Tuesday, April 13, 2021
10322 miles start @ barn
Drove to house, 10329 odometer. Loaded up and headed out for another Agate hunting trip. First stop Lacey Costco for fill-up. 12.006 gal @$3.099/gal. Odometer 10483. 16.1 mpg since last fill up. Costco Pizza for lunch. Arrived Ocean City State Park 7:25pm, Odometer 10561. Set up in site 172. Walked to office to register and surveyed sites in loops 1 & 4, the only ones open. There were plenty of basic sites in the unreserved sites. There were 11 full utility unreserved sites, of which 8 were occupied. 166, 168, 171 and 172 were available full utility sites. All were back in. The pull through sites were all occupied and $5 extra. Rates went up since last stay. Shoulder season April 1-May 14. Full popular utility $45, Full basic utility $40. Basic sites $20, $25 and $30 economy, basic and popular. Leftover Pizza and roasted chicken parts for dinner. Watched CBS Evening News and Netflix Glow via streaming with 1 bar LTE cellular coverage.
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
10561 miles start at Ocean City State Park
Broke camp at daybreak 6:45am. Disconnected and stowed sewer without draining, but freshwater was topped off. Drove to Damon Point. Walked to point at low tide but there was a group of people diligently working the point who had apparently hiked out before sunrise to photograph sunrise, as well as hunt agates. They did a pretty good job of picking the agates since we just found a handful of small agates.
Had tea and coffee with leftover pizza and prunes for breakfast and discovered we can’t run the coffee maker and induction simultaneously- coffee maker draws 1200W. The induction draws about 100W per power setting (7=700W). When inverter overloads, it alarms and signals error 3. This clears when the load is removed and the inverter is rebooted. The TV and microwave draw about 35W when idle, so TV was manually switched off to save on phantom draw. The inverter was shut down after making coffee and tea to reduce phantom draw and allow solar recharging of the house batteries which had drawn down to 11.9v while using either the induction or coffee maker, but was back up to 13v in less than a half hour while we relaxed and had breakfast.
We then drove south, targeting Cape Disappointment State Park on the Washington side of the Columbia River from Astoria. Stopped for lunch at 12:35 at boat launch area at South Bend, WA. Ramen and roasted chicken with apples. Cape Disappointment park office not accessible to RV’s, so we didn’t make it to the State Park, but did stop at the Beards Hollow view point (odometer10668). We headed to Fort Clatsop in Astoria, but stopped at Fort Columbia on the Washington side and walked the site.
The museum was closed. We then drove through Astoria and discovered a Costco and Walmart. We did some tax free shopping at Costco and got Chicken bakes for dinner. Then went to Walmart, thinking of maybe spending the night there, but there are NO OVERNIGHT PARKING signs all over, despite what appeared to be several RV’s parked in the parking lot. Janet bought some donuts and asked the manager, who said no camping was allowed in this Walmart parking lot. We made reservations at the Cannon Beach Resort RV Park- $49 for full hook up site with Good Sam’s Club discount. We then toured Fort Clatsup which was actually a reconstruction, rather than the original structure, which had burned down.
We back tracked to the east end of Astoria to fill up on diesel at Safeway 13.8gal @$3.339/gal, (odometer 10704, 16 mpg since last fill up), and drove through historic Astoria.
Also stopped at Home Depot to buy some grass kill spray en route to Cannon Beach. We passed a couple of really sad looking RV parks before Seaside, an arrived at Cannon Beach Resort RV Park at 8:27pm, site 20. This is a very large, but nice RV park. The showers/pool/bathrooms are closed due to COVID, so campers must be self contained. We would have to move to another site if we wanted to stay more than the one night. Watched the evening news and Glow via streaming. The RV park has Wifi, but I wasn’t able to get the AppleTV to log on because there is no web browser interface to allow acknowledgement of the terms presented during the log-in process. Streamed via cellular with 2 bars LTE available on AT&T.
Thursday, April 15, 2021
10732 miles start at Cannon Beach RV Park.
Rode bikes from Cannon Beach RV Resort to the Gower St. beach access, 0.6 miles. Rode bikes from Haystack to Ebola Creek, then back to Cannon Beach RV Resort.
Drove south to Newhalem Bay State Park and toured the park, which as a very nice and large campground with lots of RV sites with power and water. There is also an airfield for fly in campers, boat launch and horse corrals for horse campers.
We were also able to purchase an Oregon State Parks parking pass ($30/yr).
