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!!
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| Where is My Precious?? |
By the time we got to
Tombstone Pass (4,236') the snow was beginning to accumulate on the
road.
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| 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:
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.
Just got a good dusting of snow here as well.
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