Oregon - Days 14 - 17 - in Cascade Locks and the campground

Cascade Locks KOA, Cascade Locks

Saturday, 14 through Tuesday, 17 May 2022

The rain and the campground

It started raining just as we finished our last walk on Friday, and it rained all night long and was still raining when we went out for our first walk on Saturday.  

That supposedly much drier campsite I'd moved to turned out to be in a bit of a hole, and water collected right by our door.  Ankle-deep water.  Ankle-deep muddy water.  It was a mess.

When I opened the door Saturday morning, I had to open my umbrella before I got out because it was raining so hard.  And when I stepped outside, I was reminded that I had a gash near the top of my rubber boots, and I could feel cold muddy water running into my boot.

Then Dexter tried to refuse to get out because he hates the rain and because he could see how big the puddle was.  Emulated by Gracie who doesn't mind the rain but really didn't want to splash down into that puddle.  And calling it a puddle is an understatement - it was big and deep and cold and muddy.

The rain eventually stopped later on Saturday, but that mud puddle didn't dry up until late Sunday.  It turned out that all that maneuvering I'd done on Friday when I was trying to get the RV level put me into the lowest point of the campsite.  If I'd been willing to park where we were more tilted, we'd also have been drier.

Oh, and that site I'd first rejected because it was surrounded by muddy roads?  The roads were still muddy, but the campsite was sitting high and dry.  Actually, only a few roads in this campground were paved, and all the others had been graveled over.  Except that had been done many years before so now most of the gravel was buried in the mud, and the mud was an odd sticky consistency that was yucky to walk on.  Also a little slick and I kept worrying I'd fall over if the dogs made a sudden move.  Made walking around the campground a lot less pleasant.  And that situation didn't change for the whole time we were there.

Even though our mud puddle dried up and even though we were leaving Wednesday, I asked to move to yet another site on Monday.  The forecast was for more rain on Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning, and the last thing I wanted was for us to have to wade through that ghastly puddle a few more times.  From what I saw walking around the campground, that site we'd been in was hands-down the muddiest.  But this campground still desperately needed new gravel to be laid down, and I was surprised they hadn't done it earlier this month after the snow melted and before the summer season.

What I did

On Saturday, I spent the morning voting.  David had forwarded my mail to this campground, and it included my absentee ballot for the run-off election.  I had to spend a lot of time looking up all the candidates to try and figure out which of them might be sane.  I always vote in the Republican elections, this being Texas which means almost any Republican candidates are likely to win, and I want to do my part in trying to get people who aren't raving lunatics into office.

After that, and all day Sunday, I got 5 blog posts done, bringing me up to Day 8 - still more than a week behind but closer than I'd been.

I spent an entire morning - 5 or 6 hours - planning campgrounds for the rest of May.  I'm already halfway through the month and haven't seen much of Oregon at all, so I was trying to figure out what I could still find time to get to.  That's when I ran up against Memorial Day.  I'd totally forgotten it, and when I was trying to book a campsite online for that weekend, I found campgrounds all over everywhere were completely full.  Even this mudhole I was in was full (I was desperate, which is why I even looked).

So instead of spending the last week in Oregon trying to get my blog caught up, I had to cobble something together just to have a safe place to sleep.  I could stay at one campground until Saturday, then move to another campground on the opposite side of the state for Saturday and Sunday, and then move back across the state for Monday and Tuesday.  

Having learned my lesson, I took a look at Idaho campgrounds for the July 4th holiday.  Many of them were already full, believe it or not.  So I had to do some serious route planning to find a place to spend the first 5 days of July.  

And I went on from there to the Labor Day weekend, when I expected to be in Minnesota.  That's when I realized I couldn't drive from eastern Montana (August) to anywhere in Minnesota in one day.  So I had to figure out where I'd be staying in Montana and make reservations for that, then find somewhere in South Dakota about halfway between and reserve that, and then make the long Labor Day weekend reservation in MN.  I'm starting to think about where I'll be staying for Christmas, given all this.

I spent most of Tuesday planning driving routes for most of the rest of the month.  I'd put together reservations at state campgrounds for one of the weeks I'd be traveling, and with my experience at other state campgrounds, I was afraid I wouldn't have an internet signal.  I figured these routes could always be changed, but just in case I wanted to be able to leave each campground in the mornings and not just be driving blind.

In between all that, I did chores: laundry, bathroom cleaning, sweeping - like that.

Trip to town

On Monday, I went into town to mail my ballot and go to the grocery store.  I was surprised to find how limited the stock was at the market.  Cascade Locks (that's the name of the town, as well as the name of the marine feature) had 1,170 residents in 2020, which is small, but it's a tourist draw, it's on an interstate, and it's not particularly close to a larger town, so I figured they'd have a reasonable selection.  I had trouble finding oranges, which gives you an idea.  I saw a sign outside the grocery saying:

         Columbia Market - Now Hiring

         Cashiers     Stockers     and More

         Only Serious Committed Ones & Flexible

I can figure out what they were saying, but doesn't it sound funny?  Do they need to be flexible enough to touch their toes?

The post office was right across the street, and they very kindly hand-postmarked my ballot.  Texas has different rules for when a ballot is due based on whether it's got a postmark on it, and I wanted to minimize the chance they'd toss out my ballot for some technicality.  They really do make it hard to vote there.

I stopped at a little green area by a cemetery so the dogs could walk somewhere that wasn't muddy.  We found a couple of historic signs there, one about the cemetery and one about the town itself.

I took this because I liked the sign.

This is the sign about the cemetery -
I enlarged pieces of it below.

This is the sign about the town -
enlarged sections below.

My campground was on Forest Lane, and I
saw signs saying that road was a historic
 highway.  This sign explains why.

I took the dogs down to the locks where I thought I could walk them.  There were signs all over saying nobody could park without paying, but they wanted me to use my smartphone (which I don't have), and I figured the couple of cars who were parked there to take a break from work probably didn't pay, and we were only staying briefly, so I didn't worry.  There wasn't really anyplace to take the dogs anyway except around the parking lot.

That's where I took the photo of the Bridge of the Gods.  Here's another one.

Bridge of the Gods

I thought the signs told me I was at the locks but I couldn't see anything that fit that name.  But I finally took a good look at the way the water was flowing along a channel, and the old structure that was there, and decided we were indeed at the locks.

This one tries to show the odd water movement
in the channel.

This is a closer view of the lock itself.

I just couldn't believe this structure had enabled major river traffic - even long ago - so I finally looked it up and learned that the Bonneville Dam and Locks had ended the need for the Cascade Locks and flooded them.  The river varies 55' in height between high water and low water, so when the locks were built in 1896, they had to accommodate that.   What they did was build several locks with gates of different heights, and what's left today is the upper part of the higher lock.  

This area also boasts a small RV park, a waterfront grill, a boat ramp, and is the landing point for a sternwheeler cruise.

The only other photo I have of the town is this one:

A dogwood - so pretty.
The town was full of them, all looking gorgeous.

On the drive back to the campground,  I saw a young couple out for a walk, sort of.  The young woman had 2 Great Danes on leashes; the young man was on skates and had a much smaller dog.  That division didn't make sense to me - surely you'd want the Great Danes to pull you on the skates?