The Great Northern Redneck Adventure–Chapter 2– We’re still in Oregon?!! Onward to Spokane, the East awaits!

 

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Well, luck was with us, and the night was uninterrupted by anyone banging on our door to inform us that we couldn’t park where we were and needed to move, or anyone managing to collide with the bicycles on the rack next to the camper. 

I think it was somewhere around 9-9:30am by the time I managed to pry my crusted-shut eyes open and stick my head under the sprayer attachment for the sink to rinse away the last of the urge to climb back into the bed and pull a pillow over my head. 

It was 10am and the morning sun was already toasting things up by the time we stepped outside the camper cocoon and I got a chance to swivel my head around and get a good gander at the area. 

This wasn’t my first time through Biggs, but it was the first time I’d spent more time there than it took to get gas or take the off ramp onto US 97 South or North. 

The hills have become forested with Wind Turbines over the past ten years, I can recall when there was none here at one time, now there are quietly moving trees of white steel that have synchronized blinking red lights atop them at night for the purpose of befuddling drivers along I-84 who wonder at the surreal view far ahead of them.

Mason wandered over to the gas station to buy a bag of ice so we could chill the little red ice chest of water and soft drinks that we carried in the cab of the truck for the day while I packed in and battened down everything to get the camper back on the road. 

Our first sight-seeing stop was right across the river from us, the Maryhill Stonehenge Memorial!

A quick trip across the Biggs bridge, and a gradual creep up the mountain and we were there .  Sadly, the little souvenir and ice cream stand that’s near the memorial has closed it’s doors .

We meandered around a while, snapping photos here, snapping photos there, Mason posing for photos for what I later started calling his “fan girls” on facebook. 

After meandering around the memorial for a while, we clambered back into the pickup and made our way down the hill from the memorial into the small town of Maryhill below. 

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There really isn’t a whole lot left to the town of Maryhill, mostly a few homes, the Church, the fruit orchards, a winery, the state park, and an RV Park. 

Our main reason for visiting was to stop by Gunkel Orchards to acquire some fresh peaches for our journey.   I’d visited here once before in 2009 during the Eastern Oregon Ramblin’ Journey (as of the time of this post, still backlogged for posting) and had gotten a good bounty of fresh peaches.

This time, the peach bounty wasn’t as… well bountiful, but it was a month later than when I had been there last, and three years later, so that doesn’t surprise me as much.

 

Since we hadn’t had our breakfast yet, we parked the truck across the road in as much shade as I could get it in and we had cereal and attempted to each some peaches. 

I really should have paid a bit more attention to their ripeness, as they were definitely not ripe yet, and kind of ruined the enjoyment I had been looking forward to. 

The remaining peaches were stowed in a sack and tucked in the cabover to ripen as we continued on east before anymore were eaten.

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A sadly, less than satisfying breakfast down, we battened everything down and got back across the river and onto I-84 heading east again. 

Along the way, we passed the numerous hydroelectric dams that generate the bulk majority of Oregon’s electrical power, like the Dalles Dam below:

And had a laugh at the fact that there was a tiny town named “Arlington” in Oregon cut out of the rugged cliffs lining the gorge.

Of course, since we motored along at 55mph in the right lane, everything, including a number of other RVs passed us :

Eventually, after a slight pucker moment with my timing of our fuel stop, we made it onto I-82 and were crossing the Columbia River out of Oregon for the last time. 

At last, we were truly on our way!

For me, this wasn’t my first time traveling I-82, however, it was my first time driving my own RV along it and crossing it in the daylight. 

First thing that caught my attention not long after we had crossed into eastern Washington was what looks like an abandoned mine shaft right along side the interstate.  I doubt it is one, from what I’ve read, but the placement makes it certainly look like one. 

You can see it yourself if you drive I-82, it’s right at Milepost 116 northbound on the east side of the interstate. 

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We made a supply stop at the Walmart Supercenter in Kennewick, WA to pick up some stuff we still needed, including the super handy LED headlamps that were originally bought to ride the route of the Hiawatha trail, but ended up getting used to a lot more. 

Then a brief rest stop a little further north to contact TC Life to take up his offer of an overnight stay:

Truck Campers unite!

The Great Northern Redneck Adventure–Chapter 1–Finally on the Road

So, why “The Great Northern Adventure” when we really went east and then back west versus going north up toward Alaska? 

I guess that can be explained, easy enough. 

This adventure takes me on and off I-90 as I wended my way east across the U.S., going through a number of the northern states in the union, e.g. Washington, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan…..  Easy, right? 

