Tent Camping on the Oregon Coast #3

FORT STEVENS

Wednesday morning it was still raining - a gentle misty rain. I donned my rain poncho and quickly boiled some water on the one-burner propane stove and dove back into the tent. We feasted on instant oatmeal, hot chocolate, bananas, and morning pills. Then we headed to the beach for our first look at the Pacific Ocean.

Up until this moment we had traveled alongside the Columbia River which, as it fanned out to dump into the ocean, was broad and looked to be a sea, itself, with ocean going ships, barges, and all sizes of fishing vessels. Right in front of us, stranded on the beach was the Wreck of the Peter Iredale, an English sailing ship that ran aground in 1906.
We had read about this site, but thought we were going to have to hike to it, and weren’t sure we wanted to do that in the wind and rain.

Fort Stevens (where we were camped) was built during the Civil War to defend the western coast from marauding Southerners. Then during World War II it was active in protecting the western coast from enemy submarines. As a matter-of-fact, it was shelled by a Japanese submarine that had managed to get near the Oregon Coast. In the picture, if you try hard, you can visualize two big cannons sitting up on top of this concrete structure.

The Clatsop Spit (the point of land that juts up between the Pacific and the Columbia) is famous for birdwatching; but unfortunately for us, the birds were tucked away somewhere out of the wind and rain, because we did not see many – just seagulls, Great blue herons, and brown pelicans. Here is a list of the birds we saw between Boise and the Pacific and back again:
Blackbird, red-winged; Blackbird, Brewer’s; Chickadee, Chestnut-backed (lifer*); Cormorant, Pelagic; Cormorant, Brandt’s; Cormorant, Double-crested; Cowbird, brown-headed; Crow, Northwestern; Crow, American; Dove, Rock; Egret, Great; Flicker, Northern; Goose, Canada; Gull, ring-billed; Gull, Herring; Hawk, red-tailed; Heron, Great Blue (hundreds at Fort Stevens); Jay, Steller’s - Pacific race; Junco, Oregon; Kestrel, American; Kingfisher, Belted; Loon, Pacific; Merlin; Murre, Common; Nuthatch, red-breasted; Osprey; Owl, Barn; Owl, Barred; Pelican, American White; Pelican, Brown; Raven; Sanderling; Shearwater, Sooty (thousands on water); Sparrow, House; Swallow, Barn; Swift, Vaux’s; Vulture, Turkey; Woodpecker, Pacific Hairy; Wrentit (lifer*).

After touring the beaches, fort, and all the birding lookouts at Fort Stevens we were pretty well drenched and decided to retire to our warm, cozy tent. I grabbed a can of Progresso soup, heated it up on the one-burner stove, ran it into the tent where we feasted on soup, bagels, hot chocolate, and evening pills. Then we spent the evening playing games and reading. I’ll have to admit on our entire trip, we were in the tent by 7:00 at the latest, and usually into our warm bed by 8:30, listening to the rain beat on the roof. We averaged 13 hours of sleep each night!

Tent Camping on the Oregon Coast #2

THE COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE


Tuesday as we continued along the Columbia River Gorge a misty rain started. We turned onto the old Highway 30 and visited Horsetail Falls and Multnomah Falls, and got our first glimpse of the lush ferns, pines, and undergrowth that make western Oregon so beautiful. At Horsetail Falls there were no crowds and I was able to pause, listen, and truly appreciate their beauty. (However, my very favorite falls were to come several days later).


It is said that the Columbia River Basin is the most hydroelectrically developed river system in the world with over 400 dams along the various rivers that feed into it. As we drove along we discovered that the 100 mile stretch of river that makes up the gorge has 4 dams backing up the river into a series of lakes that provide recreation, irrigation, power; and through the locks in the various dams, barges can travel from the Pacific Ocean all the way to Lewiston, Idaho. We stopped at the Bonneville Dam, watched the volunteers counting fish at the observation windows, and looked at the fish ladders. Along the mountainsides of both Washington and Oregon we saw windmill farms. We passed many semi-trucks each carrying one big windmill blade. These windmills appear to be twice as large as the ones we saw in the San Bernardino canyons in 1999.

I will have to admit here that I am in favor of dams, I am in favor of wind power, I am in favor of solar power (although that is more expensive). If I were given the duty of voting on nuclear power, I would probably vote in favor of that, too. I feel that we should be moving ahead on our sources of power and not get stymied in our efforts to provide ourselves with better, cleaner sources of power.

We steeled ourselves for the drive through Portland – thinking: this city is two times bigger than Salt Lake City, and driving in Salt Lake City is a white-knuckle nightmare. But we found the freeway to be well-signed, and the speed limit was doable, not like the wild 75 mile-per-hour roller-coaster ride through Salt Lake. The Oregonians seem to actually obey their speed limits, making it much more easy to negotiate through their largest city. We skimmed across the northern part of the city, still along the Columbia River, to the north-western-most city of Astoria, across the bridge over Young's Bay, and up to Fort Stevens where we had reservations for the next 4 days.

