Tag: dry camping

The return to the lower 48 begins

Leaving Denali, most people head to north to Fairbanks or south to Anchorage. But we wanted to see some nature so we decided to head east and take the Old Denali highway. It’s about 130 miles of gravel with a few sections of asphalt. The worst part was for the first 70 miles the road was so rough we could only go 20 mph max. Sometimes we were going so slow the speedometer was at zero. The worst part is because it was so rough Zygi couldn’t nap so we had crying and screaming to go along with bumpy road. We did find an amazing camp area at the old airfield (Yes it REALLY was shutdown there was abandoned equipment in the middle of it and fire rings everywhere, plus a new strip a quarter mile a way). Anyways it had gorgeous views of both the mountains and a glacier. It was one of my favorite campsites of all time. Unfortunately, Victoria disagreed because of the bugs (what bugs;). It was so amazing because not only did it have a great view of the mountains and glacier, but we were all alone, out in the real middle of nowhere, no road noise, no neighbors. It’s nice to camp with just the family.

Luckily the next day the road started to improve (if I was to do it again I would approach and leave from the east). However the next day I noticed someone looking at my trailer wheels odd. I took a look myself and they seemed closer than my other side. I thought it was because we were parked on a hill. Turns out the buckle the holds the leaf-springs on didn’t just break but brought some of the frame with it. We noticed when we were smelled burning and stopped at a rest area, our tires were touching. Time to call shops on a Thursday again, a week out they say. Victoria managed to find not only the AAA rep in the area but that same shop was happy to take the business on Friday. We arrived at about 5 pm behind our trailer. Lucky for us at not extra cost some mechanics agreed to stay after and finish it that night as they were worried they would be too busy to look at it the next day. I was surprised at how young they were, the two of them couldn’t of been older that 18. But they did a great job. Three hours later we were ready to go, a little less than $300 lighter but happy for it. This was back in the town of GlennAllen and the shop was named GlennAlenn Fuel, I highly recommend them.

The next day we were back on the Glenn highway heading for Tok. (You have to go through Tok either way you enter or leave Alaska as the junction is there). We found a nice little rest area near a river to spend the night. When we first pulled in, we were the only RV there. Then I had an interesting thing happen when another RV pulled in. Where did they park? Directly next to us , with their generator running, with the rest area having room for maybe 15 RV’s. I asked him about it nicely, he smiled, an hour later he parked on the other side. That’s like the first rule of camping, unless your camping with friends of course, you park away from others. By the end of the day, it looked like an RV park at that rest area.

Next we passed through Tok and turned onto the Taylor highway. We stopped by the famous town of Chicken. Chicken is a tourist trap that didn’t used to be maybe ten years earlier. Didn’t matter Victoria loved it for the name. There isn’t much to Chicken. The town is all dirt road. There is a saloon, and a handful of gift shops. We camped at the Walter Fork BLM Campground ($5 with America the Beautiful pass discount.) I liked the river at the campground. I skinny dipped (no one around) along with skipping stones, I had at least a 15 hopper in there. Nothing like bathing in a mountain river like God intended. All these roads were gravel but decent gravel, you could run 40 or 50 mph down it no problem unlike The Old Denali Rd. The was a lot more assents and descents than usual for up here but when it takes you to the Top of the World Highway, it’s worth it.

 

Boondocking by the river in Palmer, AK

On a gorgeous sunny day we left Valdez. We wanted to stay longer, but the campground was fully booked for the holiday (July 4th.) Instead we had other plans. It was July 3rd and our plan for the holiday was to attend the parade in Glennallen. On the way back on the Richardson highway we were able to see all the gorgeous snow capped mountains that were obstructed by clouds on the way in. We stopped by Horsetail falls, which like Bridal Veil falls you literally drive right past it, and the Valdez glacier. After seeing the glacier we were back on the road when Tim noticed the passenger side door to the RV was flapping in the wind.  Well it just so happened that our generator fell out somewhere between the Valdez glacier and mile 72.  We drove back the 35 miles or so looking for a bright yellow generator but it was gone.  Either someone scooped it up or it fell too deep in the brush for us to see it.  Another “Dope!” moment for us.

We boondocked at a rest stop off the Richardson highway right before the junction with the Glenn highway (which we will be taking towards Anchorage and the Kenai peninsula). The morning of the 4th after Zygi’s morning nap we drove to Glennallen for the parade. We simply parked the RV right off the Glenn highway. Our timing was impeccable as we arrived right as the parade was starting. It was a small parade and only lasted about 30 minutes. All the cars and floats threw candy as us (I guess for Zygi?…But we ate it of course). After the parade they had a free salmon bake. We decided to skip it since the line for food was so long.

