The Hot Spring Cruise: Back to the Sea

May 19 2012 - Leaving Boise, the course was set for the northern route, passing on a return to Crystal Crane Hot Springs and Florence - opting instead for faster travel on Hwy 84, a visit to Maryhill museum, and the possibility of obtaining a spring chinook. We considered a stopover at Hot Lake RV Park adjacent to Hot Lake Hot Springs. However the toll of a days drive weighed us down by the time we made Baker City and the offer of shade trees at the Mountain View RV Park drew us to a stop. The park looked kind of grim as we entered a triple row of live-ins, then narrowed to a set of old western themed buildings where the office was located, and then opened up to an inner park for transients with lots of shade trees and grass. It was very pleasant. The office even had some materials for construction of a perch for Jack. He has had difficulty finding a proper berth in the Land Yacht as he is used to when traveling in the Element. A nice space is available between the drivers door and left arm rest. A platform was built out of finished lathe pieces where Jack has finally found his place. Smokie Joe cooked up a rack of lamb. The next morning we had breakfast at the Inland Cafe, a place that impressed us when we stopped with Jim and Abbie on the Burgdorf trip. They had a low carb option - it was very good. Our departure was complicated by an unfastening of the door step, which was gratefully repaired at Grumpys in short order. Wednesday's drive was long, hot and windy as we approached the Colombia River. We pondered various places to overnight and settled on Maryhill State Park. That got us near the museum and made reaching the ocean possible - we decided on Depoe Bay as our sea side destination - with one more overnight. Maryhill Park was beautifully laid out and landscaped and very spacious with good, clean functional facilities. In the morning, the museum was once again a stunning reminder of the age of road building up the Colombia and the fascinating life of Sam Hill. With what was left of the day we fought greater wind than Wednesday traveling further west to Troutdale. On the way we stopped at Cascade Locks and scored a fresh, today's catch, spring chinook. We overnighted at the unremarkable Sandy River RV Park in Troutdale where we determined a pan we bought for the Smokie Joe failed at its imagined purpose. It might have been dinner ruined - were it not for the unsurpassed quality of spring chinook shining through. Friday morning we set sail for Depoe Bay. We passed by the Sea and Sand RV Park, where we had a reservation for two, maybe three days, and drove into Depoe Bay. We saw a little more of the town than we did on our trip south two weeks before, spent an hour at a roadside one-mans-junk-another-mans-treasure store, had a great lunch at a cliffside restaurant and settled in to the park. The ocean front part of the park is tiered lanes along a sloped bank with back-in spaces so everybody has a direct view of the Pacific Ocean, as I have right now. Sweet.