After leaving the BLM campground in Orofino, Idaho, we cruised into the Flying J at Lewiston, Idaho where we accidentally met up with our good friends the Hammonds and the Paynes.  They were just finishing a fuel stop and since we had all agreed to meet at the Walmart in Moscow, we just hooked up at Lewiston and went to the Life On Wheels conference together.

We pulled into the parking lot for boondockers and early arrivals at the University of Idaho and got to meet Mr. Personality.  Our parking guy was about as friendly as a rock and had about as much common sense.  He parked us, then parked a fiver next to us, so close that I couldn't stand in front of our door to unlock it.  I had to duck under their front slide to get to our door.  They in turn were parked in front of another fiver back to front, so the second rig could not move until the first one got out of the way.  If one of these rigs had caught fire, we would have lost all of them.  I tried to reason with this guy and spoke of fire codes and fire safety, but he didn't care.  He told me that they had a lot of rigs coming in and would need all of the space they had to get them into a holding area before the electric folks moved on Friday.  Of course, most of the rigs showed up on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and our lot was never even close to full.  There was simply no reason to expose all of us to an unsafe condition like this.   I expressed my displeasure to the LOW folks and hopefully, someone will do something about this for the next one.   My biggest complaint at rally type events is that greed takes precedent over safety and folks get crammed in together in unsafe conditions.  I did get entertained on Friday and Saturday watching other folks argue with the same guy who parked us about how close he was parking them.  He just did not care.  Obviously, this guy had very few interpersonal skills and even less common sense.  As I walked around the electric lots over the weekend, I saw several rigs that were blocked by others.  This should never happen.  Either attendance needs to be limited, a better parking plan implemented or another place to put these folks should be found.  Also, the folks who paid for electric, ($95 extra) were served by two giant generators.  The lot A genset failed on the first night and the lot B one was so noisy, that lots of folks asked to be moved.  Power was only available from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.  I understand the need for fivers  or travel trailer with no genset to be in these lots, but the motorhomes with gensets could have burned a heck of a lot of fuel providing their own power and never even gotten close to $95.  This should have been disclosed up front, but was not.  We have been here for 7 days at this point and have not turned our genset on once, since we have solar power and lots of house batteries.  Luckily, there is a mall across the street and two movie houses nearby, so when it gets too hot, instead of running our genset, we just go to the air conditioned mall or movie!  Starting tomorrow, we will be in class all day, so we won't need the AC then either.  We are looking forward to the classes. Even though the parking mess was a pain, we think the classes will be great.

The LOW folks had an introductory meeting on Sunday afternoon where they introduced all of us to the instructors and gave a brief bio of all of them.  One of the people from the bookstore brought examples of books that the instructors had written.  Of course, they neglected to bring Movin On, written by our friends, the Hofmeisters.  It wasn't a nice start to the conference, but we had confidence that things would improve as we started attending classes.

On Monday, we got up bright and early for our first 8 am class!  We are usually not even awake by 8 o'clock, but sacrifices must be made!  Our first class was on septic systems.  I don't think we learned anything in this one, but that isn't surprising as we have been RVing for about 30 years.  I think this class would be excellent for new folks or folks who don't yet have an RV. Just as an aside, a good number of the attendees did not have RVs.  We were amazed at the number of folks attending who were sans RV!

After septic tanks, we attended a class on LP systems.  Again, it was pretty basic, but we learned some things about LP and the instructor was excellent.  He teaches RV techs at a college in British Columbia and really knows his stuff.

Our next series of classes were taught by a fellow, Greg Holder,  who manufactures accessories for solar power installations. This guy was outstanding.  We attended his class on batteries from a solar perspective, then we went to a class on the technical aspects of solar power and then one on the practical aspects of solar power.  The same fellow did a class on inverters and then on Friday morning, he had a technical discussion forum on solar.  I was duly impressed with his classes and knowledge, learning quite a bit more about solar and solar technology.  Of course, we already have solar panels on our rig, but one can never know too much about a subject.  (by the way, we boondocked for 12 days at LOW and turned the generator on for two hours of the last afternoon just to exercise it and dry a load of clothes)  We were one of very few folks in boondock who did not have to run a generator to recharge batteries.  Solar is quiet and clean, a real pleasure to use when one is boondocking.

One day for lunch, we took Gaylord Maxwell's advice and drove to the village of Helmer for a hamburger at the Helmer store and cafe.  Great burger!