We found a boondocking spot off the I Overlander app in Palmer off the old Glenn highway. We pulled in and found it was a nice spot right along the Mantanuska River. It was interesting because the river was flooded and it was washing away the dirt along the riverbank. There was a tree and each day we watched it slope deeper and deeper into the strong, merciless current. We saw many locals come out and check out the river. We talked to a couple of them and found out that a tragic accident had occurred only a week prior to our arrival. A mother and her children were playing by the water. Somehow one of her little ones fell into the rushing river. The mother instinctively went in after her baby and both of them drowned.

It was so hot while we were here, a little too hot for boondocking with a baby. We ended up leaving after a couple days and headed for the Kenai peninsula. We knew bad weather was coming but we decided to go for it anyways. Staying in 80 degree weather with no AC and the inability to swim was getting old. Little did we know that we were trading feeling like sweaty, hot pigs for cold, wet dogs.

Palmer, AK hiking trail off the Old Glenn Highway

Our journey continues…

We made it to ALASKA! First stop: Valdez

After a little over a week we were finally back on the road heading towards the Alcan border. We camped one night in another Yukon government campground in Snag Junction. We arrived late and left early the next day. On the way to the border we stopped at the “Welcome to Alaska” sign and took a picture. We don’t normally take those pictures but hey, we freaking DROVE all the way to Alaska.

Welcome to Alaska!

The border crossing went smoothly. The officer was very friendly, only asked a few typical questions and sent us on our way without inspection. The road has gotten very rough before and after the crossing. There are lots of frost heaves and potholes. We have to drive slowly to avoid more problems. But that’s fine because even though the road isn’t great the scenery is gorgeous!  After leaving Whitehorse we have seen 3 trucks pulled over changing tires.

Driving along the Tok Cutoff we camped at our first pullout. The highway noise wasn’t too bad as in the evening a car will pass here and there. The scenery was great looking out the window at the mountains. It was here that I randomly decided we would take a side trip to Valdez. Some of you may have heard of Valdez from the infamous Exxon oil spill in 1989. I decided to take the trip because the Milepost said the Richardson highway was beautiful and with the Fourth of July around the corner I figured we would try and avoid the crowd and go to Valdez instead of heading towards the popular Kenai peninsula.

Boondocking at a pullout along the Glenn Highway (in between Tok and Glennallen). El Oso is pretty dirty from all the hard driving.

On the day we were heading for Valdez the weather was awful. It was cloudy so we couldn’t even see the gorgeous mountains I read about. We did get to see the Alaskan pipeline in the distance which was cool. When we got to the top of the highway a cloud came through and totally occluded the visibility of the road. We could only see about 15 feet ahead of us. We pulled over to wait for it to pass. After about 10 minutes and watching cars haul butt past us we decided that we should keep going. After like 3 minutes we descended and were out of the cloud and everything was all good. We pass by a couple of waterfalls along the road.

We camped at Bear Paw RV park as we needed to do our weekly laundry and showers (haha we are gross hippies). It was $45 a night! But the showers were great and the laundry machines were the best I’ve ever used in my 3 years of traveling. The machines use coins which are $3 a piece and each machine takes one coin. The guy working said one dryer holds 2 loads. I though he was full of crap. The dryers were huge and looked like they came off the Enterprise. But man he was right, they worked awesome.

Enough about laundry, our campsite was great. Yet it was $45 a night but you get what you pay for. The day we arrived was so cloudy and gloomy but the next day the sun burned the clouds away and we could see that we were literally surrounded by snow capped mountains. We could walk to the harbor, walk to get food (which we didn’t do a lot of because the prices were exorbitant,$15 for a hamburger, $30 for pizza). The color of the water was a very pretty cool blue.

Tim’s wound is still healing so we couldn’t do any long hiking but we did walk around the city quite a bit. There is a nice park we walked to and walking the docks is always nice. They have some serious fishing boats here! We had to leave on July 3rd but we have plans for the fourth. See how we celebrated the nation’s birthday on the next article.

Belated Father’s Day meal of corned beef hash.

Goodbye Cassiar, Helloooo Alcan!

