June 5-11, 2024
My second camping trip of 2024 … and another brand new camping location for me. I love to explore!
But first, before the actual camping stuff happened, I left my home in Washington State and drove the big white truck along with Towhee the Trailer in tow down to a town just south of Portland, Oregon. I visited friends there for a few days, parking the truck and trailer on the street. These friends live in a home that’s on a cul-de-sac, one that has plenty of room to turn the truck and trailer. The weather was fine. I was parked in full sun. With my solar panels, I didn’t need to be plugged into electricity.
The brown house right next to my rig was unoccupied for my entire visit here, so no one bothered me with noise or other activity, and I didn’t bother anyone by walking in front of their home. The home where my friends live is where the blue car is parked in the photo below. It was easy to stay in my trailer overnight, then spend daytime and evenings with my friends. By the end of my visit, two or three sets of the neighbors had stopped by for a peek inside my trailer. They all loved her!
But eventually, it was time to head on up the road for the actual camping part of this camping trip. My friends cut some gorgeous flowers (above) from their garden and gave them to me. And then it was time to leave. [I enjoyed those flowers for the rest of my camping trip, packing them in a box when I was driving/towing, but putting them out on the table when I was parked in the campground.]
I left Portland, Oregon, and headed back north, up to the southern side of the Columbia River (still in Oregon) … then I headed east on highway I-84, right along the south side of the Columbia (what a beautiful drive!). I was headed to the Deschutes River campground. Here’s a map …
The red line is my route from my friends’ home south of Portland, then north, and then east to the Deschutes River campground along the Columbia. You’ll notice that my end destination has no green trees around it in the Google image above … and there sure weren’t many trees in the area! You can see the white dots (mountain peaks) that define the north-south string of Cascade Mountains that separate western WA-OR from eastern WA-OR. The Deschutes River and its campground is in eastern Oregon. I’ll show you more of the terrain there, but first, let’s get there.
The drive would normally have taken me about 2.5 hours, with the trailer in tow. But it actually took me almost 4 hours! Did I have trouble on the way? A break down? Problems? Nope, what happened was that I found things to see and to learn about. 🙂
About half way along the Columbia River towards my destination, I pulled off of highway I-84 at a rest area just to take a break. I’m never in a hurry when I have Towhee the Trailer in tow. While at the rest stop, I found this wonderful set of open-air “kiosks” with all manner of informational posters in them, explaining all manner of things about the early European immigrants/settlers here … how they got here, the “Oregon trail”, food, the weather, the people. I found it fascinating! So I stood there and read every word, and I learned a lot!
Here are most of the signs … read if you wish, or just skip on down to the bottom of this blog post.
In the image above, notice that the BLUE lines represent people who went to California, whereas the GREEN lines represent those who went to Oregon. I hadn’t realized that Oregon was, by far, the primary destination of people coming west … until the 1849 California gold rush of course. Interestingly, there was a gold rush in Oregon too, but not until after the California one had already started. Most of the news back then was about the California gold rush, so most people lusting for gold went there. Oregon did have its share of gold-seekers, many of whom were successful in becoming very rich, but it just didn’t have the pull that California did.
All of that was fascinating to me. Some of this information I’d heard about in school, or read about subsequently as an adult, but most of it was brand new to me. I like that the signs call Europeans “immigrants”. We were, we are.
Ah, but here I was at this rest area and time’s a-wasting. I needed to get to the campground and get my rig set up so I could sit outside and do nothing. 🙂 So I jumped back into the big white truck and, with the trailer in tow, I left that rest area and headed further east on highway I-84.
Just before 5pm, I arrived at the Deschutes River. I crossed the bridge over that river then turned off the highway to the right, and drove into the campground. Ahhh, home at last.
This lovely campground sits on the eastern shore of the Deschutes River and it’s just a stone’s throw south of the Columbia River. I bet there’s lots to explore and see and do and learn here. But first, my supper calls and then a nice quiet night’s sleep. 🙂