June 19, 2009 – Cooper Lake, Washington

Last week we set out to search for a camping spot that was fairly close to home and that had a place to do some fly fishing.  Our son-in-law, Brett, is an avid sportsman and fly fisherman, and is determined to teach Mike how to use a fly rod.  Brett had talked to us about Cooper Lake, so we thought we would check it out for a future adventure.

We stopped to check out several other campgrounds along the way.  Just in case we needed something a little closer to home.  We drove through Denny Creek Campground and Lake Easton State Park.  We both really liked these campgrounds.  That is a plus.  You must understand that Mike and I (Pam) have very different ideas about camping and campgrounds.

I like to stay fairly close to civilization, as I always imagine the worst, like one of us having some kind of medical emergency.  I also would like our daughter and son-in-law to accompany us.  They have a one-year old daughter, who is just learning to walk and has trouble sleeping at night at home.  I worry that my daughter won’t want to go camping if our campsite is too far from home.  And of course, what if the baby has a medical emergency (You can tell I am lots of fun to take camping!).  I could go on, but you probably get the point: I’m really more of a “glamper“ than a “camper”.

Mike, on the other hand, has no such worries.  The farther away from civilization, the more he likes it.  And I would imagine that our son-in-law, being from Montana, has a similar philosophy.  I don’t really know my daughter’s preference, but given the fact that she is my daughter, I am guessing that she is more like me.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to go camping, that is if I can take a shower, wash and curl my hair, and feel safe.  But I know I am a pain to take camping. . . so why doesn’t the man just get me a motorhome!!!

Denny Creek Campground was more rustic, but it was a well-maintained campground.  Lake Easton had camping sites with or without utilities.  Of course, I liked the utility sites (then I don’t have to plug a converter into the Jeep to use my curling iron).  I could be in camping heaven here, even in a tent!  There is a beach and the place is close to home.  

I really have no need to continue the journey to Cooper Lake to find a campground, this will do.  But Mike insists we continue the journey.

We had lunch in a city park in Roslyn, Washington, a charming little town with lots of small inns.  The next town on the map was Ronald, Washington. Most of the rest of the trip, our travels take us right alongside the Cle Elum River. It was a gorgeous drive.

There were several more campgrounds along the way to Cooper Lake.  We didn’t stop and check any of them out, until we were on our way back.

If you haven’t been to Cooper Lake, you have to go, if for no other reason than to see the view from the Cooper River Bridge looking back upstream to Cooper Lake.  The view is awesome.  It is like looking at a postcard.  That view alone made the drive worthwhile.

We continue our trek to check out the Owhi Campground and the boat ramp.  The campground is “walk-in” only.  It doesn’t look like a very long walk to the lake, but if you decide to use this campground, keep in mind that you will have to carry your gear to your campsite.  The lake is beautiful.

But our journey is not over.  Mike, who loves to drive, doesn’t feel like he has gone for a ride unless he drives over 400 miles, so we can’t turn around and go home yet.  We journey on to Tuquala Lake (sometimes spelled Tucquala – and this lake is also called “Fish Lake”) and find the end of the road at the Trailhead to Deception Pass. There were lots of “no fee” camping areas along the way.

On our way back, we stopped and checked out some of the “fee area” campgrounds.  There was Wish Poosh Campground and Salmon La Sac Campground.  I think the Salmon La Sac campground was our favorite.  It was one of the best maintained campgrounds we have seen so far.  However, we are still undecided about where the next family camping outing will be (I am still leaning towards the one close to home with electricity!).

Besides the picture taken from the Cooper River Bridge, my next favorite photograph taken on the trip is the one of the “water log”.

See all of our pictures from this trip>

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Rainier Trip – June 12, 2009

We are a little behind in getting this article to press.  Another week has already past, and we have already made another two trips.

Our trip was to Rainier was interesting.  One thing we noted was how few campgrounds there were in the park itself.  And the few campgrounds that we did see outside of the park were still closed.  Their closure did not appear to be because of snow.

