During our stay in Bend, OR we had a lot of camping options, as Bend is pretty much surrounded by National Forest land.
Such is not necessarily the case throughout the rest of the state.
We left Bend on a Thursday and drove west to Eugene. Along the way we had a pleasant stop at Sahalie Falls in the Willamette National Forest.
We hiked for a bit and even brought Bailey. No swimming this time, though. That water was moving waaay too fast.
Onward to Eugene, where we had two goals. The first was Falling Skye Brewing, where our latest shipment of Cholaca was waiting. We invited the staff for a tasting and they happily obliged. It’s good stuff – I sure didn’t mind a shot of pure liquid chocolate.
After picking up our Cholaca gold we hit our next goal in Eugene: REI. It’s not my goal to hit every REI in America or anything. No, really. But when we pass through a city that has one, we tend to stop in. Check out the sales, pick up some supplies. The Eugene REI was a cool little store. We hit up one of the green vests for info on where to camp that was close to town.
His first suggestion was the mall. No, really. We’d found that suggestion on FreeCampsites.net and were skeptical, so an REI employee vouchsafing for it made it seem like an option. One other suggestion was an overflow parking lot for something called the Ridgeline Trail, north of town.
We decided to check out the overflow lot first. Gravel is preferable to blacktop. The not-very-level parking lot was deserted when we got there, around 7pm. We made dinner and watched the traffic go by. There really wasn’t much traffic – a good sign – but there were some houses visible nearby. Michael decided he wanted to check out the mall.
Now, Eugene is not set up on a grid. I found navigation there to be difficult at best and it took us almost a half hour to reach the mall. I lost track of all the lefts and rights. But when we arrived we saw a few RV’s around the paring lot, and it looked pretty okay. We located mall security to check in and she said no problem, she’d meet us at our RV.
That should have registered. But it didn’t. When the mall security lady met us at the truck 10 minutes later, she said, “where’s your RV?”
This is it, we said. It’s a roof top tent.
“That’s a problem,” she said. “We don’t allow tents of any kind. RVs only, with a flushable toilet.”
Eugene must have a homeless problem. Why else would they need to make sure you weren’t pooping in the bushes? Well, at least the security lady was friendly. She gave us a free map of the area with a couple of campground suggestions.
We spent another 30 minutes getting back out to the Ridgeline Trail, because the other campground suggestions were all fee areas. By the time we got to the overflow parking lot it was 9:15 and the crazy thing? It was still light outside. At this point Michael was a little paranoid that maybe we really couldn’t camp there, so we didn’t pop the tent until 10pm. Even then it wasn’t exactly cover of darkness, but close enough. For me, anyway.
In the morning I took advantage of being 50 feet from a trailhead and went for a run. Well, it was mostly a walk on the way out – the first mile of the eastbound Ridgeline Trail was a steep uphill. But I had fun anyway. The trail was lush and green, and it was overcast out. This is more of what I pictured Oregon looking like.
After I got back to the truck Michael said he wanted to get a workout in too, but not in a gravel parking lot. A quick Google search brought us to Alton Baker Park. One of the bigger parks in Eugene, it was right on the Wilamette River and it also had a dog park. The dog park was not on the river, but it was huge and Bailey had a great time chasing the tennis ball there.
Once everyone had gotten their workout in, we set out for the Willamette Valley, which runs roughly between Eugene and Portland. The Willamette Valley is really known for their wines. Especially their pinot noirs.
The drive was beautiful. A lot like California’s San Joaquin Valley, but without the sweltering heat. And a lot more hops farms. Seriously, they were everywhere. Is it because everyone’s drinking IPAs these days?
Anyway. I knew I wouldn’t make it through more than one winery (I’m a bit of a lightweight) so we chose the Chehalem Winery in Newberg, OR. I sampled three pinots, but Michael did most of the talking. See, when he was a working chef, Michael used to host wine dinners at Colterra once a month. So he’s awfully knowledgeable. So he did the talking and I did the drinking. I actually had a full glass of their Wind Ridge Block Pinot that I enjoyed very much. (Not enough to buy the bottle though, which was $50.)
We struck out eastward from Newberg, looking for the Molalla Recreation Area, which is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. One of the things I love about the BLM is that, generally speaking, there are no rules. Sometimes anything goes. So we weren’t surprised when we didn’t see any designated campgrounds, just a couple of trailheads and several pullouts. Some of the pullouts had big signs nailed to the trees: DAY USE ONLY. But some of those pullouts didn’t have any signs at all. So we picked a big pullout that didn’t have a sign and set up shop.
While we were setting up a Sheriff’s Deputy drove by without even glancing in our general direction. Safe for another night, it would seem.
The Molalla RA was a pretty area, right on the Molalla River, with some really cool rock formations across the way.
Crazy to think that we were only an hour south of Portland, home to 600,000 people.
Now, Portland was kind of on my bucket list, and kind of not, if that makes any sense. In our 11 months on the road, we’ve hit very few metropolitan areas. When we drove south through Florida, we went right by Miami, even though I would have loved to check out Little Havana.
There’s a couple of reasons we skip the cities. First, the stuff we love to do (bike, hike, paddle, trail run) is not generally found in a city. We spend most of our time in National Forests. That’s also where the free camping is. But the second reason is that we worry about our stuff getting stolen. We carry a lot of gear in the basket above the topper, and there’s no way to secure any of it. There’s more stuff (like the Yeti cooler) in the topper with Bailey (who, let’s face is, is not exactly a guard dog).
But we have friends in Portland, friends who reached out to us and offered us a place to park and a shower. Free showers are hard to turn down.
Besides, I wanted to see how accurate “Portlandia” really was.