It was tough to leave Stewart as the scenery was amazing and our campsite was awesome. We spent a lot of days driving so I’ll sum it up briefly where we stayed. After Stewart we continued on the Cassiar highway to Morchuea Lake Recreation Site. This part of the highway is very remote with limited services. We only stayed one night because the mosquitoes were too bad to go outside. I was working on the batteries and I usually don’t have much problem with flies, they just don’t bite me much. I got eaten alive, my legs had scabs from them even though I didn’t scratch them because those suckers are so big. There was however a nice view of Mt. Edziza across the lake.

The next day we continued on the Cassiar highway passing through Jade City. It’s not really a city but a store that sells a bunch of jade and other precious stones. We thought we would buy a bunch of it for wholesale price but it turns out it was more expensive than buying it from Chinatown in San Francisco. We ended up getting a couple pieces but I later threw it away in the Yukon River in Whitehorse because I thought it cursed us from all the bad luck we started having as soon as we bought it. I figured I would give the Indian ancestors back their jade and it would help us get over the bad luck.

After Jade city we finished up the Cassiar highway at Watson Lake, crossing into the Yukon territory for the first time. We stayed at a Government campground which cost $12($9 American). British Columbia has free recreation sites that you can camp at. The Yukon territory has government campgrounds that aren’t free but $12 a night isn’t bad. For that you get well groomed sites, some of them with lake views, free firewood, and water (not hookups just where you can fill up). Again we didn’t stay in Watson Lake long. We checked out the signpost forest and the visitor center. The fridge was on the fritz and we needed to get to Whitehorse for parts.

Black Bear eating the yummy grass off the highway

After Watson Lake we were back on the Alcan highway and headed on to Whitehorse. Many of you might wonder, “How does Zygi handle all this driving?”  Well on the days we have long drives we leave right before his morning nap.  The hum of the 7.3 diesel engine lulls him to sleep and after about 2 hours he wakes up and we find a place to stop and let him out to explore.  We try to find a visitor center so he is indoors and I don’t have to worry about him getting bitten by mosquitos.  After his snack, I let him crawl around the visitor center or museum and he has a ball.  Everyone else likes to interact with him too so it is a good way to socialize him a little. Then after about an hour and a half we hit the road again in time for his next nap. By the time he wakes up from that nap we are usually done or close to done driving for the day.

Tim wrote about all the bad luck we had in Whitehorse in the previous article, so check it out if you haven’t already.  It was one thing after the other and the worst was Tim sustaining second degree deep burns over 30% of his left thigh. Long distance travel isn’t all singing and dancing. It’s just life, not a vacation in the Caribbean.

 

Driving along the most scenic highway in North America

We made it to Alaska! Well not really, only for a few hours…read on. Stewart, BC is off 37A, a little 65 km detour off the Cassier Highway described as one of the most scenic highway in North America. From Stewart you can get to Hyder which is part of Alaksa the good ol’ US of A! It is interesting that there is no border crossing to go back into the US here but you have to go through customs to cross back into Canada. Luckily it was really simple, we were only asked a few routine questions and they scanned our passports. They don’t stamp US passports when you enter Canada unfortunately as I’d like to keep my collection going and get Zygi’s started.

Entering Hyder, Alaska

We took our time driving down 37A, it was breathtakingly gorgeous. The snow capped mountains rise on all sides and there are literally hundreds of water falls. We passed by Bear Glacier and took some pictures. We arrived at Clements Lake Recreation Site which was described as having spots for 5 RV’s. This time I took the bike down the dirt road to see if there was a spot for our huge rig. Success! We found one of the most scenic spots we had ever seen. It was facing a small lake with a huge, steep mountain in the backdrop. We could see several waterfalls coming down the mountain and we could even hear the largest one from 1000’s of ft away! There were only three real camping spots, only one of them big enough for anything more than a truck camper or something similar.

The next day we took a drive to see Salmon Glacier, the only glacier in the WORLD that you can drive to see the summit. We drove across the border to Hyder, Alaska which is described as “The friendliest little ghost town you’ve seen.” We first stopped at the bear viewing platform. A nicely build elevated platform about a river where bears come to feed on salmon. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see any bears because the salmon had not made it down to the river yet (we were 3 weeks early). The man that was working there smelled like dirty old laundry but he gave us the automobile tour brochure that gave a little history about the area along the way to the glacier. There was a lot of mining done here and still is going on. The road to the glacier was a long, rough, gravel road full of large potholes. We were warned that the graters had not been on the road yet but we decided to go anyways. We had to see the fifth largest glacier in North America. The drive up itself was shockingly beautiful with beautiful steep mountains everywhere, tons of waterfalls, and clear blue lakes and a milky white river (glacier feed rivers are white from the rock being ground down). The road was about 20 miles but somehow Zygi managed to sleep on the way up despite the rocking and shaking of the tight truck suspension.