The ranger who sold us the pass was a rock hound who recommended heading down to Oceanside beach and Netarts Bay to look for agates, so we went to Cape Lookout State Park, which is just south of those beaches. We found an unreserved full utilitity site (probably the last one) and took it.
Odometer 10793 at 3pm. We tried to ride the bikes on this beach, but the sand was not compact enough for Janet’s bike, so we relaxed in the RV after riding through the campground loops. We had mostaccioli with frozen green beans, roasted chicken breast meat and Rao’s marinara sauce with toasted artisan rolls with Boursin’s cheese for dinner. Then we walked the beach to watch the sunset, and then hot showers, Netflix and bed.
Friday, April 16, 2021
10793 miles at Cape Lookout State Park
The ranger walked by and put a reserved tag on our site as we had breakfast. We asked and they explained that our particular site is usually reserved for volunteers, so it doesn’t show up as available for reservation, but when a volunteer is not working, the site may be available on a first come first serve basis, and he said we were lucky to have gotten it yesterday.
Drove north to Netarts bay, but didn’t see much other than a boat launch and lots of muddy/sandy beach. There was a beach access further down the road but there was no parking suitable for an RV. We continued on to Oceanside Beach State Recreation area. There was a sign saying no RV’s or trailers, but we were able to maneuver into the large parking lot without trouble. There is as huge basalt headland to the north where we saw lots of people looking for agates. We joined them and found small mostly clear agates. The tide was low at 10am but there was no way to round the headland. It took us a while to figure out there was a tunnel through the headland. We went through the tunnel- large rounded boulders make up the floor and there are some large driftwood logs in the passage, so footing is difficult. A headlamp was also very useful. Once through, we found more agates and discovered bubble formations in the basalt wall that was the mother to most of these small agates.
Many agates were still adherent to the basalt. It was easy to find small agates at the base of these basalt formations with the bubbles and visible agate babies. There are also some rather nice pinnacles in the water and tide pools on the other side of the headland through the tunnel. We ended up with a tray of not particularly attractive but characteristic Oceanside Beach agates. Ben did find one that did look a little more like the Damon Point agates with red streaks through amber colored agate. We also found examples of agates still attached to some basalt matrix.
Next, we drove to Cape Meares Lighthouse and were able to drive the RV all the way to the lighthouse parking lot and enjoyed the views, and an unusual “Octopus Tree”.
We drove back to Tillamook, and visited the Blue Heron Cheese farm, which happens to be a Harvest Host participant. This is an organization that for an annual fee to Harvest Host, members can stay one night for free in the parking lots of participants dry camping or boondocking without facilities, but members are encouraged to spend at least $20 on merchandise from the host. They were set up for little kids with a petting zoo, outside exhibits and an outdoors museum of sorts with tractors, miniature trains, and other farm stuff. They had alpacas, peacocks, goats, and all sorts of other animals. The gift shop and tasting room were nice- $7.00 to sample 5 wines. Despite the name, there was only one cheese branded Blue Heron- a Brie not made on site but made to their specifications by a local cheese maker.
Next, we took the Tillamook Creamery tour, which is self guided with observation windows overlooking the cheese vats and packaging production lines. There is a surprising amount of automation- they even have a robot that can milk the cows without human intervention. It uses lasers and cameras to spot the tits and robotic arms to apply the disinfectant and then attach the milking apparatus. We’re not sure if we shouldn’t be afraid of robots that can identify and attack nipples. We ended up buying cheese curds, which can only be purchased at the factory because they have a short shelf life and must be used fresh. A carton of ice cream was $5.50- which was more expensive than at Safeway, so we just had some of the ice cream we had in the RV instead, even though it was Dreyers brand. We had cheese curds and carrots for lunch.
We thought we’d head back up towards Damon Point at Ocean Shores on the way home, but pulled in at the Newhalem Bay State Park where we had purchased our Oregon State Parks pass and found that they had plenty of first come, first served RV sites in loop D. We took D12, which was a 40+’ angle back-in site. We took the bikes and did the 1.8 mile bike loop around the park. Then we walked to the beach. It wasn’t until later in the evening that we discovered it was not the best site because our neighbors insisted on sitting outside smoking nasty cigars all evening long, and the horrible smoke drifted into our RV. To make things worse, during the day, the temperature was in the upper 70’s outside, and 80’s inside the RV. We discovered our AC was not cooling. The fan runs, but the temperature did not go down, so that will need to be addressed. Odometer 10847 at campsite D12. Dinner- roasted chicken breast meat with mostaccioli pasta with cream of mushroom and cheddar cheese sauce with canned green beans and Ritz crackers with Boursin’s cheese. We watched some TV and went to bed at 11pm. The temperature was in the 80’s so we opened some windows and used the MaxAir fan after our neighbors finished with their cigars. The temperatures dropped into the 50’s overnight so eventually the windows were closed, fan turned off and electric heater turned on.
