Mornings at adult Disneyland are perhaps even more soul-satisfying than evenings – tasty pastries at the gift shop, and free coffee 24/7 at the front desk! So this morning I read today’s Oregonian on the front porch, hit the hot pools one more time (lovely little goldfinches when there aren’t people to scare them away), little bit of web-surfing, lunch at the Powerhouse, and I’m off about 130-ish.
A nice Daddy’s Day call from Martha, then I head back around the beltway to Oregon City, to check out Willamette Falls. The falls and the little bridge from which to view them were excellent, even though I never heard of them until two days ago. Oregon has a slew of really cool 30’s bridges, and there is another one here, which I found very photogenic. I got a little lost, got a little well-priced diesel, got un-lost, got to Safeway where I bought way too much food, then stumbled forward through the intermittent rain to this excellent campground for $14. A quick decision to stop at a ranger station even though it was way past closing time showed me a map of the area with lots of semi-wilderness down this little side road.
Little North Fork Santiam Recreation Area
This was another night to lose some of that idea of not going to campgrounds. One factor is that this tall skinny van is really not too great on rough roads, kinda top-heavy and wobbles alarmingly sometimes. So the off-road places I can get to are limited by how willing I am to endure the road to get there.
Tonight for instance, I did park just off a gravel road that ended at a closed bridge over the Little Santiam River. I ate my Safeway dinner there, then walked around and saw the No Camping sign and had a failure of will on the whole idea. I hit the paved road again, cruised around for awhile, and ended up at the BLM campground 1/2 mile down the road.
I am finding that BLM camps are either obscure and ignored, or unusually delux. This is one of the latter sort, well-built, well laid out, well-maintained. Each site comes with its own recycling box! On a lovely little river full of green pools and rapids, classic Oregon piney woods setting.
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