We just got back from our 2 1/2 week trip to Oregon from Colorado. The primary purpose was a float trip on the wilderness section of the Rogue River. But we decided the
Bigfoot would be a good rolling hotel room enroute. A highlight of the road trip over was Highway 140 starting in northern Nevada and ending just north of Medford, OR. The transition from high desert to massive conifers was magnificent. We spent one night at a place called Junipers Reservoir RV Resort. This place is on a working cattle ranch way off the highway and features large open space around the sites with deer hanging around.
We spent one night at a small park along the river near Grants Pass before launching the raft trip. Since we were planning to be on the river for a week, we then had to find storage for the trailer. Bridgeview RV park in the town of Rogue River only charged me $10 to store the
Bigfoot for 7 days in their secured storage lot.
Next day we met our friends from Arizona, California and western Colorado and got our rafts in the water. We spent seven days floating about 40 miles. There were large, challenging rapids, including Rainey Falls and Blossom Bar, but we made it through everything nicely. At one point we rigged up a z-rig rope system to pull a raft off a rock for a guy from a different group. The weather was perfect, we never saw a
cloud in a week. We saw lots of wildlife, including deer, bald eagles and even 5 bears. So we spent 7 nights in our tent, which is the way camping is supposed to be. But we had ice chests with fresh food and cold beer, so we were not really in survival mode. Just had to make sure the bears didn't get into our stuff. We paid for shuttle service near the put-in, so our trucks were waiting at the take-out on the last day of the float. At that point the raft was deflated and stuffed back into the truck for the trip home.
We retrieved the trailer and went back into RVing mode. We drove over to Gold Beach so we could see where the Rogue River flows into the Pacific. We found this little RV Park called Irelands Oceanview that was only a couple of minutes walk to the beach. We could hear the surf pounding from the trailer. We had left a temperture of 85 degrees at Grants Pass and it was 62 at Gold Beach. What a relief! We continued on up the coast a hundred miles or so along the 101. We stopped and explored a little in Bandon. May have to try to make that
rally over there some year. We finally turned east and headed toward Eugene/Springfield and then followed the Mackenzie River upstream a long way on Hwy 126. We spent a night in Prineville - love those Ponderosa pines. Next day we visited the new visitor center and museum at John Day Fossil Beds. Fantastic. We eventually came to Vale on the east boundary before crossing into Idaho and bustling Boise. We made a nice side trip to see Shoshone Falls on the Snake River.
It was still two days to get home from there which should have been uneventful. But the trailer blew a tire along Interstate 80 between Rock Springs and Rawlins, Wyoming. Not fun changing a tire while large diesel trucks are blasting by inches away. The flat tire was shredded, but my spare was in perfect condition to roll on. This was Saturday about 6 pm, so there would be no way to buy another spare tire until Monday. I had two extra spares in the garage at home, anyway. We just decided to keep on going all day Sunday and try making the last 400 miles without a spare. That worked, there were no more flats.
We have been recovering from the trip by cleaning and drying all the river equipment, followed by scrubbing off 3000 miles of bugs from the trailer. Too many toys on one trip maybe.