On the Road: Summer 2008

Today is Monday, June 2^nd. We left Salt Lake City Saturday afternoon for this year’s summer adventure—the Oregon coast. We’ll be gone all of June and July. The trip was inspired, at least in part, by a View/Navion rally at a place called Nehalem Bay in mid-June. Steve found out about it on the View/Navion Yahoo group in December and signed us up. At this point, it appears we may be pretty much taking over the campground—there are something like 70 RVs, just like ours, coming from all over the country. While he was making the reservation for Nehalem Bay, Steve started looking into the camping situation along the coast, and was horrified to find out that, even in December, many of state parks only had a couple of sites available for June and July. So he went ahead and made all reservations right then and there for our whole trip. This is something very different from our usual “find a great spot, stay till we feel like moving on, and then find another great spot” approach. We’ll have to see how it works out. We’re not usually very good with schedules and structure. Hopefully, we can cancel our reservations and only lose our initial deposit if something better comes along. “Better” meaning just as pretty but cheaper—Oregon state parks on the coast cost upwards of $24 a night. This, coupled with the rising fuel prices, is making this a more pricey vacation than originally planned. Guess what we’re using our “economic stimulus” check from George W. for!

We’re already feeling a little schedule-crunched as our first night reservation is tomorrow at Fort Stevens State Park (I think) on the northern Oregon border. We left Salt Lake Saturday mid-afternoon and got as far as Jerome, ID. There was nothing in my favorite cheap campground guide for that area, and we ended up doing something I’d always made fun of—spending the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot. It wasn’t as awful as I thought it would be—we’ve actually stayed in worse places—and it was free. Yesterday, we drove from Jerome to Baker, OR, a town I’ve always liked ever time we’ve passed through. We drove up a beautiful, green little canyon 18 miles to Union Creek, a NFS campground on Phillips Reservoir. Lovely sites in the pines with views of the lake. There is a wonderful hike/bike trail that goes for miles along the shoreline and through the woods; it was beautiful with wildflowers and little springs and streams. I managed to get in one hike with Ellie, but could have easily stayed a couple of more days, riding our bikes and kayaking the lake. That’s why I don’t like schedules!

Today we drove about 4 hours to get to Deschutes State Recreation Area, about 12 miles east of The Dalles off I-84. Another lovely place. We are camped on a grassy site under a big shade tree, just a stone’s throw from the river. Several families of Canada geese, complete with fuzzy young goslings, share the campground with us, as well as lots of other birds, including red-winged blackbirds and goldfinches. This campground also has a shoreline trail, which Ellie and I hiked today, and a rails-to-trails bike path that Steve and I hope to ride some of tomorrow morning before heading off to our next stop. The picture at the beginning of this post is our campspot here.