In the state of Washington, it appears that there is a focus on providing recreation for hikers.  Trailheads abound.  There is usually plenty of off-road parking provided at the numerous trailheads.  We were surprised that there wasn’t more  emphasis on campers. Many of the campgrounds we have seen have not been very well maintained.  We found the same thing on our North Cascades trip last week.

We saw lots of beautiful country.  Having recently arrived in Washington from Arizona, we are constantly amazed by the vast resources of Washington.  There are so many trees and so much water here, both of which are in such short supply in Arizona.

On most of our trips we have been amazed at how little wildlife we see.  However, on  this trip we saw a herd of elk just outside of the park.  Because of distance and dense brush, we were only able to take pictures of a few of the cows that had strayed from the herd.

Because we didn’t get to check out any campgrounds, because they were all closed. Our turn around point was Yakima.   The most memorable part of the trip was the last part.  Perhaps that is because I am trying to write this article two weeks after the fact.  And it is also very possible that the last part of the trip was so emotionally charged that it just overshadows the rest of the trip.

On our way home, we were going west on Highway 90.  We took a small side trip to have a look at Kachess Lake.  It was gorgeous, and we took some beautiful pictures.  Then we got back on the freeway.  Something you should know about us (Michael) is that whenever we can, we prefer to get off of the freeway and take side roads.  So when we saw what looked like a side road that would take us around the backside of Keechelus Lake, we took it.  It looked like we could go over Stampede Pass and come out on the west side of the lake.  One problem, when we got there the pass was closed with mounds of snow.

We backtracked and thought we saw another road that would get us around the lake.  We found NFD 5480 on the map.  It looked like it went right by the shore of the lake.  Mike was hesitant to take it, which was unusual, because this is the man who in the past would take our Cadillac four-wheeling.  I (Pam) love the water, and so I encouraged him to take this route, which again was unusual, because I usually want to take the shortest route and get back home.  This was probably only one of a few times in Mike’s life that he has ever listened to me, and it wasn’t too long before I wished he hadn’t.

While the road must have been fairly close to the water at times, we never saw the lake.  The road turned into a Jeep trail.  That shouldn’t have been a problem, after all, we were in a Jeep.  But the road just kept getting worse and it was getting late.  There was one place where we came to the top of a hill with huge power line towers and were able to walk up to a point where we could see the lake.  The view was beautiful.  We could see the whole lake and all of the traffic over on Hwy 90 (the well-traveled route that we had been trying to avoid).  We took lots of pictures.  And then we resumed our trip on 5480, and the road continued to get worse.  By now it was too late to turn back.

We came to a creek that ran across the road.  It was pretty deep and was running very fast.  We usually like to take a picture of the Jeep in the middle of creeks that we are fording.  Not this time!  There was no stopping in the middle of this stream.  We hit bottom, but we made it to the other side.  We have been on lots of rough roads, but it sure was a relief when we found a well-maintained gravel road that led us back into civilization.  After the white knuckle experience we had just been through, the “nice and easy” gravel road seemed somewhat boring.

The next week when we went through our pictures, we were somewhat disappointed.  The views we had seen from the high point at the back of the lake just didn’t seem to reflect the breathtaking grandeur we had experienced when we took the pictures. Perhaps our fear of not being able to get out of there increased our appreciation at the time.  Needless to say, we would not recommend this route to others, stick with Hwy 90 on this one.  While the view was tremendous, you get to see more of the lake from the highway and it is much less traumatic for the wife.

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Free Days at North Cascade Environmental Learning Center

We recently posted a story about our North Cascades trip and mentioned the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center.  Just saw a news release from the National Park Service (NPS) stating that the Learning Center is  providing four free days at the center this year  (June 6, July 19, August 2, September 27).  There will be three activities that you can sign up for on a first-come, first-served basis:  Forest and Waterfall Hikes, Naturalist-led Hikes and Diablo Lake Voyager Canoeing Trips.  Sounds like a great adventure in a beautiful setting.  Check out the details at http://www.nps.gov/noca/parknews/the-north-cascades-are-calling.htm. Volunteer opportunities in North Cascades are posted at the top of the same release.  In order to see the news release about the free days, scroll to the bottom on the article.

