Making Reservations vs. Stopping When and Where We Want

We stayed over a week at Mossyrock Park, which is run by the Tacoma Power District.

 Evening at Riffe Lake, Mossyrock Park

This was the first year I made reservations, mostly at State and National Parks, for all of our over 90 nights of summer travel, before we left Jojoba in Spring. In other years I have made reservations for special places, like when I made reservations at Florida State parks in the Keys eleven months ahead. But I mostly have relied on making online reservations a few days or week ahead. I found this only worked part of the time and I sometimes ended up calling commercial parks as we traveled. These were mostly one night stays, that I picked  out of the Passport America book or used the Allstays site on the web. I do try to look at some of the reviews, but if it was same day, it was hard. Personally, I find hunting for a park or even a Walmart quite stressful while driving on a travel day, and we often want to stay in a place for several days. 

Cost and security are both very important to me. We do not use the big golf courses or other amenities that are included in the cost of some high end commercial parks. Nor am I comfortable with the tight spaces found at some of the old, and often NOT less expensive, commercial parks. 

Even with the reservation fee charged on State Park reservations, I find that we average a savings of $10 or more per night. Which comes to at least $900 for the summer! We put that into our fuel budget, and get to stay at some of the prettiest, friendliest places in the country. Of course we could save even more if we boondocked, but that is not our way.

Our rig is a 35' class A.
Some state and national parks have size limits of less than that, or have only a few larger spots. Some have no size limits. The upper area of the Mossyrock Park, called the Birds-Eye area, had no size restrictions. Ours was probably the only spot with two big trees, but we were still able to get satellite below the branches.

Getting a spot in most State parks during the week is no problem.
But we have found they are usually quite full on weekends, with more local people just getting away for a few days, or camping with their friends and families.

We see many groups on weekends. 

This friendly couple was "holding down the fort" for the others in their large group, who were out on the lake.

Their group of 40 reserves the same adjacent spaces every year, months in advance. Lots of kids, lots of bikes! Unfortunately they cannot have a campfire at the center of their large circle of chairs because there a burn ban went into effect two nights ago.

So, since we are retired and camping full time in the summer, reservations are required if we want to stay for the weekends at State Parks.

We do not have a boat, nor do we fish, but we like lakes, and it really doesn't take much to amuse us. 

One evening we took a ride down a small road  had a sign that read "Dam Viewing Point".
At the end of the road was what felt like a forgotten little park. It had a moss encased information sign that told us this dam was the tallest in Washington, and that it generated 40% of Tacoma Power's electricity. 

Ah! Summer Vacation!

We also came across this group of happy looking teenagers. We noticed they were not smoking anything, and only seemed to have a 12 pack of Mountain Dew. But remembering our own youth, we wondered what they might be putting in it! 

Later in the week we stopped a roadside pull out from which we could see the other side of the dam. I thought this picture tells the story: big dam, perfect summer sunny day, boy fishing. 
There were several other people fishing, but he seemed to have the best seat.









While at Mossyrock, we took a 75 mile round trip Jeep ride to see the "other" side of Mt. Saint Helen.

East side of Mt. Saint Helen

 We viewed her from west side last year.

A farther ridgeline in the blast area

It was interesting to see the difference between the areas that have been replanted by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, vs. natural regrowth. 

Trees in the blast zone all lie in the same direction.

Before the eruption, Spirit Lake had several Boy Scout Camps and private lodges along its shores.

One man famously lost his life, when he refused to leave his lodge on the lake before the mountain blew. The white edges of the lake, in the image above, are huge floats of logs washed down since the eruption in 1980.

There is a steep trail down to the shoreline, but there is no public access to the waters of Spirit Lake now.

There was some haze from distant fires, but we were able to see Mt. Adams from the Windy Ridge Viewpoint. We could not see Mt. Hood, which can be seen on a clear day, but got a glimpse of Mt. Rainier on the drive back.

