Cascade Head! (aka Monday Morning Recap)

This hike’s not from the book, becuase my sweetie had two requirements, #1 - an easier hike, and #2 - something at the coast.

Cascade Head was perfect, as it also fulfilled requirements #3 and #4 – milkshakes at Tillamook Cheese Factory and being within spitting distance of the Pelican Brewery so we could indulge in the three B’s – burgers, bacon and beer – after the hike.

Saturday’s weather was best described as “torrential downpour” so we put off hiking that day and watched the Red Sox game (they lost) and The Ice Harvest, a so-so movie with two actors I like (just not in this movie) and strippers (which bumped the movie from “meh” to “so-so”).

Sunday’s weather was much better, making a nice drive out to Tillamook. We got shakes first (Orange Cream for me, Mountain Blackberry for him) then headed south on 101 until the turn off about a mile and a half north of the junction with Hwy 18.

Cascade Head is a Nature Conservancy Preserve area, so it’s a well-marked, well-maintained trail. It was typical spring hike for the first mile and a half (extremely muddy), but The views are great once you reach the hillside meadow leading to the upper viewpoint.





Past the upper viewpoint, the trail continues another mile or so until it ends at the other trailhead located on US Forest Service 1861. There was plenty of evidence of Saturday’s storm, in the form of some decent-sized hail on the ground.



A longer hike can be made by taking USFS 1861 down to the Harts Cove trail, but because we were doing an easier hike, we opted not to piggyback the two hikes. We logged it in our cache of hikes to do later this year or next.

After our ceremonial Fat Tire and sandwiches (at some point we’ll need to change up our food routine), it was a brisk jaunt back to the parking lot. While hitting the bathrooms before heading to the pub, my sweetie caught this little gem scrawled on the wall:



Heh. At least for my littlest chicken it is...