Fort Stevens Stake Park has 600 campsites, and we thought we would be awash in a sea of campers, but the area where we were to stay was in amongst tall pines and quite empty. We had just put up our tent, and finished our bowl of soup when it started to rain. And it rained for the next 7.5 days!

Tent Camping on the Oregon Coast #1

There are no crowds along the Oregon Coast in September, maybe that’s because it rains a lot along the Oregon Coast in September. And that makes tent camping along the Oregon Coast in September quite an adventure.

We started our late-season vacation on September 13 with the idea that we would leave our pop-up trailer and Trailblazer home, and pack the bare necessities of camping into our little Toyota Corolla, thereby not only saving gas, but enabling ourselves to zip in and out of traffic without the hassle of a trailer dragging along behind.

It turned out that our little car held quite a lot of stuff: a big, roomy 9X14 foot tent; 2 Coleman camp cots with foam pads; a 2" memory foam mattress topper; 2 sleeping bags; 3 pillows; 2 camp chairs; a small camp table; a cooler; 2 Rubbermaid totes for paper plates, saucepans, soup, and instant oatmeal; a case of bottled water; 2 duffle bags for clothes; 2 winter coats; 2 rain jackets; 2 light jackets; a one-burner propane stove; 3 small propane tanks; a bag of field guides; and various cameras, binoculars, and telescopes. When we had finished with the packing, the trunk was neatly filled -- not cram-packed; and the back seat was filled only to the bottom of the side door windows! I would have thrown my guitar on top if I’d thought I’d have time to strum it.

We planned to take two days to get to the Coast, because we like to stop and look at everything and anything. So our first night was at Memaloose State Park on the edge of the Columbia River near The Dalles.

We had just set up our tent when 4 vans rolled into the four tent sites next ours. Slogans were white-washed all over their sides indicating that this was a group of biology students from Bowling Green University on their way home from the Coast. Out poured at least 36 kids with 19 tents. We looked at each other and groaned – this was going to be a long night. And it was, but not because of those kids. That group turned out to be the most quiet group of campers we had ever heard. They set up their tents quickly and quietly. We heard nothing from them during the night and they were gone the following morning having left no trace of their ever having been there.

What we didn’t know when we reserved was that aside from the beautiful park-like setting on the banks of the big river, the Denver and Rio-Grande railroad tracks to Portland and vicinity ran along the same bank of the river approximately 500 feet on the north side of our tent! It didn’t take us long to figure out that those rails have to be the busiest in the Northern United States – trains going east, then trains going west with engineers who delighted in blasting their screaming air horns just outside our tent every 35 minutes throughout the night.

And also what we didn’t know when we reserved was that 300 feet on the south side of our tent was Interstate 84 – the only highway carrying traffic between Denver and Portland – four lanes of bumper-to-bumper semi-trucks with tires whining and air brakes roaring all through the night.

Privy Information

One-half mile to the outhouse requires planning ahead! Our family’s favorite spot to hold our annual camp out is in a cozy clearing among the pines on Bettenson Flat in the Fish Lake Forest of Utah (9000 feet in altitude). It is a perfect place away from the regular weekend crowds. Well, perfect in all but one way – the outhouse is a half mile away across the meadow as the crow flies (see the small white dot in the upper part of the above photo). And many a pour soul has set out over that meadow with their hopes high of meeting their deadline, only to turn back anxious to find a faster method of transport.

Shuttle service, including motorcycle, motor scooter, SUV, pickup truck, and sedan was on alert 24/7. One vehicle would leave, and the sentinel at camp would watch the privy through binoculars until the shuttle was reloaded and headed back in the direction of camp. “Next shuttle to the privy leaving in 15 minutes,” the sentinel would shout. Sometimes folks weren’t fast enough and would be left standing on the dirt road in the dust of the out-going shuttle, forlornly waving their roll of TP as it unraveled in the mountain breeze.

Outhouses are known by many names: privy, biffy, kybo, dunny . . . and there are others that I won’t mention here. My granddaughter calls it “the stinky opera house.” There must be something to this because when my daughter was little she enjoyed sitting in the various outhouses from Arizona to Montana singing Bali Hai at the top of her lungs.

It isn’t a difficult thing for me to deal with outhouses in the forest – especially the new pre-fabricated concrete ones that have replaced all the pit toilets that were around when I was young – now those were stinky opera houses! But still, not difficult, for someone who was raised on a farm with the only “facility” being a ramshackle two-holer located 200 feet west of the house on the other side of the barnyard near the pigpen.

It was a long way to go on cold winter days. My brothers tried to keep a path shoveled the entire distance, but sometimes nature called during the middle of a blizzard and we kids would just tear out the door in our bare feet and high-tail it through the snow to the welcoming confines of the little out-building. There we would sit and read the Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalog, then search the back index of the books in hopes of finding at least one of the more flexible pages that made up the index to use for TP.

Who can complain about dispersed camping in the forest when only a half mile away awaits the greatest comfort of modern day camping – a forest service outhouse stocked with rolls and rolls of soft white tissue paper!