back from BC

[madrone]

We got back home yesterday from our 1-month road trip to British Columbia.  The kids were wonderful, the campgrounds were beautiful, the 2000 Bayside performed beyond expectations. We're already planning our spring road trip.

Short summary:

We left home (Boulder Creek, California) on September 20th, spent the weekend camped at a friend's farm in Dunnagin CA, and then started our push north.  We spent a night at the Mount Shasta KOA (a nice kid-friendly campground) and then moved on to Crater Lake.

The Mazama campground at Crater Lake NP is primitive but gorgeous, with large sites and none of the amenities.  We weren't together enough on this trip to fill our tank, so we dry-camped out of the campground spigot.

Before the trip, I jettisoned the outdoor stove on the TT in favor of my old tried-and-true Coleman white gas stove.  This was a good choice, and the stove got a workout at Crater Lake.  Crater Lake was cold, so we ran the furnace for a short time evenings and mornings.  We were very glad to have both the furnace and the water heater on this trip.

From Crater Lake, we headed to Cascade Locks (another KOA) and spent a few days doing the Columbia River Gorge.  The Cascade Locks campground was neither as nice nor as kid-friendly as the Mount Shasta KOA.

After Cascade Locks, we headed up to Cougar, Washington to visit Mount St. Helens.  Cougar Campground was a bit on the primitive side, run by a guy who was a bit strange, but the sites were very pleasant.

All along the way, the campground managers made an effort to give us campsites near the bathroom and playground with a fair amount of space around us.  As soon as they heard we have four kids, we got the big site in the corner with a good view of the playground. At the Cougar campground, we got a whole area of the campground to ourselves.  :-)

Next was Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula and the KOA there.  We stayed in a lot of KOAs, usually after making a tour of local campgrounds. In general, the KOAs had bigger sites, more trees, and nicer facilities than the other private campgrounds.  We saw a lot of campgrounds that were wall-to-wall sites without even picnic tables.

We spent several days in Port Angeles, doing the rainforest and hanging out in town.  We then took the pop-up on the ferry to Victoria.

We spent a week at the Living Forest Campground in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.  This is another campground that is in the running for nicest campground of the trip.  It is a well-maintained private campground with beautiful grounds, all the
amenities, and large sites with lots of trees.

The weather was cold and wet in Nanaimo, and continued to be cold and wet for most of the rest of the trip.  It was pouring rain when we popped down at Living Forest, and pouring even harder when we popped back up after taking another ferry to Vancouver. We clocked our fastest set-up and take-down times that day, well under half an hour.

In North Vancouver, we stayed in Capilano Campground, a facility with all the amenities but little to recommend it except the location.  It was the most expensive campground we stayed at, $46 (Canadian) a night.

During the first rainy move, we covered our beds with tarps, but the bedding and mattresses were still damp clear through that night. We tinkered with our rainy take-down and set-up technique for the rest of the trip. We tried removing all of the bedding before popping down.  That worked pretty well, but it adds a good fifteen minutes to the take-down and set-up.  We finally tarped both end bunks with bedding on, but made sure that both tarp and tenting protruded beyond the bunk ends when we popped down.  This prevented water from getting under the mattress and later seeping up in unexpected places.

We had a great time in Vancouver, despite record rains during our visit.  When we arrived in Canada, they were in the middle of the most severe drought in history.  It's been raining since we left, and I hear they're now talking floods and the aquifers are 90% full.

When we left Canada, we visited a cousin in Woodinville, Washington.  She fed us beef stew and butterscotch chocolate chip cookies and other home comforts.  We popped up in her driveway and hooked up to her electrical. One site on five acres with full kitchen and bathroom privileges, pretty nice.

We don't have a portapotty, although we did pack a toddler potty for kid emergencies. Within a week, we all trained our bladders to go the night.

We were going to spend the next night in Salem, Oregon, but the campgrounds in the vicinity were mere parking lots, so we ended up pushing through to the Corvallis KOA in Tangent, Oregon.  Another pleasant campground run by nice folk.  We had our first campfire since we entered the droughtlands there.  It was cold, though, and there was frost on the ground next morning.

We stayed at the KOA in Grant's Pass after that.  The lady who runs that campground likes kids a lot, and had just installed a new playground.  She also had a nice collection of frozen food in the store there.

One of our best pieces of campground equipment were our outside chairs.  We used them everywhere, and even set up a few in the pop-up some nights.  The roll-up table stayed in its bag most of the trip.  We usually didn't need it, and it was kind of a pain to set up.

We were in bear country much of the trip, so I didn't like to do food prep inside the trailer.  I did a lot of cooking in the rain (as a bonus, the rain provided a prewash cycle for the dishes) on my white gas stove.  It worked great.  I also packed an electric tea kettle which was quite useful.  On getaway days, we could have tea and cocoa to sip as we started down the road.

We ate out at least once most days.  Campground cookery for six in the rain was quite a challenge, and we had quite a few long driving days in our 3600 mile road trip.

The next stop was Mystical Forest Campground in Klamath, California. That's in Del Norte County in the heart of redwood country.  We spent three nights there, visiting the redwoods at Jedediah Smith and Prairie Creek State Parks.  The campground was so-so, but the old growth forests in that area are well worth the trip.

We next had our longest driving day, 9 hours, from Klamath to Cloverdale.  The Cloverdale KOA is a real gem, especially if you have kids.  They have a pond with paddleboats, a great playground, and all sorts of other amenities.  Nice sites, too, spread out in oak woodlands.

We got home about 5pm yesterday, having clocked 3600 miles over 28 days.

[slowpez]

Sounds like a great trip.  I'm jealous.:p

[slowpez]

I have no idea what happened to my first reply but I think your trip sounds great.  Glad to hear you had a great time.  I'm jealous. :p

[cb]

Oh, heck!  I thought BC meant Baja California.  We're supposed to be leaving tomorrow and I'm not ready!  Was looking for hints, as we've never dragged the PUP along before.

[vjm1639]

3600 miles...WOW....I can't imagine!  We were exhausted after a 6 hour drive coming home from vacation not long ago!  LOL...Sounds like you had a marvelous trip!

[tlhdoc]

It sounds like you had a good trip.  Welcome back.