Thursday, March 28, 2013

Pre-California

As we will be moving to California shortly, we thought it best to experience one more Oregon camping excursion. With that in mind we visited 2 Oregon state parks close to Portland. After a long week at work we decided to visit Silver Falls state park first:
We arrived during nightfall and found an open site that was close to all the amenities:

My wife took some excellent photos of the camper but unfortunately it was raining and the house battery was completely dead so it was off to Salem Oregon to look for another battery and campsite to stay for the night:
We decided to change parks to see if there was less rain - here is my wife's collage of our trip between campgrounds:

The next day was spent at Champoeg state park which has great facilities and wonderful camping attractions:

This experience represents the first time we used our amazing "BusDepot" side awning, courtesy of our parents Christmas present, which worked excellent and added 3 times the usable covered space!
After a quick learning experience we put the awning together in approx 15 minutes but should have it down to 5 minutes next time.
We had an issue with the Kinetik house battery not charging properly so utilized a spare riding lawn mower battery that I had to power the the "house" electronics - here are a few shots of our camper during the night. This also marks the first camping experience with our new 3 window canvas tent and sleeping in the upper bunk provided an extra 2" or so which made a big difference in comfort when sleeping

Time to enjoy the nature provided at this great campsite.......We first biked to the visitor center to enlighten ourselves about the area:

We learned that Oregon was almost part of Canada (Britain and Hudson's Bay company - Go Canada!) until 1848 when Oregon was finally made into an United States Territory and finally a US state in 1859. Above are some original Hudson's Bay blankets and myself towering over some tiny original settlers!!!Our final day we enjoyed some of the excellent biking trails and met some "friends" along the way

Another great camping experience. We received a few positive comments on our "Westfalia" and new awning from the fellow campers which made us appreciate what a special vehicle we have and called it yet another successful weekend

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