tank trail is one of the first hiking trail after driving pass Valley of Fire State Park. The trail is essentially composed of red sand and all the rocks on the side of the trail are red as well. Most importantly, the most interesting part of Mouse Tank trail is that there are petroglyphs on the rock from the primitives who used to live in this area. Most of the petroglyphs are still kept in great shape for people to study and look at.
The trail itself is only about 0.8 miles round trip. It is rather short, but interesting. As we started the hike, we could see all the red sand on the trail. The color of the red sand was beautiful and looked like clay to us.
At the beginning of the trail, there was also a board showing many of the common petroglyph symbols that we would see along the trail and the board also stated the possible translation of each symbols. We took a photo of the board to see we could translate the petroglyph when we see it.
As we hiked into the canyon, we started to see the first rock with petroglyph symbols. The symbols were carved on the rock wall that has black stain on it. The symbol was kept in great shape and we could still clearly see what the symbol is. There were symbols for the sun, rain, people, and some strange bat like human creature. We were thinking that maybe the primitives were trying to indicate some alien like creature with that bat like symbol.
Then we walked further in, we saw even more symbols carved along the rock wall. There were just so many and it was so exciting to see these historic carvings. Walking on the red sandy trail and seeing these ancient petroglyphs made us feel like archaeologists! It was an amazing experience to have!
At the end of the trail was where Mouse Tank was. Mouse Tank was like a water tank in between the rocks and never got drained. We imagined that the primitive people could have used this water tank to preserve water and use it for later.
Overall, we highly recommend visiting Mouse Tank trail to get a great experience with petroglyphs. It was so wonderful to see the left over of the primitives and trying to translate these symbols were very fun as well.
White Domes Trails is located at Valley of Fire State Park in the state of Nevada. The trail head is located at the end of Mouse Tank Road, or White Domes Road. The road sign was not very clear on the name of the road. The trail itself is about 1.4 miles long and it is a loop that loops back to the parking lot. The trail itself is quite easy with a descent at the beginning of the trail to head down the canyon. The sand on the rock can sometimes make the trail slippery so extra caution is advised.
We got to White Domes Trail around 11AM. The parking lot is about half full. As we approached the trail head, we saw a group of people on top of the rock on the side. There were even small kids among the group. It is quite dangerous to do such thing as these people seemed to be amateurs without any proper gears.
The beginning of the trail is a sandy trail and our foot simply sunk in for every step that we took. It was difficult to walk on, but got better later on the trail. We also saw some elderly people hiking on the trail taking every step down the canyon cautiously. The view from the top of the trail looking down the canyon was beautiful. The color on the rock was magnificent with soft purple highlights. These rocks simply look like a loaf of taro flavored bread.
As we got down to the bottom of the canyon, we saw even more weird shaped rocks. Some rocks look like a turtle coming out of the cliff. Other rocks have a shape of a tiger resting on the rock.
As we hiked further in, we reached the path that went between vertical cliffs. It was an awesome land formation and we were excited to take several photos here. We never had the chance to see such land formation in the Northwest.
The trail then looped around into an open field and we could see the open field on the far side and all the red rocks. The view was magnificent. There were also many rocks with large holes for people to sit in. These holes were as large as a full adult and we could lay down and sleep in there.
White Domes trail was quite an awesome experience and we highly recommend doing this hike when visiting Valley of Fire State Park.
Fire Wave Trail is the most popular hiking trail at Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. The trail is only about 1.5 miles round trip with no elevation gain. As the name of the trail suggests, the trail takes the hiker through a trail with lot of wavy sand stones with red color. The trail is about 10 minutes from Valley of Fire Visitor Center and the parking lot is large enough to accommodate about 50 cars.
We got to Fire Wave Trail around 10AM in the morning and there was only few cars there. We started the hike by kept walking towards West, but shortly after we realized that we were off the trail. It was a bit hard to tell where the trail was in the beginning due to the sandy path and the lack of markers. The shrubs that was spread on the ground also made it hard to know which route is the correct path. Thanks to Google Map with GPS, we were able to see the trail on the map and able to get back on the trail.
The first part of the trail was sandy, but once we got around the large rock, the trail was on the rock. We could start seeing the red colored wavy rock. It was very beautiful. In addition, it was also very quiet on the trail. We could not hear anything other than the wind.
As we approached to the end of the trail, we started to see the infamous fire wave rock. From afar, it looked like a taro pastry dessert. The color of the rock was not a bright red color. It was more like soft red with a tad of purple highlight in between. It had a shape of an ice cream scoop, which was very interesting.
Other than that, there was another big round rock on the side. That rock simply looked like a cinnamon roll. As we looked at these rock, it was making us hungry.
We saw many people sitting on the rock enjoying food. We also climbed to the top of the fire wave rock to take an awesome photo with us standing on the very top. It was very easy to climb, but do need to be cautious not to fall on the right side where the vertical drop is.
Fire Wave Trail was one of the most interesting hike we have done. The vibrant color of rocks that we see on the trail was simply amazing. The hike was also very easy and suitable for kids and senior to walk on. As we got back to the parking lot, there were also people asking about the difficulty of the trail and we simply told them not to worry.
Death Valley National Park is one of the most famous National Park in North America. The National Park is split among Nevada and California, with most parts in California. Death Valley National Park is also known to have the lowest point in North America at Bad Water Basin and has excessive heat during the summer time. Other than being hot, Death Valley National Park is a popular place for stargazers since it is known to be the darkest place in North America and has won the Dark Sky award.
We visited Death Valley National Park over the winter holiday as the temperature would not be too high like summer. The entrance fee to Death Valley National Park is 30 dollars for a week. There was not a cheaper option for day use unfortunately. Also, the fee can be collected at the automated paying machine without going to the visitor center. Driving through Death Valley National Park was quite an interesting trip to see pretty much desert on the side of road.
We went to Zabriskie Point the first thing in the morning before the sunrise. The color of the sky was a beauty and the landscape of the badlands was breath taking. We then went to Bad Water Basin to checkout the lowest place in North America. The reflecting surface on the salt flat was unexpectedly amazing!
We then went to Visitor's Center at Furnace Creek to take a break and grab some food to eat. Afterwards, we went to Harmony Borax Work that was only a mile North of Visitor's Center. Harmony Borax Work used to be a factory manufacturing borax and shipped borax to California for use. It has closed down for a long time, but the remain was still there. This would have been a perfect place to take Milky Way photos due to its open sky and many objects could be used as the foreground.
After that, we went to Mesquite Sand Dunes. This was the only place in Death Valley National Park with sand dunes. We have never seen sand dunes before, thus it was a pretty cool experience for us to trek on sand dunes.
The last stop for us at Death Valley is at Dante's View. Dante's View is at the top of the mountain with elevation of nearly 1700m. It can be reached easily via car as there is a road leading up to it. Dante's View overlooks the entire Bad Water Basin of Death Valley. The sunrise here would have been magnificent as well. One thing to note that is the road is very narrow with sharp turns. Thus extra caution is advised.
In general, we loved Death Valley National Park. The water at the Bad Water Basin salt flat that created the reflecting surface was an unexpected pleasant surprise. The only unfortunate park was that the weather was mostly cloudy and we could not see any milky way. Perhaps we will have better luck next time!
