Cape Disappointment, the campground

September, 2020

A note before we get into the meat of this blog post: Blog reader Mary O. posted a lovely comment to the blog post “An Irish musical interlude.” Please check back there if you’d like to read it … and listen to just one more sweet Irish song. 🙂 AND you really shouldn’t miss Dawn’s second comment (it’s right under her first comment) on the “Salmon fishing” blog post … it truly did make me laugh out loud. 🙂

And now, back to Camp Disappointment …

After all that US Coast Guard seriousness this morning, for a change this afternoon my friends and I had a really fun time walking through every nook and cranny of this campground, talking “story” with each other (it’s an old Hawaiian phrase for “shooting the breeze”), while also looking for our favorite campsites, with an eye to coming back one of these days and wanting to get two (or maybe even three, or four) campsites together (in case other camping friends wish to come along too). We found several campsites that would work very nicely … a few with electrical hookups, and others with plenty of “sky” for solar electricity.

To start off with, here’s my current campsite on this trip …

These friends of mine had already reserved their campsite long ago, then they told me the specific number/address of the campsite they were in. I tried my best to get somewhere close to them (it’s a large campground). And I succeeded!

Take a look at the photo below …

Of course, there’s my big white truck and Towhee the Trailer. Off on the very far left side of the photo above is a blue camp tent. The people in that blue tent were my immediate neighbors, not people I knew, but they were awfully nice folks. Now look in the background of the photo above and you’ll see a dark green canopy/tent kind of thing and, just to the left of that, hey! there’s another white Escape trailer … with a very dark green truck parked in front of that trailer. Those people were my friends. 🙂 We were almost right next to each other, just a six second walk between us.

The dark green canopy/tent thing belonged to my friends. They were quite the professionals about how to put that thing up depending on where the sun was, where the wind was coming from, what neighbors you wanted to screen out, AND … how to route the bungee cords so no one tripped and fell.

Of course, the canopy was set up right over the picnic table at their campsite so we always had a dry, wind-free place to visit and to eat. We added a full second tarp on the top, in case of serious rain. And, of course, the tarp was the same color as the canopy (these folks are prepared!). Also, notice the small folding seat in the lower left corner of the photo above, precisely placed to prevent tripping on that bungee cord.

Every evening after dinner, we folded our chairs and simply left them under the canopy. The RED arrow above points to my chair. We would sit comfortably in our chairs to chat, and then we would eat dinner sitting at the picnic table. So elegant! 🙂

Just thought you’d like to see where I lived and how comfortable my life was here. Pretty snazzy, eh?

And now as mentioned, after lunch this day, we went for a walk through the campground. I’ll show you a few interesting camping rigs …

You might think this rig above was a horse trailer, and maybe it was at one time, or could be again, but people were camping in it, not a horse in sight.

A “Terry classic” above. I figured this was an old classic that had been wonderfully restored but online info seems to say that these trailers were introduced brand new in 2016! They are styled after the 1960s “Holiday House” however so that’s where they get their classic looks.

Here’s a fun one (above). A school bus that had been converted into a camper. Notice the black and yellow decal on the front engine hood that shows a couple of trees and then a Sasquatch right in the middle. How fun is that? I loved the dinghy attached to the roof … what is it, a Livingston? There’s another brand of fiberglass dinghy that looks just like a Livingston but I can’t remember the name of that other brand. Help me.

Washington State campgrounds sometimes have “yurts” in them. There were several yurts in this campground. The yurts at Cape Disappointment each had a wooden floor, bunk beds that would sleep three, plus a futon/couch that slept one or two more people, a small electric floor lamp, and a built-into-the-wall electric heater. Bring your own cooking equipment and a cooler/freezer if you wish to keep food cold. There are outlets you can plug into. There is also an outdoor pedestal electrical hookup as well such that you could also plug in electricity to a travel trailer parked there! I’m thinking that some non-camping friends could rent the yurt and then one (or two) trailers would fit in there as well.

Cell phone coverage in this campground was very poor, really bad, pretty much there wasn’t any. If you drive out towards the town of Ilwaco … or if you drive over to the boat launch ramp that we visited the other day, which is really near the the state park … then you can get cell phone coverage. Otherwise, inside the campground, in an emergency, what do you do?

Here’s the answer!

A telephone. A real telephone. An old-fashioned hard-wired telephone. Open the door and pick up the handset and listen for a dial tone and then call for help … you can call an operator “O” or you can dial Emergency Services “911” or you can call any local number for free (including pizza delivery!).

A little further on in the campground, we came upon the campsite below that was right next to the Pacific Ocean beach … you couldn’t get any closer! There was lots of “sky” for solar panels at this campsite. And yet, it was noisy. That ocean is noisy. But oh my gosh when there’s a stunning sunset to the west out on the ocean and you’re sitting right there with a front row view from your home on wheels, gosh, what could be better?

 

After taking the photo above, I sat and watched the ocean for awhile. Then I looked to my left and there she was (below), just standing there, on top of a stump of a tree, looking around, just like I was. The ocean can be ferocious and life-threatening … and it can be so friendly and heart-warming, too.