It’s winter in the pacific northwest which means pretty much nonstop dismal rain. Jason and I were sitting around the house moping and playing on our phones when mom pretty much told us to get in the the camper (that was actually still on the truck…) and just drive somewhere. Sold! Somewhere interesting and rainy is better than sitting at this computer staring at the rain and being mad. We grabbed some stuff out of the fridge and our duffel bag that we hadn’t even unpacked from our camping trip to Neah Bay and pointed the truck South towards Oregon. The weather forecast looked shitty pretty much everywhere but we figured that going to the coast in the rain might make for some interesting photos at least, so that became our planned destination! After stopping a few times to check things out, we realized that we were close to Ecola State Park… so why not just head there? A few years ago I got some epic photos of a colorful sunset over Haystack rock with snow on the mountains. This time the photos weren’t that great.. but it beats sitting at home!
I just realized that this was my second lighthouse in a row! Last weekend I got a picture of the one at Neah Bay! Kind of a coincidence since I don’t really have any strong feelings for lighthouses one way or another.
One random thing happened while driving along the coast: we hit a pigeon with the camper. It didn’t hit hard and hit the windshield first. I barely even heard it… but unfortunately, it got wedged between the light bars on the front of the camper. We didn’t have a good place to pull over and get it out, so we got to drive down the oregon coast with roadkill stuck to our camper… it’s wing flapping majestically in the breeze. When we finally did stop, we were at a very crowded Ecola State Park. We definitely got some judgemental stares. It was also suuuper gross. There was blood dripping down the entire side of the truck and camper. Luckily the rain washed it off, but still.. :p
After driving most of the day in the pissing rain, Jason and I were pretty well sick of it. The forecast looked a bit better inland and I’d always wanted to visit Silver Falls State Park, so an hour or so and we were there. Unfortunately, the forecast was complete bullshit and it was raining even harder! Jason drove down a side road that went to a small campground next to silver falls, but it was apparently closed in winter. We ended up setting up our camper in a random pullout that’s obviously been used for camping more than a few times. I did also learn that there are tons of hiking and biking trails all over the park! Maybe we’ll bring the bikes back down this way sometime!
Until recently we hadn’t used the camper in rain to test it out. I wasn’t sure that it was going to be totally waterproof. It gets fairly damp inside just due to condensation, but it didn’t seem like the rain was actually getting in through the windows or seams. That was until we parked for our last night and had a ton of rain coupled with a little bit of wind. We had water flowing through the zipper and the seams of the windows on the right side of the camper. I rigged up a siphon drain with paper towels and Jason chugged a powerade to donate the bottle. It worked pretty good! We got a bottle and a half of water out of it! 😮
The location we were parked was actually pretty cool as the sun went down so I had to go get some pictures.
Overall, it was a pretty hilariously random road trip. I still love our camper! It makes camping in the cold and rain pretty darn pleasant! (and I have a coffee pot!) I got some good pictures, which is what I was really after… and Jason and I had a hell of a laugh about the stupid bird incident. Don’t know what we’re going to do to top this next weekend!