See the photos of our North Cascades Camping trip.

Read the article about our North Cascades Camping trip.

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Another Mobile Wi-Fi Solution

I just saw a website where you can purchase an application for your smartphone that turns you phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, providing wi-fi service for up to 5 other wireless devices.  It is available for a $24.99 one-time fee for lifetime access.  You must have an unlimited data plan on your phone.  I see that it is not available for Verizon Wireless customers, so we can’t try it out.  Sounds interesting!  Check it out at http://walkinghotspot.com/.

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Cooper Lake

Today we are off to check out Cooper Lake in the Cascade Mountains of Washington for a future family camping adventure. You can follow us on our adventure by clicking on the link – Follow Me – Our GPS Location on the right. We will try to post pictures and blog more on our experience later in the day if internet is available.

Google Map of Cooper Lake

Map of our GPS route to Cooper Lake

Click Here to see Pictures of our Journey to Cooper Lake and Beyond

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Online Photo Storage

We just discovered that the SmugMug “MAPTHIS” button is only mapping the first 200 geotagged photos in a gallery. Therefore, we have broken up the pictures for our North Cascades camping into two galleries, Part 1 and Part 2. The link to the pictures in that post takes visitors to Part 1. In the description of Part 1, we have given a link to the Part 2 photos (and vice versa).

We love SmugMug and its unlimited storage. But from now on, for this blog, we will be using Picasa as our photo album, as we like its mapping abilities better than those in SmugMug. In Picasa, when you click on a gallery, it initially shows you a small map with all the tags for all of the photo locations clustered on the map. Then when you click on a single picture you see the location for that one picture. It makes it a little easier to see the specific location of each picture. They also have a link that allows you to see a larger map with thumbnails of the photo tracing the route. As you click on each picture in the left panel it shows a larger image on the map.

You can see a sneak preview of our pictures from last weeks, June 12th trip in Picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com/RVingExpert/June122009Rainier# . Mike has done an excellent job of putting descriptions on each picture, so it is somewhat of a picture blog of our trip. More about the trip will be coming in our next post.

Picasa has a free user account for up to 1 GB of photos. After that it is $20 a year for the first 10 GB, which is shared with your Gmail account. Subsequent upgrades are at the rate of $75 a year for 40 GB, $250 a year for 150 GB, and $500 a year for 400 GB. Therefore, we will be using Picasa for our blog and SmugMug for our personal photos, and to maintain an archive our older travel photos to try to stay under the 10 GB per year.

SmugMug has three different account levels for users (Standard, Power, and Pro). All three levels come with unlimited storage, just different capabilities. We have the Standard plan for $39.95 a year. The most sophisticated package, the Pro package, allows you to protect and sell your photos. The Pro Package also offers the ability to upload HD videos. The cost for the Pro package is $149.95 a year.

We love to take pictures and share them with family and friends and have used online photo storage for years. It eliminates the need to email the photos to friends. You can usually “Share” the photos from within the gallery. We haven’t really gotten into Picasa that much yet to know all of its capabilities. But SmugMug has a “Share” feature, and it has an “address book” that you allows you to keep the email addresses of friends and family to whom you frequently send links to your pictures. SmugMug sends them a great email with one of the pictures from the album in it that also links to the gallery / album.

Since obtaining our digital camera (Nikon D200), we haven’t actually had a picture developed or printed in years. We move too often to be toting around photo albums, and as you can see, my wife, Pam, takes a huge number of pictures in one day. We frequently come home from one of our trips with almost 1,000 pictures, and then she has to weed them down to 200 to 400 pictures. She has trouble trashing digital pictures. That is why our photo albums are so huge. We are working on a solution to her addiction, so that we don’t put so many pictures out there for our viewers to wade through. I wonder if they have a 12-Step program for photo addicts?