As we looked at Mt. Saint Helen, I noticed something that looked like a cloud rising from a ridge.

Using the zoom on my camera, I was able to see it better and decided it might be a volcano vent.
It was all rock, so it couldn't have been a wildfire. 

She is still active!












We did do other things while at this park, including visiting our  new friend Kay from Jojoba, where we will be camping during the Labor Day weekend, and going to the local diner for a fish fry.  

Live music was being played

We heard about the local Blueberry Festival that was held in town over the weekend, and decided to stop in. As a previous exhibitor at Art and Craft Festivals I had great sympathy for the vendors at this one. It was almost deserted. 


But, all in all it was a quiet, relaxing, long week, just living the life.

Moving on Monday.

Flooding and Detour

We had planned on driving east on I-10 out of Houston and heading toward New Orleans. But due to all the rain, I-10 was closed at the bridge over the Sabine River.  According to the Department of Transportation, the recommended detour involved going northeast to I-20 and Shreveport Louisiana, then back south. This would have been over 300 miles out of our way.

Craig did some homework the night before our departure and found a route that only took us out of our way by about 160 miles.  

The land was flooded as far as we could see. This was not even a major river crossing.

Knowing that our next park reservation was farther than we usually drive in one day, I left one night unplanned. I wasn't sure, with having to get through Houston traffic, how far we would get. For just an overnight, I like to check availability as we drive. I usually can find a Passport America park along our route.

Many of the trees are budding and showing lots of little leaves. Others, like these are still bare. 

It was a good thing we were open, because although we went over 350 miles on the first day, we did not get all the way back to our planned route. I found a small commercial park just outside of Baton Rouge.

We noticed this herd of cows standing in the middle of a flooded field and wondered why they didn't go to the higher grassy area that was within their fenced pasture. We saw several groups like this. As far as I could tell there was no feed station where they were. 

A friendly tree.

Even though our stop at Fountainbleau State Park was only for two days, we were glad to see the RV area was not flooded, and the big old trees gave us a sheltered feel.

I bet this tree would have some good stories if it could speak.

We stopped here two years ago on our way back to California from Florida. It is across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.

Our reason for a visit to New Orleans, this time, was to eat at Cochon Butcher, another of the restaurants on Craig's Yelp Top 100 list. 




Although it gets rave reviews, I found the food to be too salty and too greasy for my taste. But it was one of those places we wanted to experience. Most are unique and wonderful. This one was not.

[From Craig] One of the neat things about full-timing is you can treat a place like New Orleans as a cornucopia of things to do and places to go, or you can stop for a single restaurant if you want to.

Monday dawned cool, crisp, and sunny. A beautiful day to drive. For us, the destinations are important, but the travel between is the adventure. 

We are so lucky.  Life is good.

Big Wheels are Rolling Again!

YEAH! After two medium length drives, up a few inclines, the Alfa seems to be running very well. It's as if she can finally breathe!

We stayed in the Freightliner parking area Friday night so we could get an early start on Saturday.

Sunday's weather forecast cited 100° temperatures in Salt Lake City. Time to move north. My aim was to find a place that was not too far away, but in cooler terrain.  

I found what sounded like a delightful place listed in our Passport America book. 140 miles north, the Cub River Guest Lodge and RV park is in Idaho and is just on the edge of the mountains. We called ahead and reserved the last of their twelve RV spaces.

It was fairly easy to find and get to. Except for the eight miles on the small Cub River Road, it was not much off our chosen route. 

Personally, I liked the place very much. After several nights in the city, in a hotel and in a parking lot, I was ready for a few days at a mountain retreat such as this. Small, friendly, cool!  



What more could you want?

The answer was a clear view of the sky so Craig could get the broadcast of the Women's World Cup soccer games with our rooftop Winegard satellite dish. I have to point out that it's rare that  the dish can't see the satellites, but of course this had to be the time when it was not possible with all of the trees overhead and the sheer mountain wall that loomed over us to the south.  Most of the time, Craig would be OK with not being able to get TV for a few days, but this is Women's World Cup time, and watching the games is a major pleasure for him. 

