Saturday, June 19, 2021

Shakedown Cruise: Getting there

 


We bought a new 17’ Imagine trailer with heated, vibrating recliners instead of a dinette and a murphy bed for space saving. Dave picked it up on Wed June 9th, and we got all the stuff moved in from the old trailer on Saturday. I went to work and took a Pilates class on Monday, and then we packed up on Tuesday morning. Our plan had been to be ready to go at 1:30, but a combination of slow service at Ridgewalker (back to counter service, good; many low alcohol, lower ibu beers on tap, also good, but the food is meh or meh- minus), not being completely in the groove of how to hitch up, and having to wait out drenching rainstorms meant we left later, which meant that it was rush hour pretty much all the way through Portland. Also drenching rainstorms while we were driving, which wasn’t a lot of fun for Dave. Fortunately it wasn’t pouring when we got to the campground, and we were able to get set up fairly easily, except for the cool new leveling block slipping on the wet pavement.

Ainsworth state park is lovely; green and leafy with just one big loop, at the foot of some amazing basalt peaks. And the trailer is lovely too – although it’s smaller (by 7 feet) than our old trailer it feels much more spacious and has more comfortable places to sit – and an astonishing amount of storage space. What Ainsworth doesn’t have, even though it’s barely off of I-84, is cell signal… mostly. Sometimes if you put your phone down you get some. We didn’t really plan for that and hadn’t done a lot of research about local attractions, which turned out to be a bad thing because even though there are many wonderful hiking trails, none of the many, many signboards have trail maps. None. We went for a quick walk through the campground (so many information boards… ) and then headed out for dinner in Cascade Locks, where both of the brewpubs are closed on Tuesday. 

BotG and a weather preview
We decided to head to Stevenson, WA for dinner, which is only 3 miles or so from Cascade Locks. It may be close by, but it's across the Bridge of the Gods, one of the world’s scariest interstate bridges. It’s barely two lanes wide and carries heavy traffic from Oregon to Washington and vice versa. It’s also a toll road, $2 each way. The taphouse there had good beer (walking man brewery Schwarzbier) and good food.  We sat at a counter that looked out the front window, and watched the rain come and go across the valley. It was fascination to watch it slowly hide more and more of the scenery, even though we’d rather it had been not raining. I might note here that it’s been raining hard on and off for the past week or so, but the forecast from Wed on was for sun, sun, and more sun.

We got safely back across the bridge without paying (the toll taker was on break) and back to our trailer palace, where Dave connected by Bluetooth to the sound system and we listened to tunes in our recliner, reading or knitting. It ended up being kind of a stressful day, and we were glad to turn in. The bed is quite comfy, and aside from being awakened several times by trains going by (long, long, long trains, carrying cheaply made goods from the East to the East coast) we slept very well.

I still have the $2 from the return trip in the outside pocket of my purse, just in case we need to take a quick trip to Washington.

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