Next question, why now, why go so late in the year that you risk hitting winter snows on the way back?  Why go when most of the campgrounds are closed for the winter by the time you reach the middle of the US? 

Well, mainly, that’s simply a requirement of my work schedule.   For most people, taking 2-3 months off from work is not possible, for me, I’m forced into 6 months off after every contract at Intel ends, regardless of if I want to take it or not, just the nature of the rules of the job, nothing new to me, been doing it for four years now. 

So, when I took my latest contract back in 2011, I decided it was high past time I planned a return to my family’s home state of Illinois. We’ve had a number of family members pass away over the past four years and plenty more getting older every day, some already up in their 90s, increasing the odds that with every year I don’t go, the greater the chances I might never see them again.

My contract was ending at the beginning of September, early enough in the fall that I’d still have warm enjoyable weather for at least half of the journey and the added benefit of entering into the end of the Summer fuel prices and a steady decline in fuel prices as time marched further and further away from the warm days of summer. 

Another plus was by the time I left, school would be back in session and the droves of….. special snowflakes…. for lack of another polite word for them, on the road would be drastically reduced, taking more of the stress out of my long range trip. 

Thus, September 2012 became my month of departure when I started planning and budgeting this trip back in September 2011. 

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Hopefully, you’ve read my previous post about preparing my rig for the return to the road, this pretty much details all the prep work it took to get ready to pull out of my driveway and start driving east.

If you haven’t, well, best to go to the bottom of the page and click the “Older Post” button to go back and read the previous blog entry first to get up to speed .   If you’re reading this from a forum, well, look up my posts and there should be a Prologue or Chapter Zero or something (I don’t know what I’ll call it yet) for the trip report that will bring you up to speed. 

At one time, I’d had this fantasy about actually hitting the road on September 6th, reality was late evening September 13th, fortunately a Thursday , became the actual day that we departed. 

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It was around 8pm or so when we finally left that Thursday, the very last ounces of daylight fading away before I’d even had a chance to finish my shower, leaving the road ahead cloaked in that inky darkness common to most rural areas where urbanites haven’t soiled it. 

As per standard operating procedure, I slowly made my way down the road from home, watching both sides of the road at the same time for the familiar suicide attempts of our local deer population, until we finally cleared the last of the denser wooded area of the northern island and onto the straight run of Giliham road, allowing us to gradually creep up to the 55mph speed limit. 

Another advantage of this time of the year, most of the damn fool tourists that come out to the beaches (both clothed and clothing optional) up the road during the summer months are gone.   No worries about being crashed into by a fool who doesn’t understand a 35mph speed limit sign and double solid yellow lines down the center of the road. 

After about 20 minutes, we pulled off and I made a brief stop at the Park N’ Ride lot at the base of the bridge onto the island to retighten the camper’s tiedowns and recheck the cargo loads. 

From there it was first a short and sweet drive west down U.S. 30 to the Cornelius Pass Road intersection, then a slow climb up the windy and blind cornered Cornelius Pass Road itself. 

I had hoped that the lateness of the hour would reduce the number of “Cling-Ons”¹ behind the truck, but by the time we reached the pull out at the top of the pass, there was more than twenty odd vehicles that had lined up behind us. 

So, we sat for a while to clear out any backlog on the road, then merged back onto the road and started the decent down the other side, once again accumulating another vast following of cling-ons in about 30 seconds. 

Roughly an hour and a half later, we pulled into the parking lot of the Cornelius Pass Road house.   The cigars were extracted from the humidor for the evening and we proceeded in to the white shed to relax and ready ourselves for the road.

Perhaps, I should stop for a moment and explain what I mean by readying in context of this trip .  

Readying, for me means getting psyched up to stare at yellow stripes and long ribbons of pitch black asphalt for hours on end. 

Readying for Mason means, getting ready to fall asleep when the vehicle was in motion for more than ten minutes, or less, regardless of the time of day . 

It was a fairly busy night at the White Shed, of all reasons, because there was a convention of Mercedes Benz Car Salesmen going on.   Came to the conclusion really quick that the only thing scarier than a car salesman is a drunk car salesman…..

This fact actually was to our benefit as we wound up being the only two in there as it got on towards closing time when this one lone female salesman came in who wanted a beer, but didn’t want to, and I quote “Be that woman who puts a single beer on her credit card.” 

Her solution to her dilemma?  Buy us two cigars so she wouldn’t feel bad!  

