Trip Report - 1200 miles in the NW again...
This Christmas we decided, rather suddenly, to make the ~600 mile trip down to southern Oregon to see Mom and my Step Dad.
Before leaving I stuck one of my Christmas presents on the spare tire up front and we were ready to travel!
If you've followed the other thread I recently posted you know there was some question as to whether or not we could 'camp' (sleep really) in our camper in front of their home but it turned out that WE COULD and were just fine doing so.
This was a good thing since the driveway drops more than 18 inches in 25 feet and there was no way we could have leveled the camper in it.
Even with 3" of blocks under the front tires we slept downhill but we weren't uncomfortable. It was about 1 1/2" of downhill grade still but not bad.
We also discovered that the dehumidifier I'd bought wasn't worth the $40 as it would only remove about 1 teaspoon of water per day (maybe 2 at most). As such we had to constantly dry things out during the day. At night we didn't leave a window open as it was cold and I didn't want to waste a lot of propane though we had plugged into Mom's so at least there was no concern about power (battery's running furnace all night).
Overall though, we did well and only used one LP tank down to about 17% in an entire week.
After spending 4 days with Mom and Dad we headed North to Hillsboro where my sister lives. We wanted to travel when the weather was warm as we'd had some snowy weather and didn't really want to drive potentially hundreds of miles in bad weather.
My sister is a popular jazz artist in the Portland area and had a gig in Camas (seen here) so after visiting her in Hillsboro we risked the insane evening traffic on HWY26 and
headed to Camas.
We had a great time there and spent the night in her pianists driveway after a few drinks :)
We had to level there too but were sleeping uphill afterwards ;)
Finally, we headed home but first cross 'The Bridge of the Gods' in Cascade Locks (after passing another AF owner headed West on HWY14) and had breakfast on the Oregon side.
Breakfast was great, the view nice despite the weather and we were back on the Interstate to hit 65MPH and head home.
The drive home was WINDY and we were pushed around a fair but but frankly, the truck setup handles it rather well and there were no white knuckles.
All in all we drove just about 1200 miles (maybe it was more but I'd have to go check) and have now put on over 5000 miles on the truck with this camper. We're VERY happy, stayed warm and comfy and are looking forward to our next trip.
One comment though, is that the nearest dump station is about 15 miles away (state rest area). There may be one closer, I just haven't found it yet, but it does seem to be a pain to have to drive that far though it was open and we were able to dump the tanks, drain the fresh and winterize the camper again in a short period of time :)
Hope everyone has a great New Years! and had a wonderful Christmas.