Libby and I attended the same technical classes until Thursday.  That day, she went to a class on places to nest in the winter, taught by Gaylord Maxwell. She said he was just great and very entertaining.  I went to a class on diesel engines taught by a service manager from a dealership in the Washington/Oregon area.  He was a little nervous speaking to a large group, but got a little more relaxed as the class progressed.  He did, however, give several "facts" that were incorrect.  I hope the new folks in that class do some more research instead of taking some of the information as gospel.  Overall, I thought he was pretty good and I am certain that he will get even better at presentations if he gets the chance to do some more.  As a sales person and sales manager for so many years, it is pretty natural for me to speak in front of large groups, but I know that it can be a tough test for folks who are not used to it.

Libby also attended a personal safety class on Friday while I went to the solar forum.  She said the couple who taught it were just great.  They were the same two who taught the class we attended on Pepper Spray and self defense.  Another good class that I recommend to anyone attending the LOW.

We went to a class on RV insurance and learned quite a bit.  One of the nice things about the LOW is that Gaylord Maxwell, the founder of the conference, does not allow folks to sell their products during the classes.  Most of them were very good about this and it made the classes that much more enjoyable.

Another day, Libby and I drove to Pullman, Washington, only 8 miles west of Moscow and went to the Ferdinand Ice Cream shop on the campus of Washington State University or WAZZU as the folks there call it.  They have a cheese factory on campus and of course, one of the best byproducts of cheese production is ice cream!  More good stuff and one of the basic food groups, chocolate ice cream.

One of our favorite classes was taught by Paul Bernhagen.  We first met Paul and Stephanie at the Goshen Escapade in September of 1999.  They bailed out of their engineering jobs in their mid 30s and have been fulltime for over seven years.  They boondock quite a bit and Paul taught a class on boondocking.  It was very informative.  While I doubt that we would be as avid boondockers as the Bernhagen's, we picked up lots of great tips on extending our non hook up stays.  We like to boondock whenever possible to save money and just for the thrill of being totally independent of the power grid and water companies.  One of the best tips we got from Paul was a new way to use our LP fired water heater.  His suggestion is to turn on the LP heater for only a few minutes to heat your shower water.  We tried this while boondocked at LOW.  We ran our water heater for 10 minutes and then turned it off.  This provided hot water for both of us to use for our military showers with room to spare.  It also meant that we did not turn on the cold water at all, thus eliminating all of the cold water usage, saving water and allowing us to turn the shower off with the faucet handle instead of the spray head which always drips.  I think this tip alone cut our shower water usage at least in half.  While we did add water since it was available to us in the boondock, we could have easily gone the entire 12 days without it.  Previously, we had gone 10 days on one tank of water.  This is going to be really helpful when we boondock for extended periods.

The week at LOW came to an end quickly and we had to say ADIOS to our old and new friends.  We stayed in the parking lot at the University until Sunday morning.  We left at our usual 10ish in the morning and made the journey south to the Lewiston grade for the third time in two weeks.  This time, however, we turned west and passed through Lewiston, crossing the river into Clarkston, Washington.  As a side note here, a fellow saw our URL on the back of the coach and sent us an email after reading the website.  He is a student at a college in Lewiston, Idaho.  It is always nice to be able to correspond with folks who read the website or see the URL on the rig.

Also of interest in this area, Lewiston is a seaport!  It is hard to imagine a seaport in Idaho, but ships can come up the Columbia and Snake rivers all the way to Lewiston.  While we did not see any large ships, we did see lots of barges used for hauling grain.

We followed the sun westward and after traveling several hours through some wonderful scenery, pulled into the Pioneer RV Park in Hermiston, Oregon for the night.  This park was a Passport America, so we only spent $11 to stay there.  They had nice pull through sites, cable and hot phone lines!  All in all, a real bargain.  I got to surf the net and we had a nice place to stay.  We pulled out of there about 10 am on Monday and headed for the Columbia River Gorge.

As we traveled west on the Oregon side of the Columbia River, the wind was fierce.   Our two days of driving in the gorge caused us to only get 9 mpg which is the lowest fuel mileage we have ever attained.  The wind blows from the ocean to the high desert up the gorge in the summertime.  It is very strong most of the time.  The upside, was that there were hundreds of windsurfers on the river for us to watch.  In the winter, the wind blows the other way, toward the ocean.  We are told it blows some pretty cold air downstream.

