Adios to Dungeness … I’m off to Chimacum

August, 2021

I love going to new places. Today I’m moving to a brand new camping destination for me. Today I’m leaving Dungeness (which I love and will return to), but I’m not going home … I’m heading to a campground near the small town of Chimacum (CHIM-a-cum). Dungeness and Chimacum are both on the Olympic Peninsula, so it won’t be a very long drive for me today. 🙂

But before I show you where I’m going, let’s say goodbye to Dungeness and our perfect three-rig, three-trailer, neighborhood of friends.

The photo below is of my friend’s car and her Scamp trailer. Her trailer was small, and yet she had everything she needed inside, and it was so attractive inside! I was very impressed. And … because the trailer was small, she didn’t need a honking big pickup truck to haul it. I was very impressed.

The photo below shows my other friends’ great big green (and brand new) Toyota pickup truck and their 21-foot Escape trailer. Their rig is perfectly outfitted too.

The photo below shows my big white RAM pickup truck and my 21-foot Escape trailer, also perfectly outfitted. 🙂

Here we all were (below) … my two friends on the left in their rig … the Scamp is on the far right … and I’m just a bit beyond the Scamp on the right. The arrow points to the exit … heading on out!

First to leave was the Scamp trailer. She was heading home today.

I pulled out next with Towhee the Trailer in tow, and with my friends in the dark green pickup truck and their Escape trailer right behind. We were on our way to Chimacum. In the map below, Dungeness campground is on the left … Chimacum campground is on the right. Both are near the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula, with Puget Sound off to the right.

The drive took us about an hour, maybe a tad more, but not much.

We pulled into the “Escapees” campground in Chimacum … the Evergreen Coho SKP RV Park. It was so well maintained and so pretty. “Escapees” in an international (tho mostly USA) group of RVers. It’s the largest such organization in the USA and in the world. It has political clout.

The Escapees organization owns some campgrounds around the USA, but in this instance, a private land owner developed this property as an RV park. Then that land owner joined “Escapees” and turned this RV park into one that is used exclusively by other Escapees members. Many people have motorhomes or trailers or even small mobile homes here, parked full time. And yet there is lots of room for us transient campers to come and stay here too, perfectly safe, with all the amenties … ALL the amenities … for a fraction of what state parks charge. I love the Washington State Park system and I will continue to support it, but it is sometimes more expensive than private campgrounds like this one. This campground was $24.75/night with 30-50amp electricity and water and free wifi and fabulously clean showers … state park campgrounds in Washington State range from $32-$50/night, most with free wifi but some without any wifi at all even if you were willing to pay for it, and the bathrooms are usually clean but not always. Needless to say, this SKP park was really nice.

We arrived. We stopped at the office and checked in. And then we headed to our designated campsites. In the photo below, you may be able to pick out the big white truck, and the big green truck, both on the right side of the photo.

Let me zoom in for you. 🙂

The photos above may make this place look crowded. Rest assured it was not. It’s likely just the angle of my photograph and the fact that, on a flat photo, distances don’t appear necessarily as they truly are. The “home” sites on this property were comfortably spaced.

The two photos below show my spot in a row of transient campers. I had big rigs on both sides of me, although the empty space right next to me stayed empty while I was there … happy about that. 🙂 Even with those big rigs so close to me, all was quiet most of the day and all was quiet every evening and all night. And I had trees in view at all times. Remember that my “dining room” which is also my “living room” is at the back of my trailer … so I erred on parking a bit back towards those trees. So my view out my back windows, while sitting at my dinette, included nothing but gorgeous green trees.

 

Below, my friends with their big green pickup truck had an equally lovely spot just a few feet away.

Later that same afternoon, we three friends walked through this “Evergreen Coho SKP RV Park”. We were impressed; it was attractive. Many mobile homes and motorhomes and trailers were permanently parked here and the owners lived here year-round full-time, although many units were used just in the summer months up here in the northern parts of the USA by people who wish to escape the heat of southern climes in the summer.

Every permanently parked unit’s space was well-maintained, clean, and the mobile home or RV was in excellent condition. And there were several areas for transient RVers (like me) to come stay for a day or a lot longer if I wished.

As we friends walked through the place, of course we talked about what we saw and what we liked. I liked the elevated planting beds below. How reasonable. 🙂 In fact, I might be adding such a thing at home along my back patio.

 

It was the end of our “arrival day” here. My friends and I had dinner separately after spending a great deal of the day together. Later in the evening, I walked around the community again since it was so pleasant. Stay tuned for tomorrow at Chimacum and the surrounding environs. Fun stuff coming up. 🙂