Our objective was to find a new, cool site on the White River in the Mt. Hood Nat'l Forest. I looked at my map and found an access road that looked promising. After about an hour of brutal road, big rocks, dips, a steep incline that actually stalled my bus (had to do some creative clutching and throttle management to get up that hill, cringing all the way). Winding through beautiful old growth, dropped down the grade and knew I was getting close to the White River. Looked down to my left and said "Zane! There it is!" An AWESOME campite right along the river. Big park-like setting in the middle of nowhere that would handle a multitude of buses. Beautiful site! There was a STEEP "driveway" off the road that I could "maybe" get down, but no way would I get up. So, the road continues, there has to be access at the bottom. 20-30 yards before the camp access a HUGE old-growth tree had fallen blocking the road. S$#&! I said quietly to myself. "Zane, let's walk down and take a look." Walked to the end of the site and noticed a road leading in from the other side. Encouraging, but NO WAY was I going down that steep drive to camp there, try to exit through the other road and find it is blocked or dead-ends...we'd be totally screwed. So, we decide to backtrack out and go with plan "B". Problem...the road is 3 feet wider than the length of my bus. So, 40-50 or so back-forth-back-forth-back-forths later (with Zane outside monitoring the damage potential--glad he was there!) we finally get turned around and head out the way we came.
We went to another spot I knew of in a "campground" that was empty except for one quiet group camped a the far end. We decided, weary from our experience, that we were both ready to pull in and start camping...unstead of exploring further. So we did...two wonderful nights of Zane-daddy time. Fishing, bike riding, wading in the river, archery contests (with the new archery set I surprised him with...had to give him something material for his 8th B-day
.Noticed on my map that the road we were camped along "appeared" to be a loop to the same spot we tried to access. So, yesterday we set off on a 5 mile roundtrip bike ride. Crossed the bridge that I saw on my map, and 1/4 mile later we biked into the same spot we originally tried to access
This one is on my "must do" list, and I'll look at my calendar and try to arrange an IAC gathering. Perfect site in the wilderness for a bunch of airheads.Thank you Zane for a wonderful camping trip! You're quite the 'lil camper-dude.