The next day we hung around the lake and enjoyed the view. It was another warm perfect day. I swam to the platform in the middle of the freezing lake. We also broke out the kayak for the first time on the trip and took Zygi for his first ride. He liked climbing around on it until he barrel rolled off it. He was upset for a bit after that but Victoria calmed him down. Unfortunately after we put his life jacket on he started balling and didn’t stop crying for the entire ride (which was a short one). We let him play with the jacket afterwards so hopefully after a few more times he’ll be used to it. Any suggestions on this will be appreciated.

After a couple days we decided to move on even though we could have stayed there all summer. It helps to know that the next place we’re going is going to be just as spectacular. Hasta luego mis amigos

Putting miles and mosquitos behind us: Our first week in Canada.

After Vancouver we realized we were a bit behind schedule. I wanted to be at 1500 miles driven and we were only an 1000. We had been driving around 150-200 miles a day since leaving Modesto. So we decided we needed to pick it up a little. After leaving Vancouver we drove 250 miles to a town called 100 Mile House to the aptly named 100 Mile House Municipal Park. No utilities (not that we needed any) but there were trash cans and it had a water tap to fill your tank. Someone came around every few hours to collect the $10/night fee. It was nice and there was a short walk to a waterfall and a large beautiful park. The camp spot was quite nice backing right up to a creek with lots of trees and space. Unfortunately Victoria was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and she couldn’t even take the short walk to the waterfall so we left the next day.

Taking a break at one of the rest stops

I should mention that in Canada they have free parks that you can camp at called Recreation Sites. They don’t have any hookups but they are FREE. There are also municipal parks and provincial parks but they have a fee although some of them have hookups. Our goal is to camp for free as much as possible since the gas is ridiculously expensive here at about $5 a gallon. We have been using Backroad Mapbooks as our guide for finding these sites. I bought the whole British Columbia set for like $180 Canadian. Sounds like a lot but the commercial campgrounds can be anywhere from $30-$50 a night. So they will pay for themselves in a week.

Backroad Mapbooks

The next day we drove another 200 miles to the town of Prince George, the largest city in Northern BC. We needed to have the truck battery looked at because the truck wasn’t starting like it should in the morning. I only had those batteries a little over a year so I knew they were under warranty. Low and behold Victoria found an Interstate Battery store in Prince George! Unfortunately they were closed for the weekend by the time we arrived. So we were stuck at a commercial campground called Bee Lazee Campground. We needed to do laundry and take long hot showers after two weeks of navy showers. Plus Victoria vacuumed the truck out, I didn’t think it was dirty but man it looked better afterwards. It was a decent park other than the lady was a bit rude who ran the place and at $35 a night Canadian (about $30 American) I expect better service. Victoria said she had hotter showers in Mexico. Anyways I got the truck to Interstate early Monday morning and sure enough one battery was bad (Replaced for free) and the other just was hooked incorrectly (they placed the battery in the center rather then fully to the right so it didn’t seat all the way down) both of which the guy fixed for $20 Canadian.

Bee Lazee campground

Recreation sites are very similar to National Forest primitive campgrounds in the United States. It can be a good bit of work to find out if our rig will fit. It seems to be a 50/50 chance on if the rangers know much about the campgrounds and roads to get to them. The roads are often dirt and gravel and often you just have to go with your gut. We had initially picked out Bulkley Lake Recreation site. When we turned off the highway the road seemed ok at first but then it came to a dead end but the road continured into a narrow forest road. Victoria said “Hold on there! You better go check that out first.” After a like mile and a half of rough road I ran into a gate, and I thought, “thank God we did come down here.” On the way back I noticed a map and the trail to the campsites was so over grown I would have had to machete my way in, much less drive a 35ft fifth wheel down it. This was really disappointing as we’d been in the car since 8am and it was 5 pm, luckily the sun doesn’t really set till 11pm here. We had a plan B though, Chapman Lake Recreation Site which was another hour and a half away. We also realized that we can’t fully trust that when the recreation site is listed to be ok for RV’s it doesn’t necessarily mean LARGE RV’s.

