July 2, 2009 – Goin’ Glampin’

We are off to go camping, or “glamping,” with our daughter, our son-in-law and our grandbaby. We have everything with us, including the kitchen sink. Well, maybe not exactly the kitchen sink, but the dishpan that goes in the sink. My reasoning was that it could be used to transport some canned goods as we travel, and then when we get there, grandbaby Reece can use it as a swimming pool (Note: She is very small and uses it as her bathtub when she is at Grandma and Grandpa’s house).

Because we only decided to go camping the night before we left. We had a very limited selection of places to stay. We decided to go camping because our children were headed off for an adventure with some friends in Idaho. However, they wanted to go camping with us too. So it was decided that we would head out towards their destination and set up a camp where they would spend the first night with us. The next day, they would get up and leave for their destination, and we would head back home. Unfortunately, when we tried to get reservations at some of the campgrounds we had scoped out in the past few weeks, they were all booked up. So we ended up deciding to spend the one night at Yakima River RV Park in Ellensburg, Washington.

It was a very nice RV park. Tenting is by permission only and is in an overflow lot behind the shop. Recent flooding had made the mosquito problem a very big problem, which made our stay very uncomfortable. We had to eat our evening meal inside the “glamping” tent. We enjoyed the company of a few horses, who were pastured in a field next to us. There was no fire ring, so we didn’t get to enjoy using our Tonka Toasters (aka pie irons) or roasting marshmallows. On the positive side, we got to see our children and enjoy watching our grandbaby enjoying being outdoors and having new experiences. Our son-in-law was the only one brave enough to tread the overgrown trail down to the river, where he did a little fishing before dinner.

This park looks like it would be excellent for fishermen and hunters, as the park is surrounded by public lands. Right down the road from the facility is a Wildlife Access Area that made it easy to get to the river. There were several boaters and fishermen there. The water at that point looked to be flowing a little too fast for swimming, which would have been a nice pastime, given how warm it was this weekend.

We woke up Friday morning, with no one very eager to spend much time in camp, due to the mosquitoes. Our daughter and Pam took showers using our Zodi shower and enjoyed it immensely. Our daughter, exclaimed that she “felt like a new woman”, and told her husband that they needed to “get one of these.” (The baby took her bath the night before in Grandma’s dishpan.) The men just roughed it and didn’t shower. (I think they just have to impress each other with their “manliness”, and that they fear being called a sissy by the other one, but that they secretly were longing to take a shower)

After breakfast and showers, the kids packed up and got on their way, leaving us with Griz, their family dog, to keep for the weekend. After we finished packing all of our glamping gear, we set out to take a different route home that would allow us to explore some more camping sites and check out the area.

We found lots of recreational areas along Hwy 12, as well as a few undesignated camping areas that looked like good possibilities for camping (Check out the pictures). The basics of our route were:

Hwy 90 to Exit 109 (Canyon Road – Hwy 821)
Hwy 821
Hwy 12 (with a side-trip up Hwy 123 to see Ohanapecosh)
Hwy 7
Hwy 161
Hwy 18
Issaquah-Hobart Road – back to Issaquah

Some interesting sites that we think are worth checking out:

Rimrock Lake
Clear Creek Falls
Alder Lake
Ohanapecosh

See the pictures from our trip.

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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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