We solved Saturday's dilemma by driving south 30 miles and going to a Wild Wings Sports bar in Logan Utah to see the game. If this happened more often he would probably invest in a secondary portable dish, but finding a sports bar is much less expensive. The hot wings were good, and their TVs were top-notch!

There are several more important matches on in the next few days, so Sunday morning we again packed up and sought a park with fewer trees. There was another park that accepts Passport America  about 40 miles away, and Craig called to ask if they had a spot with a clear view of the sky. They answered "yes".

Downata Hot Springs is a little, older park with a variety of activities. They feature a large heated pool, water slides, spa, and two large hot spring fed soaking pools. 

But when we pulled into our assigned 50 amp RV spot, we discovered there was a big tree that prevented the dish from seeing its satellites. Craig walked the rather empty RV parking area and found a spot that looked better. It was no problem getting reassigned. The new spot is only 30 amp, so we have to be a bit careful with what we have on when the AC is running. 

After a nice dinner of grilled fresh salmon, we noticed the sunset was developing. To the west of our site there is a large grass pasture with several horses. I decided to try to get a picture of both the horses and the sunset. I may have done better with our big Nikon camera, but these are what I got with my little Sony:

Looks like a good place to be a horse!

This guy was pushing his nose as far under the fence as he could get to reach some of these thistles. I pulled one and put it up on the top rail of the fence and he quickly chomped it down. 

I think he would have liked me to pull more for him, but I don't think it is right to feed other people's animals if you don't know what is good for them.

It was very cool Sunday night and we enjoyed sleeping with the windows wide open. Monday's daytime temps were in the high 70's. Sweet!

On Monday we enjoyed the hot spring waters in the early afternoon before the soccer matches.

The large pool and hot tub area attracted the children. There are two waterslides for them to use. The pool is kept at 96°.



We chose to go into the two large hot-spring soaking pools. There was one other couple in when we arrived, but soon we had both pools to ourselves.

One was 101° and the other was 105°.  The jets in the first pool were very strong and the temperature of the second was very relaxing! An added plus was they did not smell of sulfur like many hot springs do.

Life is good. Craig has his soccer,  I have hot water pools, and the Alfa is running smoothly (for now).

Questions about Memberships

As we are coming closer to being full-timers, I am starting to look into several things more seriously. One is memberships. We joined Passport America last fall and have used their discount program several times with good results. The discounts have more than paid for the cost of membership and we will continue it. 

We joined FMCA two years ago because we wanted to go to their rally and take the seminars. We also got it for a couple of other discounts, including a discount on the driving class we took. Since I didn't think we wanted to go to any more of their rallies I was going to let it lapse, but then we discovered a nice discount on a tire purchase. We will need to buy more tires sometime in the future, so I will keep up the FMCA membership.

I'm wondering which others we should join. We are most interested in finding decent parks with reasonable costs or discounts. 

I've looked at the Escapees website.

Are any of you members? $60 per year is only $5 per month, it seems reasonable enough. We plan on getting our mail in South Dakota, so the Escapees mail forwarding service is not a draw.   

We don't want to register the Alfa in Texas because we don't want to have to go to Texas for inspections once a year. (We may go to Texas, but we don't want to have to go to Texas.) 

So we would be looking at the Escapees for their parks discounts and any other benefits we don't yet know we need. If you are a SKP, which benefits do you use?

We sat thru one sales pitch for a membership program when we were in Las Vegas. We did it so we could get a few nights at the resort for free, and will do so again if we have the opportunity. But we are not ready to jump into a contract for owning a site. Besides I have heard that if you want to buy into such a thing you can get them cheaper as a resale. Much like time shares.


Are there any programs that we should be wary of?  Any rip offs?