In the end, we left for our grocery stop with two new, rather nice, cigars tucked in the humidor to enjoy further on down the road. 

Another hour was spent at the local WinCo Grocery store in Hillsboro, before we truly got on the road, making it really the 13th of September by the time our tires kissed U.S. 26 east bound.

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We drove for roughly two hours that night, till we reached Biggs Junction, Oregon, our planned rest stop for the days drive.  

Why stop so soon after departing?  

Well, several reasons:

A.) I wanted to get a few hours sleep in the dark and do the rest of my driving in the day when I could actually see something. 

B.) Mason had never seen the Stonehenge Memorial in Maryhill, WA just across the river from Biggs, if he’d had, I would have likely just fueled up and kept on driving till I got closer to Kennewick, WA before stopping for some shut eye. 

C.) I had just drove for two hours with forty mile an hour winds in the mix, after having already spent the whole day laboring at getting the last of the logistics of loading worked out (figuring out how to secure the big blue rolling waste tote under the floor had ended up taking several hours as the camper had to be partially unloaded again to get the anchors finally installed in the correct location). 

D.)  Out of reasons, just felt like adding a D, for symmetry .

My original plan had been to stop at the Pilot Truck Stop for the night.   This plan crashed and burned with no survivors after an inquiry inside revealed that they did not allow any overnight parking for RVs, only trucks, something that I found to be unique to that one Pilot.

So, we decided to try Plan B, stay at Maryhill State Park across the river. 

Park was full and overpriced compared to when I had visited there last in 2009.

Plan C, shoulder of the road where I had seen some other trucks parked.

Road had a massive slope to one side, didn’t have enough blocks for a 12” height adjustment to get the camper level enough to sleep in, had I been able to nose in, I could have done it, but there wasn’t enough room.

Plan D, park at the other truck stop across the street from the Pilot.  

Truck Lot was full.

Finally, I noticed there was a motorhome parked in the auto spots of the restaurant out in front of the truck stop. 

Figured, if there’s an RV there, a second one won’t seem out of place, so found a spot and pulled in nose first and leveled up as needed.  

Swung the bike rack so that the bikes were off set to one side instead of being perpendicular to the door (narrow driveway) and took a kitchen sink shower.   This consisted of using the sprayer attachment on the sink to wash my hair and the primary areas of stink.  

Since I’d showered just before we left, I didn’t need a full shower, just enough of a scrub to remove the smell of the cigars from me so that my pillow wouldn’t retain it for several days afterwards. 

After that, it took about five minutes till oblivion hit, from which I didn’t return until my alarm went off eight hours later. 

Northwest Campers, Hoodstock Jamboree– Part 1, Overnighting at Memaloose State Park

It’s been a while since I last took the poor old Redneck Express out on the road. As you’ll recall, my last tale on here that actually involved traveling with the ole’ Express was back in October of last year during the NATCOA Fall Color’s Rally up in Washington.

Since then, the KIT Kamper has been quietly sleeping in its docking station out here on the island while I finished my latest work contract and resumed my down time on unemployment before taking on another contract.

During the time since the Redneck Express and I last traveled the black top, gas prices have crept up rather staggeringly and with my income having shrunk quite substantially when switching over to unemployment, doing a whole lot of travel is not all that possible, especially with a peak fuel economy of only 8 miles-per-gallon.

Nonetheless, I’d been saving my pennies up to take at least one trip this spring and this time, we were going to attend a rally I had to skip last year because of the timing and my having just moved to my little spot on the island.

Every year in April, a little known Jamboree gets together up in the tiny Oregon town of Odell and participates in what they call “Hoodstock.”

I've been with a local camping group here in the Pacific Northwest, mostly made up of Classic Winnebagos and a few newer Class As, for roughly a year and a half now by the name of "Northwest Campers".

Every year in April during the Hood River Blossom Festival, they hold a Jamboree up at the Hood River Fairgrounds in Odell, gathering together to chat, show off modifications they’d done to each other’s RVs and to do the “Tour of Homes”, or more simply we all go and visit one another’s RVs.

In addition to the good old fashioned fat-chewing and tall-tale swapping, everyone brings a dish for the big group Potluck dinner on Saturday Night.

Each year is usually themed, most years had been themed to the 60s, given the vintage of a number of the Winnebagos that started the group, complete with tie-dye and mullet wigs.

This year, the group decided to try something new, doing a “Hawaiian” theme. So, I was looking forward to seeing how my first Hoodstock was going to turn out.