We stopped in Mosier, Oregon at the Columbia River Gorge RV Park.  This park is rated 5 stars in the campground directory, but we don't agree.  While we had a great view, the road up to this park is gravel for several miles and both the rig and the toad got filthy on our way up the hill.  There were no sewers at the park, which isn't a big deal for us, but no park without large level sites and full hookups should be rated as 5 stars.  We understand from friends who stayed there after us that the power was not good either. ( We don't often notice low voltage anymore, since we have a Hughes Autoformer wired into our rig ) In any case, the view from site 46 was spectacular.  In the evening when the clouds parted, we had a terrific view of Mt. Adams, a 12,276 foot tall volcano.  Mt. Adams is one of the volcanic mountains in the famous Ring of Fire chain that surrounds the Pacific Ocean. In Washington and Oregon there are a number of volcanic peaks that dominate the landscape, Hood, Batchelor, Jefferson, the Three Sisters in Oregon, Rainer, Adams, Baker, Mt. St. Helens in Washington.  We also had a doe and two fawns visit our parking site one evening. 

We also visited the Columbia River Gorge Center while near the Dalles and Libby got to try her hand at windsurfing the river. 

We also drove back in to The Dalles a couple of times to eat at Cousins restaurant.  The trip on U.S. 30 was spectacular and the Yak burgers were yummy

  We headed on west following the Columbia River until we reached Portland.  At Portland we picked up I-5 and traveled south to Corvalis. At Corvalis, we turned west on 20 and headed for Newport.  We tried for four days to make a reservation at the C2C park in Newport, Whalers Rest.  Unfortunately, like many business today, they have an automated attendant on their phone system and we could not get through to a live person to make a reservation.  When we arrived, they had no C2C spots left.  We stayed in this park last year on our way to Alaska and thought it was a pretty nice park.  They directed us to the Oregon State park at South Beach closer to Newport and we drove in without a reservation, staying for two nights.  The cost at the state park was $20 per night, for water and electric, no sewer.  This is a great family campground and we enjoyed our two days there.  We walked on the beach, went sightseeing and just hung out for two days.

  Since South Beach was sold out over the weekend, we moved to the Newport Marina and RV Park just east of the big bridge in Newport.  This park was originally just a parking lot, but they have installed water, electric and sewer along several rows in the back and made it into an RV park.  Over the weekend the full hookup sites and a lot of the dry camp sites were full as many folks apparently come to this park to fish and crab in the Newport area.  By Monday, the dry camp was empty and the full hookups were a little less crowded.  We spent 7 days at this park, enjoying the cool weather and watching the pleasure and fishing boats come in and out of the bay.  We toured the Oregon Aquarium and did a behind the scenes tour.  We went to the Hatfield Marine Science Center of the University of Oregon.  Libby got to play with BOB (big orange blob) an octopus that the center had on display.  The day after we were there, BOB was released back into the Pacific Ocean to continue his life of eating crabs.  We did get to see them feed him while we were there.  He was amazing as he floated over a crab and just enveloped it before settling into a corner of his tank to digest lunch.

While at the Marina we ate at the Roque Ale brewery, good food in a real brewery right on the bay.  We also had breakfast several times at a small cafe called the Fishtail.  Great food, nice atmosphere and the ladies inside were just wonderful. 

After we left the Marina, we moved to the Outdoor Resort, Pacific Shores, for three days.  We used one of the coupons from MotorHome magazine to stay in this park.  It was a pay for one night and get two free deal, so we forked over $35 for our first night, but of course, only averaged $15 for the three day period.  A highlight of our stay at Pacific Shores was the arrival of our friends Bart and Holly Creasey.  They had been parked across from us at LOW and we were surprised to see them pull into next to us in Newport.

This park is truly a five star resort.  Large cement pads, full hookups, sewer connections recessed into a shallow depression so that inadvertent spills don't get away.  A great location and fantastic clubhouse.  They had an outdoor pool and spa and an indoor pool and spa.  We chose the indoor hot tub to soak in as it was a little cool right on the ocean.  The only downside at this park was that there were no pull throughs.  We think the geography of the park was just not right to create pull throughs.  The clubhouse had only one modem hookup, so getting on line was a little tough at times.

While at this park, we attempted to go whale watching on a boat out of Depoe Bay, but every time we tried to go out, the weather turned nasty and we never made it.  We did see a whale just south of Depoe Bay swimming north along the shore.  We watched it for quite a while. 

After we left Pacific Shores, we traveled back over US 20 to Coburg and settled into the Eugene Kamping World RV Park.  This is an old park, but we felt fortunate to get a site anywhere.  With over 6,000 rigs expected at the FMCA in Redmond, lots of folks are in the area and RV sites are rather scarce.  We stayed for five days in this park, touring the Safari, Monaco and Country Coach RV manufacturing facilities in the area.  Since most of this activity occurred in August, I am going to save our reviews for the August update. Meanwhile here are some pictures of the Oregon Coast between Newport and Depoe Bay.
 

Fuel for July                    $51.48
Camping Fees for July    $297