Camping

After a fun filled 12 day camping trip, we are back in the land of TV, Cell Phones. and Internet. It was so refreshing to be completely out of touch from June 30 to July 11. Well, we weren’t completely out of touch, we did drive to town a couple times, and I did manage to go through at least 60 plus messages each time on my iPhone. When we finally got the coach back to electric hookups on July 11, I had 150 email messages to sort through. Egad, that was a mess!! Especially since we are in a small town called Prineville and the cell phone (Internet Data) service is very slow. I still have in the neighborhood of 40 email messages that have attachments that will take forever to open here……so, I am waiting until we get back in a better service area to deal with them.

No, I did not take any pictures! There are many already posted in our Web Album (check left side of page for link) so I didn’t think we needed more. Just know it is a beautiful spot and sooooo very serene!!

We left Salem on June 28 and drove to Prineville where we parked the coach for two nights in the Crook County RV Park. That afternoon, Ken & I drove the Jeep 16 miles out of town along the Crooked River and into the canyon looking for a camping site. The usual spot that we stay at was full, so we found a nice area near the end of the camp grounds for us and our friends. We quickly held the sites with tents and made the payments to keep them.

Once we had the sites secured, we went back to the coach and settled in for the night. The next day (29th) we drove Jeep to Redmond and did some geocaching.

On June 30, we moved the coach down to the river campground and spent the rest of the day relaxing and just enjoying the solitude and hoping to see some wild animals (we didn’t, not then anyhow).

On July 2, we drove Jeep back into Prineville for some needed supplies and to check on IF we were great grandparents for the 5th time. Well, it seems our grand-daughter had an ultrasound on June 30 and was told all the amniotic fluid had leaked out, so she was immediately moved to the birthing center and labor was induced. The baby girl was born at 6:30 that evening. Her name is Ciara (pronounced cee-air-ah) Rose Rojas Rodrigues, weighing in at 5lbs 13ozs and 17 ½ inches long. Mommy (Lauren) and daddy (Abraham) are doing well, but it seems daddy was a bit weak kneed for a while. Our daughter, Leigh, had been trying to call us and had left messages, but alas, we were out of touch. Anyhow, while we were still in town, we had the chance to call and talk to Laurie, so all was well.

Our friends showed up shortly after Noon on the 2nd and quickly got settled in to camping mode. During the next 10 days, we tried to be very lazy and do a lot of nothing. The guys did take a long hike along the rim, then one day, all but me took a hike up to Chimney Rock (big tall rock outcropping with big elevation change). I later went up part way (.25 mile) with Ken to try and find a geocache, but we didn’t find it. That same day, Ken & I took a loop drive from camp up and over the rim, and drove the back way into Prineville, then back to camp. We did do some off road stuff, but nothing hard. Naturally, we found some caches along the way (grin). Another day we all rafted down the river. We dropped the rafts in just below the Bowman Dam and pulled out about 5 miles down stream at our camp. The river was moving pretty fast, so it only took us about an hour and a half to make the trip. Some spots were pretty shallow and we scraped bottom a few times.

One of our outings was just us girls driving to Bend (the back way) and shopping at the Outlets. The guys didn’t want to do that, so they stayed in camp and lazed the whole day. Yes, we all did go to town (Prineville) another day and had dinner and special milk shakes at The Tastee Freeze. They have some marvelous burgers and just the very best “REAL" milkshakes. Our last day of camping, no one wanted to BBQ, so we all drove to town and ate at the Sports Bar and Grill. They have wonderful pizzas and you can even shell the “free” peanuts on the floor…..we had a mess around us when we left (grin).

If you are wondering if we went to town on the 4th of July to watch the fireworks, the answer is no…. we didn’t want anything to do with that mess. Besides, we have been there and done that, so we were all contented to enjoy the peaceful river and see the occasional Owl, Eagle, and even Deer a couple times.

Most of our days were warm and sunny. We did have some wind and clouds and even a couple evenings of thunder and lightning. What rain we did get was minimal and didn’t last long at all.

Unfortunately, our time along the river went all too fast and we broke camp on July 11. Our friends drove straight back home, but Ken & I drove back into Prineville and settled in at the Crook County RV Park for two nights.

Today, July 12, we went out and found 19 caches before the weather turned bad. This morning, we woke to beautiful warm sun, but by early afternoon, the skies turned black and menacing. Soon the thunder and lightning along with wind arrived. We even had some heavy rain for short intervals. One thing about Eastern Oregon, the thunder feels and sounds like it is sooooo much closer. It really resonated when sounding off. Our temps dropped from the 90s of yesterday to the high 60s this afternoon (wild).

We will be leaving here in the morning and heading for Junction City which is a few miles north of Eugene. While in Junction City, we are having our front privacy curtains removed and installing electric solar screens and privacy shades. The front ones will be all one piece and will fit just inside the windshield. Each will be moveable from driver and passenger sides. The driver side and passenger side windows will have manual screens (solar and privacy). This is going to make a huge difference in how the front looks, and we won’t have those awful curtains to move back and forth. Now everything will move up and down. We should be in Junction City all of Monday and probably part of Tuesday, but we won’t know until they get in and start working on stuff.