Even though I’m so tired of driving at least it has been scenic. It’s like you think you’ve seen the best and then there is something even better around every turn. So finally we make it to Chapman Lake and we picked out a nice large spot with grass over looking the lake. It was such a pleasure to see after traveling 10 hours. There was a little dock and yellow wildflowers all around. There were only like 8 sites and we had the entire campground to ourselves.

The first day we just chilled by the lake as it was warm and sunny. I had my folding rocking chair out, Victoria was laying out, and Zygi was running around on the tarp watching Marilyn play fetch. It was a nice relaxing day, well needed after the long drive the day before. I should also mention that with the incredible amount of day light our two 100 watt panels really pump out the energy. So we can watch TV all day and night if we wanted and charge all our other devices and not worry about the power. The only thing I used the generator for so far was to use my laser jet printer (I just have a 1000 watt inverter). They must draw an incredible amount of power because I have a 2000 watt generator for backup and it really revs up when the printer first starts.

Someone used magical voodoo to position these rocks like this.

The next day we tried to do some hiking. I say try because the first trail went to a lake at about 3 miles but we only made it about one mile because the trees blocking the trail were too numerous and large, especially with Zygi on my back. So we then went to another one that was nice and and open, Ski and snowshoe trails in the winter and hiking trails in the summer. Unfortunately they had record snowfall this year and so the trail was like walking on a peat bog, it reminded me of our hiking in Florida. In fact it was so much like Florida that the bugs were actually worse. For some reason the mosquitoes seem to have a thing for Victoria. She said it was the worst hike she ever did. So again after about a mile we turned around and said lets go enjoy the lake before we have to leave, which we did.

Hiking near Chapman Lake

I have to mention that we have never seen so much wildlife so close in the wild. We saw two black bears on separate occasions right along the road, We saw a bald eagle quite close and then another that chased him off. We saw two foxes cross the road and countless deer. It was/is amazing, we’re are really getting far into the wild now. On most trips I’m really into the actual activities, hiking, biking and camping, but the driving is so incredibly scenic it’s an activity on it’s own.

Nest up taking the Cassier highway to Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK on a road called 37a that is supposedly the most scenic in all off North America (I’ll give you a hint, it very well may be.) See you then.

Riffe Lake and Mt Rainier

After Portland we found an awesome spot on Riffe Lake that was beautiful and surrounded on all sides by mountains. It was a pretty popular spot as it seemed a lot of locals came out for the day and to camp.  It is also a landing zone for hang gliders. It was entertaining to watch them glide back and forth so quietly in the air.  They made it look easy!  The boondocking spots are just a mile or two from Taidnapam Park where we also were able to dump and get more fresh water for $5….Well actually it was only dumping but we sneakily got some fresh water too, leave a comment if you want to know how.

We went hiking around our campsite. Apparently the water level on Riffe Lake is low at this time and we were hiking around what appeared to be old building foundations.  Was there a town buried under the lake?  There were big trees that had fallen and made for some cool photos.  We were trying to hike to an old cabin but every time we tried to find the path to it, it disappeared! We called it the Blair Witch cabin and said forget it.  It was too creepy how it kept disappearing.

The drive to the Nisqually enterance of Mt. Rainier National Park only took about 40 minutes from Riffe Lake.  At first we felt like we were driving through West Virginia as we passed by some of the locals homes.  Once we reached the park we had some gorgeous views.  When we got to Paradise visitor center it started snowing and we couldn’t see the mountain at all. We ended up going for a hike on one of the only trails open (which was covered in snow) and let Zygi play in it. Unfortunately all the footage we took for Zygi’s first snow experience got deleted because of my Chinese fleece lined pants. The skin on my thigh touches on my phone in my pocket and ended up resetting my phone because it tried to unlock it to many times.

We also went on a hike to The Grove of the Patriarchs which had some absolutely massive trees. They were Douglas firs, western hemlocks and western red cedars. Some of them were 1000 years old! We haven’t seen trees this big since we saw the Sequoias in California. It was a beautiful hike and we probably would have had it to ourselves but they were training seasonal rangers that day and they were sitting along the trail interviewing each other. It was still amazing, there is just something about trees like that which really impresses you. Victoria says she can feel the energy coming from the old trees.

We never got to see Mount Rainier.  She hid behind the clouds the whole time we were there.  Even on the day we left we saw a tiny glimpse of the behemoth but not the whole mountain. We were a little disappointed, but we had a good time anyways.  We got to play in the snow with Zygi and saw some giant trees.

