We worked this morning for a while in Spokane and then hit the road. We figured we'd decide while we were on the road how far we wanted to go — whether we wanted to drive all the way home (just under 6 hours) or if we wanted to stop for one more night somewhere in the Columbia River Gorge and head home in the morning. We opted for one more night on the road. This gives us a chance to (a) have one more night on the road, and who wouldn't want that? and (b) get into town in the morning, giving us daylight and lots of time to unpack, clean up the Airstream, get home, unpack again…etc. You get the picture.
We are at Maryhill State Park, on the Washington side of the Columbia River.
Not a bad view! This place would be a fabulous spot for us to bring the Hobie! It's not too far from home, the wind is famously windy, and there's a great spot to beach the boat in front of the riverside campsites.
Ah, the benefits of camping in the winter. I bet this place is packed in the summer!
We have good AT&T service here (probably good Verizon too, but we haven't checked). There's only one other camper in the campground, and it's really beautiful here.
Tonight for dinner, I made us some grass-fed beef burgers (seasoned with fresh jalapeno, smoked paprika, and garlic), served open-faced on a sweet potato pancake topped with applewood smoked bacon, blue cheese, spinach and a slice of tomato. Yum!!
We opened a bottle of champagne to toast our last night on the road (I know, last night for what? three weeks or so? total bummer, huh?)
I think Kevin's going to fly the hexacopter in the morning to get some aerial shots of this gorgeous place.
It's been amazing to explore the country as we have been for the past four months, but it's also fun to return to the Pacific Northwest for a bit.
We stopped to get gas somewhere just after entering Oregon and next door there was a do-it-yourself car wash with big bays so we decided to get the top layer of grime off of the Airstream. I wish you could see how incredibly dirty it is in this photo:
It's amazing how dirty an Airstream can look when you get close, but how perfectly shiny and lovely it looks when you back up a bit. We'll do the full detail wax job when we get back to town but for now, the aluminum is quite a bit shinier (even close up!) than it was a few hours ago.
My heart was kind of in my throat about you pulling in and parking the Airstream. Until I saw it is for only 3 weeks ha ha!
btw that burger sounded sooooo gooood. no pics eh…dang. Is that your recipe cuz it really made me hungry.
Anna-Marie: I always seem to get in a total funk the last day or two of a trip as we’re heading home. I think we both do a little bit…but it’s for the holidays this time and we have family and friends coming to hang out….so that’ll be fun! Also, we keep asking each other “Okay where do you wanna go next?” which helps keep the “thing to look forward to” going. 🙂
I didn’t take photos of the burger…and it was supposed to have two sweet potato cake “bun” halves, but I dropped one on the floor as I was pulling it out of the pan, so we did open-faced and kept one for breakfast in the morning. I got the recipe from a book called Practical Paleo, and then just added blue cheese….because we do “Paleo-ish” …
🙂
Fun trip! Thank you.