Oregon coast – tierneycreates

This post is a follow up to yesterday’s post 2024 Travels. When writing yesterday’s post looking back on my big travel events in 2024 I realized I left off a significant trip, an Oregon Coast road trip with our friends MJ and J.

This trip was significant because it was the first time I was able to return to Cannon Beach, Oregon, where my late husband and our dogs would visit yearly for vacation.

First John and I flew into Portland, Oregon and visited his son who lives there. It was awesome to see the quilt I gave my stepson on the sofa in his apartment, apparently being used and enjoyed 🙂

After a day and a half in Portland we drove our rental car to Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast.

It was awesome and emotionally overwhelming to return to Cannon Beach. With John’s support I was able to visit many of the favorite places that my late husband Terry and I used to always visit including Center Diamond Fabric (the wonderful little quilt shop); the little cafe across from Center Diamond Fabric; the awesome bookstore the Cannon Beach Book Company (with a sofa!); and the Screw & Brew – a hardware store turned into a brew pup!

Although it was a bit of am overcast day, we also walked over to the beach so John could see Haystack Rock:

It was quite the emotional experience to return. Here is what I share on the Instagram post I did back in October 2024 on this return to Cannon Beach:

(I returned to) Cannon Beach for the first time in six years since my life changed forever in 2018. It was hard to be there, but it was good and healing. I got to return to my favorite quilt shop on the Oregon coast and have delicious hot chocolate in one of the cozy cafés of Cannon Beach. The library had a book sale AND we stopped at the bookstore! (Public library + independent bookstore in the same day = Bliss)

After our jaunt to Cannon Beach, we drove to Pacific City, Oregon to meet up with our friends MJ and J who we rented a home near the beach with for a couple days. After we got checked into our rental house we all walked to the beach to enjoy an amazing sunset:

From Pacific City we went on various days trips, roadtripping along the Oregon Coast for a couple days and returning to our home based in Pacific City. We went on some wonderful hikes, checked out various areas of the coastline, had lots of delicious seafood (Colorado is landlocked so whenever we are near the ocean we eat as much fresh seafood as we can!), and spent one morning doing some beach clean up and returning a jellyfish to the sea.

It was a memorable trip and I think it was healing to return to Cannon Beach. In the spring this year I am going to do something big (and hopefully healing) and return to Central Oregon/Bend, Oregon for the first time in 6 years. Until now I’ve been emotionally unable to return to the place I lived for 14 years and where I left a piece of my heart (and maybe my soul) when I moved away in 2019 after my husband suddenly passed at my home there in 2018.

But as I’ve mentioned to my other widow friends (both online and in person): “Remember: We can do brave things, and we are stronger than we realize!”

Oregon Coast Adventures, tierneytravels

Time in Tillamook (and other places)

September 8, 2023September 8, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Before July’s trip to the Oregon Coast gets to be too much of a blur in the place, I should probably continue my story about the trip. I am going to jump the end of our trip and the road trip to return from Newport/Oregon Coast to Portland, Oregon to fly home back to Denver. Also I want to share a little quilt shop tour of the “out of the way, down the road, in the back of the woods” quilt shop we came across in Tillmook, Oregon on our way back to Portland.

If you are just joining us you can catch the rest of the story in this series of posts (scroll down when you click the link to get to the 3 earlier stories from this trip) – Oregon Coast Adventures .

Here was our route from Newport, Oregon (on the coast) to Portland, Oregon (inland). We took a different route back to Portland than the one we took to the Oregon Coast (where we went through McMinnville) in the post Oregon Coast Adventures: First Stop -McMinnville, Oregon:

Let’s talk Tillmook first, as it was the one quilt shop stop I made while visiting the Oregon Coast area. Technically it is not on the coast as it is a little bit inland but we’ll pretend like it is the coast.

I asked John if we could stop in Tillmook on our way to Portland as it’s been many years since I’ve been to the Tillmook Factory/Tillmook Dairy Co-op where the dairy products I love (seriously yummy ice cream and cheese, etc.) come from.

On our way there I saw a sign for a quilt shop – Sew Little Time and I asked John to pull off the main highway and follow it. This took us into some back roads and I was beginning to get suspicious if there was actually a quilt shop there…

(Can you see the news headlines: DENVER COUPLE DISAPPEARS LOOKING FOR A QUILT SHOP IN RURAL TILLAMOOK)

But finally there was after driving deeper and deeper into the rural area – at someone’s house!

Once I convinced myself to walk in, I discovered a lovely little shop with wonderful and very helpful staff.

This is the shop where I found the fabric to make the bag from our friends K & M who just got the new lab puppy (see post Bag to Celebrate a New Lab! ):

The had older fabric lines and a lot of “country/rural life” themed fabrics but they are a small shop in a neighborhood and likely gear their fabric selections to what people in the rural community wanted (Tillamook has a large farming community and we saw some gorgeous farms as we drove around). The staff was so warm and friendly I would stop there again even if I am not sure what I would buy there (unless I had a friend who just got a new tractor and I was making a gift with tractor fabric…). The shop does not appear to have a website but here is an article about them from the Cannon Beach Gazette – With ‘Sew Little Time’, go quilt shopping.

After the quilt shop we headed to the Tillmook Factory/Tillmook Dairy Co-op and wandered around a bit and shopped in their giant “gift shop” of dairy delights!

Not for the lactose-intolerant!

Before we got to Tillamook, we stopped in Pacific City at the Pelican Brewing Company and had snack and a craft beer, then wandered along to beach.

Our flight back to Denver was in the early evening, and before we dropped our rental car back off at the Portland airport, we stopped in downtown Portland for an early dinner at Deschutes Brewery and a wander around Powell’s Books.

It was fun to take John to two places I love (Deschutes Brewery and Powell’s) for the first time!

I likely have another story or two in me about this trip so stay tuned for more Oregon Coast adventures in the future.

Life in B&W, Oregon Coast Adventures, tierneytravels

Oregon Coast Adventures: Yaquina Head Lighthouse in B&W

July 31, 2023August 14, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

It’s been a long time since I’ve added a post to my blog category Life in B&W where I let my inner Ansel Adams run free (smile). So it was time to share some of the Black & White photos I took while recently visiting the Oregon Coast. I’ll tell you more about the trip in a future post, but for now here are photos from our visit to Yaquina Bay State Park in Newport, Oregon and the Yaquina Head Lighthouse:

While at the state park beach area we enjoyed looking for life in the tide pools (the tide was low), a visiting with a park ranger who gave us a great overview, looking at large rocks covered with endless mussels, and trying to carefully walk on the rocks on the beach near the tide pools (the beach is entirely made of black basaltic rocks) without wiping out on Cobble Beach!

If you’d like to see more and see some of what we saw but in actual color, here is a video I found on YouTube: