Winter Camping!

Day 1 Beaverton to Nehalem, Thursday, January 29th, 2009

I can't believe it took us about six months to get in another camping trip. But since the family and I camped last August, I decided to head out solo and meet up with some friends at Nehalem. But first things first. This is Spiffy, Mark's and my bus as we parked at a Beaverton Strip Mall to enjoy some sushi before the days in the semi wilderness. (Oh who am I kidding, it was a state parks campground.

Then we all hit the road. To give you a taste, here's a quick movie of me passing Spiff's bus on Highway 26 Westbound, right smack in the middle of the Coast Range. You can hear me rocking out to U2's Joshua Tree Album.



Before long, we made it to the coast and we were greeted with spectacular weather.. especially for this time of year.. late January!!!





So we finally pulled into the campground around 3:30 or so.. plenty of time to set up camp.. and I liked my spot, even though it was a bit shady.



Mark brought a keg of Sierra Nevada and we tapped that straight away. It was really tasty and because it got down near freezing at night, we didn't even need ice to keep it nice and cold at the perfect drinking temperature.



We hit the beach real quick before it got dark and got treated to a very nice sunset under clear blue and then starry skies. Night one was shaping up to be a good one.



I think the most memorable part of night one was the raccoon. Right after a great dinner of hot pockets (veggies and hamburger meat/sausage stuffed into a foil pocket and set right in the coals of the fire) a huge maybe 30 pound raccoon started wandering around and then right into our campsite.



Keep in mind, I didn't use the zoom at all, so I'm no more than about four feet away. Immediately the raccoon disregarded our fine company and chose to snuggle up next to the trash bag that I'd momentarily stashed under the bus.



No matter what we did, or how close we came, or how much racket we made, he simply refused to come out from under my engine so we nicknamed him "Colin."

It was so nice that first night of the trip.. Thursday, before the rest of the masses descended on our so quiet campground. We played some music, sipped some fine ale and remembered how lucky we were.

Day 2 and 3 Nehalem State Park, OR Friday and Saturday, January 30th and 31st.



What's nice about camping is that you have time to do things to usually don't in the real world. For a few weeks now I've wanted to try out this HDR photography that is all the rage.. so with nice weather, I spent Friday taking the pictures and spent some of Saturday, processing them on my laptop. For some reason I wasn't too impressed with the ocean and thought the dunes looked cooler with the lighting that was in play this weekend.





And of course, you know I couldn't experiment without including a few buses.


That right there is Spiffy's bus as seen from my tire well. And this is the one that I thought turned out the best... Jasan's 78 Westy.



The ones of my bus didn't turn out that great because I wasn't parked in the sun and I think contrast is really what these pictures need to make them stand out.

Anyway, Friday was a pretty mellow day. I spent 90 minutes of it or so, doing on a bike right all around the area and into the small town of Manzanita. It's a great little tiny small town right on the beach.

The night got a bit drizzly and had to hunker down under a tarp that Mark put up. Slowly but surely, more and more buses turned out during the night.. just like the raccoons. And before you knew it, by Saturday morning we had a full A loop of buses.

I made a quick loop around the area and took some pictures. I'm only including the bay window bus pictures because I just don't have time to do all of them and hey, it's my blog so there.

























You can see the kind of great turnout we had and I don't think I even got around to all the bay windows. Plus there were tons of Vanagons and probably a split or two though I didn't see them.

As if having a keg of beer wasn't enough, Saturday afternoon saw the return of a tradition we started in Maupin last year, the beer tasting club. Several people brought along their favorite bottle to sample.



And I met Jamie in the spot next to me who it turns out is a brewer for a local brewery. I actually really liked his contribution.

Later that night we had a huge pot luck and per usual, all the food was awesome.

But once again, it was the people who made this trip so fun. Here's to new friends and old ones. Let's do it again soon!