Wednesday, May 23, 2012

It's snowing. Time to move on.


Wednesday:
We awoke this morning to 34* and snow. We expect lots of precipitation in the Cascade Range, that's just the way the weather works out here, but prefer ours in drops and NOT flakes. The Wave 3 heater was on all night and it was 54* inside at 6am. That's very consistent with our previous experiences that the heater can maintain an interior temperature about 20* above outside temperature. 



Carol is very sensitive to cold temperatures so we decided to head west and to a lower elevation. The drive on US 20 is as pretty as any we've seen. We checked out a few USFS campgrounds along the way, but they were dark and dreary. With the very dense tree canopy, everything at ground level is covered with moss, mushrooms, lichen and such. Looks like someplace out of the Hobbit stories. Gollum can't be far away!!


Where is My Precious??



 By the time we got to Tombstone Pass (4,236') the snow was beginning to accumulate on the road. 

Tombstone Pass

I stopped in the USFS district office in Sweet Home and came away with a ton of great local information. We might just to take the Quartzville Road as part of our travels after we leave Springfield on June 7th. It's a “Recreation Corridor and Back Country Byway” that runs from the Sweet Home area east towards Marion Forks. The Ranger Lady I talked to said it affords countless boondocking opportunities, and we just strike it rich, she said with a big grin on her face. Seems people still pan for gold in that area. 


Tonight we're at the Linn County Waterloo Campground located east of Lebanon off US 20 (44.48862 -122.81496). $19/night for us old folks; a very good value for a site with water and electric. There are 120 campsites. Sixty sites are reserveable and they are all booked for the coming holiday weekend. Right now, there are less then a dozen campers. Our camping neighbor lives in town and said the campground would be completely full by probably late tomorrow. The property is very well maintained with play areas for the children, fishing access to the South Santium River, and an off-lease dog park. Well worth a stop. As soon as I got hooked up the first order of business was to plug in the electric heater and point it straight at Carol.  The inside temperature is a toasty 73* plus our precipitation is in the form of drops.

2 comments:

Russ Krecklow said...

Nice to have a "weather dog" isn't it? We can tell when Rusty has been outside...if it's snowing, he's got it all over himself...if it's raining...he's wet...if it's sunny...he's hot! Course, we could just go out there with him. Hey, enjoy your trip from Lebanon to the coast. Hope the weather over there is better. We stopped over at AM Solar yesterday, since we were in that area, and checked it out for you. Nice place there, think you will enjoy it.

Jimbo said...

Just got a good dusting of snow here as well.