Over the weekend, we drove all the way through Idaho to Portland, OR! It was a marathon drive, but glad we made it.
Tripp jumped across the Idaho border!
Driving along the Columbia River was really beautiful the closer we got to Portland. We looked for mountain goats, but didn’t see any. We did see their trails in the grass.
Carla drove us through this extremely windy downhill section (6% grade for 6 miles!). I feel bad, because she was driving for an hour to give me a break and this was part of the road she got it!
Mt. Hood in the distance:
Saturday night, after 760 miles and 13.5 hours of driving, we pulled into the last spot at a truck stop outside of Portland. Carla had called 13 RV parks trying to find a place to stay, but no luck. Parking in the Walmart parking lot can result in a fine in Portland, so that wasn’t an option either.
The next morning we drove the last few hours to Florence, OR. It was so nice to see a lot of evergreen trees!
We arrived at Woahink Lake RV Resort. Tripp rode on the dash the whole way!! Ok, maybe not, but that would’ve been normal in the 70s, right?
We immediately jumped in the car and drove up to Cape Cove, next to Haceta Lighthouse. We wanted to do something fun since we arrived on the weekend and early enough in the day.
We had never driven north on Highway 101 from Florence before, and it was absolutely beautiful! But also pretty scary to drive along the side of the mountain!! It looked very much like Big Sur, CA.
In the next blog post, you will see what I mean by kind of a scary drive (had to drive it in the RV…).
Mommy keeping Tripp’s feet dry when a wave comes in!
Avin loved sifting sand, looking for treasures:
Tripp had fun building a fort with driftwood:
We then headed back into town and ate at a favorite fish n chips restaurant in this area called Mo’s. You can’t sit by the window and watch for sea otters and sea lions to surface in the bay.
Awesome weather!!!!
We took this same photo last year! It’s somewhere in the West Coast Adventure series of blog posts…I need to find it to see how much the kids have grown!
I found this classy treasure box, but Carla wouldn’t let me buy it…not sure why….
Crab pot ropes all ready to go on a dock near the restaurant:
There was a big fruit stand set up near the waterfront and we bought some really good peaches!
The next day we climbed on the sand dunes just behind the RV park. This is why a lot of people with ATVs stay at this park. There is a road at the back of the park that takes you straight to the dunes!
It’s been so windy the last couple of days that if you leave the RV would does open you will find sand inside the RV that blows off the dunes behind the park!
Unfortunately, the cellular service and wifi were both so sketchy that we had to leave this RV park the next day, as it was making it hard to work. Unless you are right in town, Florence is a bad area for cell service. It stinks, because we really like this area. Honeyman State Park looks like a really nice place to stay and there is marginal cell service, so we may give that a shot on a weekend sometime to test it out.
Look for another blog post soon! I got behind while we had bad connectivity.
Now you’re talkin’!
I still think you need to go back and pick up that treasure box though.
Ha! Maybe for Carla’s birthday! 🙂
That windy road looks awesome on the map!! Did you take a video of Carla driving ?
I just got a couple of still shots! I don’t think she wanted me to video her during that stressful moment! I do, however, have a funny video of me driving up the Oregon coast on some scary sections that I will be posting in a blog post, hopefully tonight!
I watched it! Awesome. I’m taking note of all these nice places! Thanks for sharing