Yesterday afternoon we left Eugene Camping World and headed out to our next Boondockers Welcome site in Corvallis. It was hot needless to say. Not sure what the final temp was but it is likely going to be hotter today and tomorrow, something the wife sure is not happy about. It is not too bad of a place. The gentleman that hosts uses the location for work, I think he hosts people because he likes sticking it to the new houses. Seems they are part of the city while he land is technically county and he gets to do things they are unable to do because he is in the county and they are in the city. Got to love it. Still getting the RV into the spot required the wife to pull off some really tight turns. I have to give it to her, she can do things, that I certainly would not be able to do. If our host had not had this one trailer where he did and that was open spot, then the whole thing would have been simple.

Today, I think the wife is going to get some groceries and gas for the truck (we should have filled up the truck earlier yesterday).

I did email the US Forest Service about the Sno Park Closures. They emailed me back in under 6 hours with this response.

«< Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.

It is the Sno-Park that is temporarily closed for the season, but you may camp in your RV. Please be aware that no campfires are allowed. Propane cook stoves with an on/off valve is fine.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Thank you «<

So that is good news. If we decide to back east across the Cascades then we will have places to go to.

Late July 23, we moved on to the next Rest Stop. This one was not quite what we expected on the northbound side. We ended up moving over the southbound side. Seems there was a derelict Class C that someone was living out of. It smelled pretty bad, and we would have had to park right next to it, so we moved on.

July 24, we moved over street that has 4 Spirits Distillery and went to the Block 15 Brewery there for snack and some beers. We stay there the night and did a lot of house keeping Sunday. Finally Sunday night we moved on back to the Peoria Park to stay for night.

Later today, we will be back at Eugene Camping World for the night to fill up and dump, and spend the night before we finally move on tomorrow afternoon to our Boondockers Welcome site.

Note, it is getting hot again.

Well we moved on from Camping World to a Rest Stop North of Eugene for the night. It's pretty busy but at least we are not going to be hassled here. Right now the plan is to do two more Rest Stop nights at different ones and then back to Camping World late Sunday evening and stay there until Tuesday afternoon/evening. That will bring us to our scheduled Boondockers Welcome location. I have to say this area of Oregon has been harder for us to find places to be.

It's been a busy few days. It was hard to find a place to be even for day but on the 19th we finally found a place called the Peoria Park. It was a little rundown roadside park with a boat ramp. We arrived, looked around and found no signs that forbid anything, so we decided to chance it. We were not bothered by anyone the entire two days that we stayed there. Seems it used as a rest stop for a variety of activities. We even had someone some people sleeping in their truck one night. The only bad thing about it was the road noise, since it's the park is right off the road, the parking was right next to the road. In the morning, It seemed like you parked the middle of the road. Still with no one bothering us, we will likely be back for a least a day.

Last night we came back to Eugene Camping World to dump, get water, and rest for the night. I think after I work today, we will head up to one of the rest stops for the evening. Although depending on how the wife feels we might just stay here another night? It is hard to say because we are trying to not abuse any place that is letting us stay overnight. we still have nights until our schedule Boondockers Welcome stop. I have to say finding places to stay along the I-5 in Oregon has been the hardest. We certainly had better luck east of the Cascades. At least there ares some Snow Parks, you can RV camp during the months of April thru October without permit.

Well we stayed at the Ray Benson Sno-Park until Friday afternoon. We sort of picked the wrong spot to be at while there. Seems that place is popular with ATV people. They were nice enough but we parked near the kid's loop, so we had a little more traffic than we would have liked.

We ended up at the Eugene Camping World for the night. They had a free dump (and free water). There were several others doing the same. We will likely be back there again. So we left the morning of July 17th to find a place to stay for the week.

We decided to check out a place we found on iOverlander. The drive there was very pretty. The first spot was not something we wanted to try so we moved on to the next spot. It was a good pull out and after figuring the best location to part, we did and settled in for the night. It went well until Sunday afternoon, when someone came from a private road and decided to tell us that we could not camp there. We sort of found this odd because other people had use that private road did not bother to stop and tell us we couldn't be there. As a matter of fact a few people just sort of waved at us. In the end, we decided to not press the matter and look for alternatives.

We decided to use another overnight we found on iOverlander. Seems a business 4 Spirits Distillery allows an overnight. We called and checked and they were more than happy to let us street park overnight. So we arrived late afternoon, and had drinks and food there until they were almost closing. Everyone there was very nice and they were super impressed with the wife's ability to turn the RV around and then back it into a spot. She got at least three comments of her impressive backing up and turning ability.