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Our Camping Trip . . . North Cascades

A map of the route we took for our trip

Pictures of our Trip

Last Thursday night we finally ended up finding a place to camp around 10 PM.  The first campground we tried, closed their office and their gates at dusk.  We were probably 15 minutes too late to get in.  So we set off in search of another park.  We ended up finding Grandy Lake Campground, a small county campground on the way to Baker Lake that didn’t even show up in our internet search.

What fun!  Trying to set up camp in the dark with a tent you haven’t used in about two years.  I’m sure our campground neighbors were very unhappy with us.  We had to use the light from the Jeep to help us get set up.  I hate arriving so late and trying to set up camp, but it does keep life interesting and sometimes it supplies some more pleasant aspects.   It is always a great adventure to wake up in the morning and see what your surroundings look like in the light of day.

Grandy Lake looks like an old logging lake.  It appeared to be pretty shallow and full of old logs.  Their were no services, except for some portable toilets on the premises.  There was no potable water, but the price was right, five dollars for the night.  We made the mistake of deciding to break camp and head down the road without eating breakfast or showering.  In hind sight, we should have toted water from the lake and  showered, as Pam is a “bear” to live with if she doesn’t get to shower and wash her hair every morning.  Add to that not feeding her, and it is like trying to make friends with a ‘very hungry bear”.  Lesson learned!

We found our way back to Highway 20 and headed toward our original destination Diablo Lake.  We set up camp on Thursday afternoon in the Colonial Meadows Campground, took showers and then headed out to explore.  We didn’t have cell phone or internet service that day, so I am writing this and saving it to post when we get back to civilization.

That afternoon we continued up Highway 20 to the summit where we could see the trail to Ross Lake Resort before we turned around.  We stopped and visited the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, an environmental education center that is supported by Seattle City Light.  It is on the shore of Diablo Lake.  This is a beautiful drive, but we were surprised by the lack of recreational facilities.  There are several beautiful bridges that allow you to cross the Skagit River.  There are several beautiful water falls.  The scenery is gorgeous.  There are several dams that supply hydroelectric power for Seattle on the river, and the dams create some amazing lakes.

There are several campgrounds in the area.  The three campgrounds that we actually viewed were Colonial Meadows Campground (142 sites – $12 a night),   Newhalem Creek Campground (various services and prices) and Gorge Lake Campground (Free – only six sites).  There is a ferry on Diablo Lake that takes visitors up to Lake Ross.  The northern part of Lake Ross is in Canada.

The day-time temperature was about 92 degrees.,  which is nothing compared to the 110 to 120 degrees we frequently saw in Phoenix, but it was not what we expected at this altitude.  So we headed back to our campground and cooled off in the creek next to our campsite, and then we took a nap.  The Colonial Meadows Campground, is also where the Thunder Creek Trail begins.  The campground has 142 sites, and has public restrooms with flush toilets scattered throughout the campground.  There are no showers or utility hookups.  The cost was $12 a night. The creek ran right behind our campsite, and Diablo Lake was about 100 yards from our site.

Diablo Lake, was beautiful to look at from a distance, but it didn’t look like a very pleasant place to swim.   I don’t know if it was pollen from all the pine trees, but there was a layer of yellow gunk floating on the surface.  Now the creek was very pleasant, but also very cold.  We would definitely stay there again.  We also thought that Gorge Lake Campground looked very interesting,.  With only six sites and the fact that the sites were free was very attractive.  It would be a pleasant place to stay.  However, it looked as if the water was probably moving too fast there to be able to get into it.

The next day we continued on over Hwy 20.  It was an absolutely amazing drive.  I have never seen so many waterfalls in all my life.  You can see the rest of our route and pictures online.

On our way home, we stopped and drove through a few other areas that offered camping to check them out for future adventures:  Lake Chelan State Park, Alta Lake State Park, and Entiat City Park.  The preceding links provide info and photos about these facilities.  You will also find a few pics in the photos that we took and in viewing the route that we took, you will see a few pictures that we attached to the different waypoints.

All in all, we had a wonderful time and look forward to getting out and doing some more camping this summer in the beautiful state of Washington.

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On The Road Again . . .

