Well the RV left only 15 minutes later than planned this morning. A record I think. Except for the fact that we were supposed to have left yesterday morning. I followed about 2 hours later, and ran into terrible traffic due to an accident just south of Madigan Hospital, between Tacoma and Olympia. Weather was fantastic, low 70's, blue skies. Stopped at a great rest stop with wooded paths. So did someone else with a bit of the "medicinal purposes only" stuff burning slowly. Mikey and I never found them. The views from the road were beautiful.

Caught up with M&D at a moderate size park called Kress Lake at exit 32 near Kalama, WA. Except for some trash around the lake nearest the parking lot, it is a beautiful area. I walked Mikey off leash around the lake, on a well worn flat path through some very pretty woods and meadow areas. Definitely worth getting out of the car, especially to do the walk. Dad tried fishing, and claimed to see many large mouth bass, tho' he didn't catch anything. Only one other group there, a dad fishing with his 2 kids.

Left Kress Lake around 4 pm, and back-tracked up I5 to Longveiw, in order to make a Wal-Mart run. What a great town. It has a beautifully designed park, "Lake Sacajawea" in the middle of town. The lake supposedly has a ton of fish. There were at least 5 Chinese food restaurants on the main street. We stopped and had a Chinese buffet which was excellent. I encouraged M&D to think about living in Longview.

Entered Oregon via the 2 lane Lewis and Clark bridge over the Columbia River. Beautiful veiw of an impressive river. Very busy waterway. Lots of logs going somewhere. We headed west towards Astoria. Found the town of Clatskanie, which had the first RV park sign seen. For $10 we stayed the night with electricity and water in what essentially was a city park. Showers and bathrooms were available all night. No gray water dumpsite, but we were actually encouraged by the 80+ year old guy who ran the town park to just let the gray water drip through the night. What about an environmental impact study on that. And they wonder why the river that runs adjacent to the park has no interesting fish…. Mikey ran all over the park for about 20 minutes, then slept like a log anywhere he could in the RV.

On to day 2

My home page