Today, we will move on and find a different spot for me to work at in the afternoon and then another overnight spot. We have set location to be at next week. So until then, we will be going around to different overnight spots.

Hot is the best way to describe the last few days. As many will know it has been unseasonably warm in central Oregon. With high in the low 90's, we made a decision late yesterday to leave to try to find cooler weather once again. It also helped that there was a fire that they started fighting two days ago just north of Sisters, OR, which was the town we were near.

So last night around 9pm, we pulled into Ray Benson Sno-Park. Which so far, I think is the largest Sno-Park we have seen in Oregon. I have to say the ability to use the Sno-Parks without permit in the summer for RV camping has been a real lifesaver for us. They have allowed us to do a few quick overnight or over-the-weekend stops easily.

I hope the wife is feeling better when she gets up this morning. She was just not feeling well. I think she over did yesterday with the heat, the smoke/haze, and not eating much. At least I hope that is all it was. I will find out more when she gets up later this morning.

It has been quite a week, mostly without cell service. We are still talking about getting a backup hotspot, but the earliest that will happen is next Month. At least we are currently in a good spot for cell and I can work.

We left the location La Pine on Friday July 2, our Boondockers Welcome host were great. I do no think we would have survived the week without the 30amp power they provided us for free. The RV AC got a bit of work out because of the heat. After we left we headed to La Pine State Park to dump the grey and black tanks. It was a little further than we thought but it was worth it in the end.

After dumping, we proceeded to the Mount Bachelor area. We looked at a few different spot along the way. While I was going to be on vacation, it would have still been nice to find a place that had cell signal. It really was not to be. With it being July 4th weekend, a lot of places were full. One place we went to that was listed as a campsite on Free Campsites, when we got there had signs no camping and we did not see any of the campsites that people said were there anyways. We stopped at three different Sno-Parks as well. Out of those only one of them had cell signal for T-mobile. We did not stay at that location. There was quite a few people there and the treeline was basically a bunch of young trees, so it was a little depressing. We ended up at one down the road, the Swampy Lakes Sno-Park.

On July 3, we decided to scout around the area. So we detached and took the truck around to several roads we wanted to explore. Seems the number of free camping spots has really gone down. some of the locations we tried to go were either blocked off or marked as no motorized traffic (which is sort of odd because it clearly had heavy usage from vehicles. After spending most of the afternoon looking, we find a new spot at 43.98935,-121.43957 to go move the RV.

We spent July 4 through the July 6 at that spot. On July 7, we decided to move on and find a place near Sisters that the wife had scouted on an earlier trip. We made a new stop at the La Pine State Park to dump again and then made some stops to resupply before heading there. It took us a while but we did finally find a spot about 830pm (thankfully the sunsets at 930pm right now) at 44.26595,-121.53693

Well it has certainly been a while since my last post. The quick reason is Internet has been spotty for work this week. The long reason follows.

On June 25, we went up towards Paulina Lake here in Oregon. It is funny but unlike the areas around Flagstaff, there were not many camping sites in the National Forest. We ended up at the 10 Mile Snow-Park, where we just parked the camper in the shade all weekend. It was pretty hot all weekend too. Heck it has been unusually hot here in the Northwest period. They are seeing 95+ weather right now. It is cool in the morning and late night but from 1pm to 7pm, it's pretty hot. Needless to say we stayed here because we needed to. We didn't get any TV signal but we surprisingly found enough cell signal that we were able to watch Netflix one night.

On Sunday June 27, We moved to out next Boondockers Welcome location in La Pine, Oregon. It a nice place with nice folks. They supply water and 30 Amp electrical, which was good because we needed to finally run the AC in the RV. From that perspective, it has been the best choice of locations so far. Where things fall down has been the Cell Signal side of the house. To get some work done, I found a location outside on the property where I can get just enough signal to work in the morning, in the afternoon I have been driving into town to go the library to work. The library does have WiFi but I found that the hotspot works better for what I do. Still at the campsite, spotty coverage. Which has been driving the wife crazy. We are still undecided on which provider to get the backup hotspot from. If Verizon was not so pricey, it would be an easy choice.

My work location in La Pine.

<img src='nomadimages/la_pine_workspot.png'>

At any rate, we will be leaving tomorrow, and heading out towards cooler weather if we can find it. I've taken some days off that when combined with the July 4th holiday means I do not have to go back to work until Thursday July 8th. And that means that We can go places that we do not need Internet when we get there(although I hope at at least one or two places do have some).