It is Wednesday evening.  After a long, hard day at work, we are heading out to go camping.  We have the Jeep packed to the hilt with all of Pam’s “must haves”.  We are anxious to take advantage of the beautiful weather we are having here in the State of Washington. We don’t know where we will spend the night, we just wanted to get out of town on this beautiful evening.

We currently do not own an RV, so we “rough” it by tent camping with the Jeep.  We have our porta-potty and a new Zodi shower.  It is just like home.  This will the first time we have used the Zodi shower.  In the past, we have just heated water on the camp stove.  We have an Outback pop-up tent that we use for the shower and porta-potty.  We are taking our small tent this time, as our stay will be short and we expect that we won’t be staying in the same place both nights.  We have another tent that we had to purchase in order to accommodate the King-sized cots that Pam insisted on having when we went on a two-week camping trip a few years back.  She brought home the cots and then discovered that they wouldn’t fit in either of the other two tents that we owned.

Again, we are writing this as we are on our way to our destination, which at this point, we have no idea where we are going.  But you can see where we are by checking our location page.  And we will up date our post as we go.  Be sure to “refresh” your screen to see if we have added to this posting.  And refresh your screen when viewing the location page too, as it does not appear to update automatically.  However, if you are using Google Latitude and if you add us to your list of people you are following, that page seems to refresh itself.

Pictures of our trip – more info to come

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Tethering a MAC to a Blackberry on Verizon

Just in case anyone is interested in tethering a MAC to a Verizon Blackberry via Bluetooth, I thought I would provide a link to  the instructions I found on the internet. I have also uploaded a screenshot of the settings.  The password should be vzw.  You would replace the number signs (3) in the the USER NAME with your BlackBerry’s phone number.  

Another thought about the wireless router for your car.  It sure seems like RV Manufacturers would start offering this as a factory installed feature / accessory.

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Right on Track

I just read an article on the internet, MSNBC, about a wireless router that is now available for your car or RV.  It turns your car or RV into a WiFi hotspot. The timing of this article was very appropriate considering our post from this weekend, where we were trying out using our laptop tethered to our Blackberry to access the internet as we were going down the road.  The article, The Mobile Internet Makes Its Way Into Cars, addresses the cost, the demand and the security of the system.

The system is offered by Autonet Mobile.  It can be purchased as an accessory with the Cadillac CTS.  Chrysler and Jeep dealers sell and install the router under name of “uconnect web”.  There are other online dealers, and it can now be purchased through Advance Auto Parts.  The unit is priced at $499.  Installation is extra.  A one-year contract is required, monthly fees start at $29 for 1 GB of usage.  There is also a 5 GB plan for $59 a month.

The system can be moved from one car to another, as long as the other car has also been wired for the unit.  It allows all laptops and other portable wireless devices to access the internet going down the road.  Access is suppose to extend to about 100 to 150 feet from the vehicle.

The main advantage I see to this over our Blackberry tethering to our laptop is that it would provide wireless access to the internet for everyone in the vehicle.  It would provide another means of entertainment to the passengers.  They can stream internet radio to their individual devices, watch YouTube videos, access the various mapping sites (i.e. Google Maps, MapQuest), interact with all of the social networking sites and surf the web.  Our system only provides internet access to the one user who is tethered to the Blackberry.

I would imagine that this system could find a great deal of interest among full-time RVers, whose vehicle is also their home. In the MSNBC article their is debate about how much demand there will be for this system, because of the ability to have home internet service, and services such as ours through our cellular provider.  Skeptics think people will not be willing to pay to have even more internet access than they already have. Who knows?

Personally, we like the idea of being able to take our internet away from the vehicle (i.e. to the park, beach, hotel room, etc). We don’t have any interest in changing to this system.  First of all it would be more expensive for us, even if we didn’t consider the initial purchase of the unit. Currently our 5 GB plan through Verizon on our Blackberry is only $30 a month. Secondly, there are only two people in our immediate family, and one of us has to drive, so there is no need for both of us to have internet access.  At least not until they invent auto-pilot for our vehicle.

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