The Great NorthWest Coast Adventure

Got a wild idea to take a two-week journey and visit the Pacific Northwest — specifically the Seattle and Portland area.  We’ve been talking about taking a visit out there for the last few years. And now that we’ve got the Pod, why not try to “camp-it out”.  No hotel expense. We can take the dogs with us, so no kennel fees.  Should save us money.  (Well….  we did probably spend less than if we had stayed in hotels for 14 days, but we did spend a good deal on gas, AND, of course,  we found new reasons to buy more things to keep us organized in the small Pod.)

The first big mod we made before this trip, was to remove the left hand-section of the dinette area.  We sleep in the oversized bunks — full size mattress vs. twin size. We originally thought we could make the dinette area bed the dog bed area. We tried that last year. Wouldn’t you know it, the dogs didn’t really want to sleep there.  Reba and Cody would get up there for periods of time, Bailey would never get up there. I guess we did too good of a job training them to stay off the couch in the house. They preferred the floor.  So, we needed more floor space — simple as that.  Also,  Brinda wanted more counter space and thought how cool it would be to have a flip up sort of table coming off the side of the sink cabinet and into the space where the left side of the dinette was.

This dinette change gave Mike the brilliant idea to build a sort of box for storage in the corner of the dinette area.  Yay! It’s such easy access and another great hard surface to put stuff.  I like to put a serving tray there with all of our drinking glasses and our pitcher of tea.

All of the dinette changing/dog accommodating gave Brinda cause to re-upholster the dinette cushions again — the length on the back cushion would have to be cut. Since the dogs seem to have little interest in getting up there, Brinda changed the material and added a whole slew of pillows.

The west coast trip started with a swing through Montana and Idaho, stopping for a couple of days in Spokane.  Then it was on to the Seattle area, around the sound and then down to Portland as the half way point.  Then we swung back up to the Washington side of the Columbia, back to Spokane and home.  We stayed no more than 2 nights at any one park, mostly because I waited so long to reserve campsites that was all that was available.  Fortunately, we had a nice long stay at Cape Disappointment on the Columbia River.  Well worth it.  Here’s a list of the places we stayed.

• Billings, MT KOA
• Riverside 9 Mile State Park, Spokane, Washington
• Dash Point State Park, Washington
• Potlatch State Park, Washington
• L.L. Stub Stewart Memorial State Park, Oregon
• Cape Disappointment State Park, Washington

L.L. Stub Stewart is a short ways west of Portland, half way to the coast.  And the coast was absolutely beautiful.  We took the dogs there and they were welcome off leash where they could swim in a white-sand beach inlet without fear of sharp toothed predators.  Portland was nice too but it was so hot we didn’t visit there much.

Potlatch wasn’t that nice – the campsites were too close and our neighbors had a smokey fire going 24/7 that blew always in our direction.  I think if you camped there on an off-time, you would enjoy it more as there was definitely an abundance of shade. But we drove to Bremerton and took a ferry across to Seattle to do some sight-seeing.   The only problem was we forgot the dog leashes.  Brinda pulled a McGyver and made leashes from a crossbody purse strap and a laptop case strap.  Don’t remember what the third leash came from, but I’m sure it was just as weird.  The dogs didn’t care, as you might expect.

There were many adventures on this trip but I’ll summarize by simply saying that Dash Point, L.L. Stub Stewart and Cape Disappointment are well worth the trip.  The others were nice but not particularly memorable.  And the KOA in Billings is the original KOA, and it’s quite nice as far as KOAs go.  Unfortunately it was packed on the return trip due to the State Games of Montana.  We got one of the last overflow spots.

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