I started getting things ready on Monday the week of the Jamboree, washing the truck and camper, vacuuming out several years worth of sand, dirt and grit from the cab of the truck, and doing a couple minor mods to ready the camper for travel once more.

As per requirement it seems, a number of running lights needed to have their ground screws retightened and one of the turn signals had stopped working again.

Originally, I had planned to pull out early on Thursday and meet everyone at the fairgrounds, Les and several others had already headed out that direction to start acquiring sites for the group. However, between the unceasing rain and the headache of trying to trace the right turn signals lack of power problems, I didn’t get on the road until 6-7pm.

After chatting with Les on the phone, he informed me that it would be best to not try and show up and navigate the camping area at the fairgrounds at night. Since I was already on the road by that point, I at first decided to stop at one of the two RV Parks in Cascade Locks, Oregon.

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The drive on I-84 was completely uneventful other than the near-constant dump of rain from the sky and the horrible ruts in the slow lane on East-Bound I-84 tossing me all over the place.

After about 45 minutes, I pulled into Cascade Locks and followed the signs to my first planned stop, Sternwheeler Park. I discovered that unfortunately, their Campground was closed for the evening at that the entrance had a 12’ clearance limit to get under the railroad tracks.

After a tense few minutes getting turned around and back up the steep narrow driveway to the closed campground, I headed down the road a little further to park #2, the Cascade Locks KOA.

I almost stayed there, until I saw the “No Pets” sign underneath the Night Check-In box. Well, Moby the Wonder Dog was with me once again, so no KOA for us. Just as we were turning round to leave, a second even better reason came rumbling right through the edge of the park, the Union Pacific Mainline that had a crossing right near the park, so not only did the park have the mainline tracks going right along through it, it also had a near 30 minutes process of blowing train horns.

I was honestly amazed that the park had as many RVs in it as it did!

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So, onward further east we drove, our next destination The Dalles, hoping that we could find an RV park or something. At around milepost 73, I missed my turn off for a rest area which I was at the time thinking about sleeping at, as both my poor pooch Moby and myself were getting fairly tired by that point and wanted to get off the road, the day had already been fairly long from getting the camper into travel ready condition.

As we kept going east, getting a little desperate, I spotted one of Oregon’s brown State Park signs for “Memaloose State Park”.

The name tickled the back of my mind, I’d heard of Memaloose before, but I couldn’t remember why. I knew of Viento, which was one of the less pleasant parks along the Columbia River, but suffered from the same shortcomings as the KOA I’d looked at back at the Cascade Locks.

The surprise came in that when we got to exit 76, the signage there actually directed us back onto the interstate again, heading back west again.

That was when it came back to me, Memaloose State Park is the only State Park in Oregon that you actually enter through an interstate rest area!

As I pulled in to the rest area, I began to wonder if a park with this convenience to to the freeway would have any sites open at all at that time of the night?

Quite as number, was what we found out.

There was roughly ten rigs in the park, several were bigger class As that looked like their owners were visiting the area for an extended period of time, a few travel trailers and one other truck camper.

A quick listen out the window confirmed that while one could hear the freeway, the placement of the park twenty or so feet below the freeway on the slope and above the railroad tracks actually cuts the noise down quite a bit from either.

While audible, both were very low background noises, and completely blocked out once inside the camper.

So, we picked a site and Moby and I took a little walk to stretch our legs and pay our $20 for our night with full hookups.

Afterwards, we settled in, Moby munching happily on his dinner, then curling up on the dinette seat while I went off to use the showers.

Discovered that the lights in the men’s showers weren’t working and ended up using the handicap stall, never got really any hot water out of the shower, warm would be the best description one could give to the shower I had. Add in that it was down in the 40s at night, and that the bathrooms didn’t really have any heating in them, it was one seriously cold shower.

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The next morning came and the rain had reduced itself back to a drizzle, I decided to bring the camera along as I took Moby out for his morning walk.

The population of RVs was even lower, now, than it had been we’d pulled in the night before. There was probably five RVs left. All of the trailers I had parked to last night were long gone, only a couple with a couple small dogs staying in a Wells Cargo trailer were left on the side of the loop I’d parked on.

One of the pleasant surprises was how close we were to the river. When I’d pulled in the night before, the river was completely blanketed in a deep darkness. In the morning, the blanket was pulled away revealing the river nestled amongst low clouds and fog.

We managed to make our way all the way around the park before Moby was quite tired of the constant drizzle and was ready to curl up in the cab of the truck and be on our way.

The adventure continues in Part 2!….