Summer has come
Summer has arrived with lot’s of sun and warmer temps. The yard is looking good and the garden is in.
We usually take off for our annual vacation in August or September each year. This coincides with the general time of our anniversary and we go enjoy ourselves out of the state only to return and find our garden out of control and our yard a foot high or dead and we have missed the best of summer in the northwest.
This year we decided to go early so that we can return and enjoy the best weather time frame in Western Washington. Besides, The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is going on in Vegas. Erin and I have a deal, every other year we go to Vegas for the majority of our big vacation with the off years being dedicated to visiting the great outdoors. Since we no longer have pets to worry about, it’s a pretty easy measure to ask the neighbors to pickup the mail and water the garden while harvesting any early garden offerings, lock up and head out.
We started off with a quick short run to Eugene, Oregon to get headed south. The Camping World there has about 15 pull through dry camping spots. They do, of course have the standard free pump out station and potable water to fill your tanks with. We pulled in about 10:30 pm and there were two other rigs there. Plenty of room to put out the slides and make a snack for dinner and head to bed. We were looking forward to visiting the store and grabbing some coffee and looking around the next morning but Camping World is only open from 8 am to 6 pm. We arrived way too late and we were up and awake at 6 am and chomping at the bit to get on down the road. Question for Camping World…Your clients usually need to have a longer shopping day, why not expand your open hours to 7 am and closing at 9 pm? This would give your customers time to get to your stores after work and after long days on the road when they discover they need something. Run 2 shifts of employees and expand those store hours for us please.
So, McCafe for us as we fueled The Beast and southbound we were by 7 am. South through Oregon on a sunny day is a treat. Looking through our glasses just brings out the vibrant greens filtering the sun. We stopped at the Rogue River State Park and investigated it for future use. Great looking place, huge park, very nice parking areas for RV’s and tenting areas. Want full hook ups? 27 bucks a day next to the Rogue River. I’m not sure you can get any better than that.
We cross over into California and witness something we haven’t seen in a very long time…A FULL LAKE SHASTA! I’m not sure the last time I saw water up to the resorts along the shore. Into our destination for the night, Mountain Gate RV Park. We stayed here one night last year and found it to be to our liking. They are among the top 100 Good Sam parks in the U.S. We pulled in, got our spot, set Piper up and Erin hands me a beer! Whew, I remember opening it but it just magically became empty. The temperature was 80 when we pulled in so we put on our swimsuits and head for the clean pool. Jump in and find it so very refreshing that we hang out for a long time. Back to Piper, grilled burgers and salad for dinner then dessert and a relaxing evening. Tomorrow we head off to Oakhurst to actually stop for a couple of nights before the Vegas trek.