Saturday, April 17, 2021
10847 miles at Newhalem Bay State Park campsite D12.
We took another bike ride around the park, and had oatmeal and toast for breakfast. We loaded up the bikes and broke camp after topping off the fresh water. The RV dump station had two RV’s in the lanes, so we drove on towards Fort Stevens State Park to the North. When we arrived there, we found two dump station lanes open, so we dumped, flushed, and topped off. The flushing water at the dump station had a swaged on nozzle making it impossible to attach any kind of hose fitting, so we used our outside shower with the adapters we got to flush the black tank and hose. The potable water hydrant had stripped threads so it leaked a lot. We could have used a “water bandit” adapter which can attach to damaged hose threads. We toured the campground which was entirely reserved sites, and all were booked for the weekend. There was a KOA right across the highway. We drove to the south Columbia River Jetty at the end of the Fort Stevens State Park, and found only fine sandy beach with no gravel. The jetty was under construction, so we watched as two huge excavators handled giant boulders for a while.
We then went to one of the batteries, which was very much like those at Fort Casey and Worden, but Fort Stevens had actually come under enemy fire from a Japanese submarine during WWII.
There was a peace memorial there to mark the the first place where enemy soldiers attacked the American mainland since the war of 1812. We had ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch at Fort Stevens (odometer 10897). It was quite warm- 80’s.
We decided to drive to Jack City and spend the night there, rather than take our chances at Ocean City State Park, which the WA State Parks website showed to have no vacancy for the weekend. We refueled in Astoria (Odometer 10918 miles, 13.606 gal @$3.099/gal. 15.7mpg since last fill up). There was a Franz Bakery outlet near the gas station so we picked up some donuts for just $1 per box. The DEF reminder has been on for the last few days, so we stopped at a NAPA auto parts store in Clatskanie, OR and bought a jug of DEF and added it to the reservoir 10953 miles on the odometer. This turned off the DEF reminder and brought the DEF gauge up to 7/8. It had been down to 1/4 when the reminder came on. We arrived at Jack City at 7:45pm, 11015 miles on the odometer, and parked in front of Jack’s boat shed. We will dry camp here for the night. Chili cheese hot dogs with carrots for dinner cooked on batteries using the induction for frozen hot dogs and canned chili, and then the convection oven for the rolls and cheese. The Max-Air fan was run at high to cool the RV with the screen door and windows opened. The battery was 11.9v after dinner. We watched TV streaming off 2 bars LTE AT&T coverage.
Sunday, April 18, 2021
11015 miles at Jack City
We got up at 6:45am and saw that Jack had already left. We saw Sharon was still up through the kitchen window so we dropped in and said good bye, leaving some donuts that we had bought at the Franz bakery outlet in Astoria. We left Jack City at 7:45am. We arrived at Damon Point at 9:10am, 11118 miles on the odometer (103 miles) to find the Quinalt RV Park and Marina full of new RV’s. Their website still says it is closed due to Covid-19, and there is still a cable over the entrance, so it may be that only Quinault Indians can use it now, but there must have been 100 RV’s there. We weren’t the first out to the point, but found a couple of nice Damon Point agates to add to our collection. Ben also found a large commercial crabbing float that had been adrift for some time, heavily encrusted with barnacles and algae, but it should clean up OK and be usable to rig up a second shrimping line. We had sandwiches for lunch in the RV at the Damon Point parking lot. We then drove to the Lacey Costco where we filled up with 18.4gal @$3.159/gal, odometer 11202 (15.4mpg since last fill up). We then stopped at Chiang’s Gourmet to pick up take out Chinese food for dinner at 4:15pm. Next stop was at the Smokey Point rest stop to dump and flush the tanks, and top off the fresh water. Ben found that the Pocket Hose Silver Bullet easily fits in the external shower bay and is handy to flush both the black tank and hose with the external shower instead of relying on the dump station water, which again was incompatible with hose fittings. We went through the tulip fields via the Conway turnoff and topped off diesel at the Swinomish Casino with 8.173gal @$3.049/gal (15.5mpg since last fill up). Most of the drive back along I-5 was at 70+mph to keep pace with traffic, although there were a few places where traffic was jammed up. We arrived home at 6:49pm with 11354 miles on the odometer.
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