Oregon & Washington Are Great Places For Summer RV Trips

We are just back from two months up to the North West in the RV and also an Alaska Cruise.  All of that was good.  Oregon especially welcomes RVers with many great State Park Campgrounds, a lot of great private RV parks, and lots of good repair and service at reasonable prices.  Or motorhome was made there 12 years ago.

Frazier on the beach at Manzanita Oregon.  This is right next to our RV park.

There are a lot of campgrounds on the beach in Oregon.  The picture above is a lovely beach campground right next to the picturesque town of Manzanita.  The beach is an off-leash area for dogs.  Keep in mind that even though we were there in July we had some sizable rainstorms.  Or normally rain impervious rear slide leaved during one of these deluges.

We also stayed at Emigrant Lake in the Medford - Ashland area.

This view was steps from our motorhome.  

Book reservations at both places if you want to stay there.

When we were in Oregon we had our Country Coach serviced at the Country Coach dealer.  If you are lucky enough to have a Country Coach Junction City has several very good options to get your rig worked on or upgraded.  Junction City is near to Eugene, which in the summer is a good place to visit.  They have a great farmers market on Fridays.

After Oregon we went to Washington.  As a general comment Washington RV parks that are desirable book up early.  So look fairly far ahead if you want to camp in WA in the summer.  We stayed in Port Townsend.  We loved it here.  We stayed in the Marina RV Park right in town and had water views.  This is a great place to camp.

This is the beach right in front of our campsite in Port Townsend.  

Besides the beach Port Townsend is a great walkable place or bike.  My knee is not so good any more so I biked to town several times a day.

A b&b in Port Townsend.  

We also camped at a Thousand Trails park in Monroe Washington.  We parked on the side by the riven and this was a delightful stay.  TT parks get panned for their facilities sometimes, but this is a very nice spot about 1 hour from Seattle.  My sister lives here and my son.

I will warn you that the traffic in the Seattle area is epic.  Avoid the 405 freeway if possible.

We left from Seattle to go on an Alaska cruise.  That will be the subject of another post.

Take A Break From Hurry-Up, RV

So what is one of the biggest attractions to RVing, no hurry-up.  You are in your second home, with wheels, make your own pace.  Like some place you find by accident, stay a while.  Don't like the location, move.  And you are in your own home.

This was taken steps from our camp site in Port Townsend WA a few weeks ago.

Being in your own place when RVing came real to me a few weeks ago when we left our motorhome to get some work done on it and took an Alaska cruise.  During the cruise we had to leave our dog behind and live out of suitcases.  I very much enjoyed the trip to Alaska with all of it's awesome scenery, but was quite glad to get back to my familiar bed, cloths closet, my coffee pot, and also all that space you have in our rig.

A glacier calving in Glacier Bay Alaska

We are 7 weeks into our current RV trip.  I am in no hurry to get home.  If I had been traveling out of a suitcase for 7 weeks I would have been ready for home long ago.  

November Trip To Chandler AZ

Today is the first day of the November trip to Chandler AZ.  We made it up to tomorrows meeting point, the accorn casino in the mountains east of San Diego.  When we went into the casino to have dinner we saw the Utts and we joined up for dinner.  We are off at 9:30AM in the morning.  This picture is at sunset where we parked for free.  Actually is was less than free as Barbara won about $225 in the casino.

San Diego RV Club - Mission Bells RV Club - Invites You To Attend Our Events

Mission Bells RV Club was founded in 1961.  Since then the club has sponsored monthly camping events that range from weekends at campgrounds within a 100 miles of San Diego to Christmas dinner parties.  We usually have one or two longer range events such as going to Quartsite, Death Valley, and Tucson.  Last year many of our members went to Europe on a river cruise.

Here are some pictures of some of our local events.

And here is one of our last winter trip to southern AZ.

If you are living in the greater San Diego area and love RVing consider coming to one of our events.  Call me Robert Nuttmann 619-227-9840 and lets discuss it.

At $4 A Gal Does RVing Have a Future?

It has been a while since I have added a post to the Mission Bells RV blog.  It seems like there is much more activity on our Facebook page and so I have just let that handle most of the traffic.  But blogs are supposed to be where we put down something that we want to pass on to others and offer a little bit of wisdom.  Facebook is more "hello how are you".  And in our case it seems like we post about a thousand tempting pictures of food.  You would think our club liked to eat?  Likely very true.  I have asked a couple of members to write something for the blog, but any one of you is welcome to do so.

So is RVing as relevant at $4 a gal as at $2?  Yes, or at least camping and RVing is certainly still relevant.  Fuel has cost an arm and a leg in England for years and "caravanning" is very popular there.  Same in Australia.  But their RVs look a bit different.

More like these guys here and not the really big ones some of us drive.

The other thing is, when gas prices go up maybe we don't need to drive so far to enjoy ourselves?  With RVing the vacation starts when you close the door to the RV.  So small trips to local destinations like what we do on our weekend outings / meetings get us away from the things we are normally surrounded by.

And there is always going back to

And that is not such a bad idea for those that are able to sleep on the ground.  We still have our LL Bean tent in our garage.  I think it has been used once in the last 10 years.  I sold my camp stove last year on ebay.

We recently spent a week camped in the Grand Teton National Park.  It was a wonderful experience and adventures such as that make RVing relevant at any price if it can be afforded.

Tucalota Springs And Where Is Everyone Going This Summer?

I am a bit slow getting these pictures up.  But they are going up now.  I have been fighting learning how to work with pictures on an Apple computer after using Micro Soft for 20 years.  Big!!! difference.  Apple is a very very good piece of hardware, but their computer software is way different.  But here are some pictures from last months rally.

One day a few of us rode in the Jeep up the dirt road behind the RV park.

So where is everyone going this summer?  Tell us where in the comments section.  Barbara and I are headed to Oregon in a couple of days for about a month.  Later in the summer we are going to WY and MT.

Sweetwater Rally

Our recent rally at Sweetwater County Park had some really beautiful moments and some awfully wet ones.

This picture is from Sunday morning coffee.  Notice the blue skies.

I would like to say first off that the new section of the Sweetwater park is really nice.  Large sites, good utilities, and nice views.

Last time I was here was in the old section and I much prefer the one we just camped in.  Of course great thanks go out to Gerald, Martha, Janet, and Gerry.

Saturday night was very wet, and the wind blew in the direction of the side of our motor home with the slides on it.  So I discovered that the very middle of the front slide seal I had replaced not too long ago had come out.  I am still waiting for my carpet to completely dry.

Breakfast Sunday was great.  Fruit, pancakes, bacon, and lots of it all.

These pictures are compliments from Don Mruk by the way.  I did not take many pictures at the rally.

Here is one inside of the tents / easy ups put together to keep us out of the rain.  Seems like every time we go to this RV park we get rained on.  We were at the rally Thanksgiving 2011 and it poured.

Sitting up high in this park we also had some good views of nature.