On an adventure with the mister.

We booked our first two nights at a yurt in Champoeg State Park. We haven’t camped together without the RV and a yurt seemed like an easy entry point. The van would be our kitchen and storage. The park was only an hour away so we had a whole day to explore.

Our first stop was Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey for a 4 mile hike on their beautiful forested grounds. The hike traversed 4 miles in one continual thigh burner 950′ incline, a spectacular viewpoint over the Willamette Valley, and a continual toe crunching knee wracking decline to the finish line. But wonderful. It was so peaceful there, and I wished I could have visited their operations. 30 monks live and work there, engaged in the enterprises of bookbinding, wine bottling, and fruitcake baking.

Starving after that, we made a beeline for Martha’s Tacos and More in Lafayette. I love Sope Asada and oh lucky day it was on the menu.

We headed to a local park with a bag of cherries for dessert. Lafayette Locks Historical Park features the remains of locks built in the mid 1800s to facilitate transport on the Yamhill River of wheat and lumber to mills in Oregon City. The dam was later destroyed but the 60’ long concrete walls remain in the river.

We arrived at Champoeg with just enough time before our check in to visit the historic Butteville store for an ice cream sundae. The ten year old boy sitting at a table assembling them was not stingy with the topping! Yum!

Our yurt had a walk in arrangement so many trips to the distant van later we were settled in, had a fire going, and were joined by my buddy Robin Stern for some brats on the fire. When we headed to bed after a lovely evening we discovered… ants!! Hundreds of ants crawling all over our bed! We had told a ranger earlier that there was a nest of ants swarming the perimeter of the yurt, but they said it’s camping, nothing we can do. But swarming the bed, big nope!

We quickly decided we were leaving. It was almost 11pm and while Bob loaded the van in record time I went looking for someone still awake. I intercepted a grudging ranger on her way out, and once I explained the problem she bent over backward to help. There was one vacant cabin. She made sure it was clean, got us a key and and left notes to explain it all to her morning cohort. We were so thankful and as the clock rounded the end on the day we were finally tucked in for the night.