First van adventure of the season

I’m off! During the cold rainy days of winter, as I fantasized about van adventures to come, I decided to set two trip goals for this year.

It doesn’t seem like this should be a problem, but… When I have time to go someplace, I look at all the places I could go and I have decision paralysis. Sometimes I spend days stewing over WHICH wonderful place I should visit. Do I want mountains, desert, ocean, pastoral valleys? We have it all here in the Pacific Northwest, right in our backyard.

I do have a process I follow.

First, I look at the weather map. I’m a fair weather camper, and if I don’t have to be in the cold or rain or heat why would I? Since we have so many micro-climates, there is usually someplace with comfortable weather. That narrows my search – unless the weather is great everyplace, which is a nice problem to have but doesn’t help me with decision making.

Once I pick a couple of regions, I do a little soul searching. What am I in the mood for? How far do I want to drive? What kind of geography sounds fun? Do I want good hiking, or some fun little towns to visit, or a historical site? Is it a weekday or weekend? I only go to popular places during the week, so I don’t have to navigate crowds of people.

I can usually come up with an area (or two) and then I look at camping options.

My favorites are Forest Service and BLM. They have at least a vault toilet, and potable water is a nice bonus. These sites are usually large and private, and minimally developed. But they are sites, in a campground, and there is some level of staffing around, even if it’s a weekly ranger visit to clean the loo.

My second favorite kind of site in the PNW is a county park. They are usually kind of old fashioned, have a host, and have bathrooms. They have a local flavor and a laid back vibe. And they are usually pretty low cost.

I don’t like to go to state parks. The campgrounds are huge, with many users who don’t really want to leave the comforts of home behind. There are lots of generators and bright lights and big movie screens going on. And kids, SO MANY KIDS. I get it that camping is a family thing, but did I mention kids? And they are more expensive, which isn’t a good use of my camping money since I don’t really like them.

My least favorite are RV parks. These are private campgrounds set up for RVs. They are usually pretty large, and they are like a parking lot, with big RVs lined up and plugged in to water and sewer. They are also the most expensive. It’s just not camping for me. But, they usually have the most amenities, like laundry, showers, and even a pool or other recreation spot. So I might stay there if I needed to do laundry and wanted to get settled and do it on site.

So, what are my two destinations for the year? Drumroll please… I selected the Steens, a desert mountain area in remote SE Oregon, and the north Cascades, which includes North Cascades National Park and surrounding mountains. I’ve never been to either and have long wanted to, so it’s great to have some dream trips to look forward to.

This week, I am off to the Steens!

Heading over Mount Hood, you know you’ve gone someplace new. You leave the dense firs of the rainforest for the bristly pines of the arid east side of the mountain, and then drop down to the wide open sage and juniper of the high desert.

Lunch time in Madras! This taco truck was in a small pod with picnic tables and, most importantly, a bathroom. Pollo and carnitas, yum! I followed it with a tamarindo agua fresca. It’s so sweet I won’t get through much of it but I love the tangy sour of tamarind.

These abandoned buildings sit along highway 20 in Brothers, Oregon.

In Hines, OR I stopped for a snack and found the old shell of a building. I found out that in the 1920s, expecting the boom times to continue, Portland investors began building a large concrete structure at Hines, the Ponderosa Hotel. Just a few months later the Wall Street crash halted the project. It was never finished.

I made it to my first night stop, Chickahominy Reservoir. It’s all dried up. In the Portland area it was a long wet spring, but in southern Oregon it has been critically dry. This is a popular fishing lake, but there is no fishing going on now, and the campground is almost empty.