September 01, 2003
Home Away From Home
We arrived at the campground at about 8:00 after struggling through Labor Day traffic for the last 5.5 hours, with just enough light left to set up our tent and get a few other things out. The tent, which looked very big when we set it up in the living room, looked quite small in the campsite. Especially compared to other tents in surrounding campsites! It served us well, though, and was plenty big enough for the three of us.
We bought firewood, and tried to light a fire that night, but even using a great deal of firestarter, we were unable to convince any of it to burn. Instead, we heated up some water on the camp stove, and got our hot chocolate in spite of the uncooperative firewood. I was amused when the ranger came around and told us that there were no open flames allowed, and we'd need to put out the candle that was on the picnic table. Dude, we're incapable of getting anything to burn! We're lucky the candle has lasted this long! I suppose it's karmic justice from all the times I refused to build the fire at home, claiming that I didn't know how, and making my brother do it instead.
The park we stayed at, Milo McIver State Park, is located along the Barlow Road, the first overland road into the Willamette Valley. Because of this, many very interesting old houses are located along the road to the park. I mostly restrained myself from pulling off the road and scaring residents by taking pictures of their amazing houses, although I admit that this was due more to a lack of good places to pull off the road rather than consideration for the privacy of the owners of the houses.
A church near the campground.
I didn't know that we would be camping in the middle of Christmas tree land. Many Christmas tree farms occupied the surrounding area. The trees were all lined up neatly in rows, and often times the orderly fields were surrounded by huge evergreens, maybe encouraging the littler trees to grow!
Saturday morning, we walked down to the Clackamas River, where we encountered two men who were snorkeling for glasses. Evidently one of them had been kayaking there the day before, and had flipped and lost his glasses. They headed upstream from us with a length of rope and a snorkel mask, and while I'm not sure if they ever found the glasses, we didn't see them being washed helplessly downstream either. So it could have been worse.
Also providing us with entertainment were two kayakers. One was obviously more experienced than the other, and for a while the less experienced one was swimming down the river, holding onto his kayak. Much shouting back and forth ensued. In the middle of the river, they were having a hard time hearing each other, but we could hear them both quite well. They stood up on a piece of land in the middle of the river and dumped out huge amounts of water from their kayaks.
The Clackamas River from a viewpoint at the park.
Saturday afternoon, we drove up to Estacada and visited the Bonne Lure State Park, which was really a parking lot next to Eagle Creek. It was a good place for the girls to play in the water, and passed the time I eavesdropping on the people next to us who had a herd of very cute very little blonde boys with them. For a while, they were having a heated debate about how gross it was to eat cold hot dogs. Some were firmly in the camp of it not being gross at all, others thought it was disgusting under any circumstances, and another seemed to be in the middle, but said she hadn't eaten since yesterday morning and was going to have one.
We also made a quick stop at Foster Farm, the site of one of the original settler's houses. The farm was evidently the first real sign of civilization in a long time, on the Oregon Trail, and the farm's website says, "Every overlander who kept a diary on the trek over the Barlow Road to Oregon City wrote of Fosters farm." We got there just a few minutes before closing, but were able to walk through the house and the barn, which both had lots of period items.
Because it was Labor Day Weekend, the campground was full, although I was surprised on Saturday morning when there was no wait for the showers. It seemed like the campsite next to us had enough people all by itself to provide a wait of at least ten to fifteen minutes. They were charming neighbors, who loudly complained about other loud campers, and shouted endearing phrases such as, "You both be quiet afore I knock you on the head with this stick." At least one of them was constantly burping throughout the weekend too. Ahhh... the great outdoors.
Saturday was capped off by a session with a visiting astronomer, who told us about all kinds of constellations and how the stars moved throughout the night, and other very interesting nighttime sky facts. One guy in the crowd was really impressed with how light that we see now left the star many years ago. He kept asking about it over and over! We were able to see the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, the North Star, and several other constellations that I have since forgotten. We also saw Mars, which was neat, but the other things he talked about were more interesting. He said that the best time to see satellites was the hour or two after sunset, because the angle of the sun is still close enough that the light will reflect off of the satellite. Later, there's nothing to reflect off of them, so they're not visible. We went up to the star-viewing field again Sunday night, and managed to find Vega and the North Star again.
Monday morning we managed to fit everything back in the car, which I had been slightly concerned about. We were packed in pretty tight going down, and things always seem to expand. We got everything all ready to go while our dear neighbors were still rousting members of their group out of bed. Burping guy had been up for a while, though!
Here the girls show their class by posing doing the first thing they thought of to do when they saw this memorial site -- sticking their fingers up the sculptured nose. More pictures of the weekend are here.