Can I get a ride?

Next up, crossing the border into CANADA!

  • Writers: Tim and Victoria
  • Photographs, mostly Victoria’s but I took some too, with her directions, lol

 

Celilo Park – Train Horns and Wind Storms on The Columbia River Gorge

Since Memorial Day was coming up and we don’t make reservations we had to be a little creative in where we could stay. First I tried all the national forest campgrounds in Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington. There were 500 campgrounds including primitive. Amazingly every single spot in all 500 parks was reserved for the weekend. So then we started looking for first come first serve sites. We’d be arriving on a Wednesday so we’d beat out most people for those spots. Unfortunately there were very few spots, maybe 6 total, some of those a ways out of the way for us. Then I came across a COE park called Celilio right on the Columbia River Gorge, it looked beautiful, nice trees and grass in an area that is pretty desert like, they said they had spots for 30 or 40 campers and they were all first come first serve. It sounded perfect but there was one warning, there were two train tracks about a 100 ft from the parking area and since the entrance crossed the tracks they had to lay on the horn as they passed.

When we got there on Wednesday there were only only three other campers that were there and we got a pretty sweet spot where the back half of the trailer would be shaded by trees but the solar panels at the front would still get light basically all day. It was a pretty nice sunny day with maybe only 10 mph winds when we got there and and we walked around and checked out the park.  It has a set of bathrooms but unfortunately the water spigot is chained shut. One nice thing that they offered were free life jackets to borrow they even had one Zygi’s size, so we planned to go kayaking.

Unfortunately the weather changed for the worse the rest of the time we were there, it was generally pretty sunny but unfortunately the winds were a steady 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 40 mph for the next few days. The Columbia River Gorge is famous for it’s wind and therefore famous for it’s wind surfing. In fact someone had set the sailing speed record on one of them in the Gorge, clocking in at over 70 mph. However a few years ago that was beat by a 75 mph run done by a specially designed carbon fiber racing sailboat. Anyways we did get to see some of the wind surfers but it seemed like it was even a bit much for them some of the times. Therefore with our solar panels cranking out more energy than our batteries could take we figured we’d take some time and enjoy a bit of tv (I’ve got all of The Amazing Races on my hard drive 😉

After a day or two of that we were bored and were able to find a spot where there were enough trees and bushes that if you were sitting down you could get out of the wind. I setup a tarp on the ground over there and let Zygi zoom around and play with the grass, sticks, pine cones, and rocks. It was a great way for him to let out some energy.  Zygi didn’t seem to mind the trains too much. Sometimes one would scare him but then we would say, “Chooooo Choo!” with a smile and he would be ok.

 

We attempted to visit The Dalles Dam. Victoria had read on tripadvisor that you could take a tour of the dam and ride on a train from the visitor center. Unfortunately when we arrived the dam visitor center was closed and we didn’t get any dam tour.  After a quick google search, we then discovered that they didn’t offer the train ride anymore since it derailed with a few tourists on it. Sooo we just decided to walk around the dam visitor center and take the dam trail as far as it let us go.

We did have one successful day while visiting the area. We decided we needed to get away from the wind and trains and check out Tamanawas Falls. It was about an hour drive but well worth it, even on Memorial Day weekend with hundreds of other people. On the way, we saw magnificent views of Mt Hood since it was a clear day. We hiked 3 miles out and back to see Tamanawas Falls. It was pretty cool because you could actually hike and sit completely behind the falls. That part was too rocky, slick and steep to climb with the baby so Victoria stayed behind while and I climbed back there and got a few photos for her.

The classic northwest forest was amazing to be in after days in the desert looking part of Eastern Oregon. Even with all the people, we were able to find our own area of the river to have lunch by climbing down off the trail a little bit. It even had a little pool area where you could get in the water. Unfortunately it was the coldest water I’ve ever been in, straight snow melt from Mt Hood. My feet and calves were numb before I had the chance to go any further so I just rinsed off there and got out carefully so as to not hurt my feet. We both loved the trail and I can’t imagine how much nicer it would be on a calm weekday.

After staying five days so we could avoid any problems with finding a spot we were ready to leave and I had a friend I wanted to visit from the old college dorm days, Ron from 2N! Therefore we decided to stay at an RV park we had stayed at before in Portland. It’s a very nice park just off the river and only a mile from a light rail station to take you into downtown. Next up, our return to Portland!

He get’s his feet from his dad…