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Welches, OR
This week we made it safely from our last campsite in Eugene, OR to a resort called Mt Hood Village RV Resort located in Welches, OR. We enjoyed our time at this resort as it is one of the prettiest ones we’ve been to. Almost every site is surrounded by trees and they even had a small gated community of cabins for full-time residents. They had a small man-made lake and two access points to the Salmon River. Right next to our site was a tiny house neighborhood! It was interesting to see the different themes given to each one. They were available for rent through the resort and looked much better than any cabin rentals we’ve seen at other resorts.
Off-Roading Adventure
Jason’s mother who joined us in Eugene, OR had been chomping at the bit to go test out her new 2017 Toyota 4-Runner. She found a great forest road that led through the mountains to a lake. We loaded up our three large dogs and ourselves and headed out. The 4-Runner had no issues navigated the dirt road and the dogs loved being able to stick their heads out the back window. Unfortunately for us, the end of the road was closed so we couldn’t access the lake. Apparently, the road had collapsed due to rain and not been repaired yet. We still enjoyed our time out though and it thoroughly exhausted the dogs.
River fun with Dogs
As I mentioned before, our RV resort had access to the Salmon River. While it was a little cold for our taste, all the dogs loved it! They spent over an hour swimming, fetching sticks, wrestling, and smelling everything. Chasing sticks is one of Carmen’s favorite past times (not fetching, just chasing) and she loved going after them as they floated down the river. All three dogs were exhausted after the activities so we packed up and headed back to the RV.
Power Outage
Once we returned to RV after the river, we noticed immediately how hot it was inside. The AC was not on and it was 85 degrees in the rig! We checked our breakers, shore power breaker, and our surge protector. They all appeared to be in working condition. When we looked at our neighbors, it appeared their power was out too so we headed to the front office to find out what was happening. Upon arrival, we discovered that the construction crew working on a new part of the park hit a main electrical line. The electricity in the entire resort (they have 382 sites) was out with no estimated time of getting it fixed!
Since we didn’t have a generator, we opened windows to hopefully get a breeze through our RV. We also noticed that our lights inside weren’t turning on, which was odd to us because they run off 12-volt (meaning they should still run off our battery). After about 10 mins of troubleshooting, we realized that our battery disconnect had been turned off since week 1! Oops! Turning it on let us use most of our RV like normal so we grabbed some board games and settled in. Thankfully, the power came back on an hour later and we continued our night as usual.
Since this day, a sad thought has stuck with us: what if Carmen was in the RV alone? The temperature in our RV increased dramatically within the hour of the power going out. There was no notification from the park that they lost power. This has led us to find a product that will monitor the temperature in the RV and notify us on our phones when it passes a threshold. That way if we are out on a hot day and the temperature in our RV rises we will be able to rush home for Carmen. We have our eye on one product but please comment down below if you have any recommendations!
Moving to Portland, OR
Since it was a holiday weekend and we couldn’t book one park during the entire week we needed, we had to move campsites in the middle of the week. We packed up and drove the hour to the Portland Fairview RV Park. This park had over 400 sites and was almost at full capacity! Thankfully the spots were large and the property maintained very well. They had a small hot tub that we spent a couple of nights in after our days of exploring Downtown Portland and our trip to see Multnomah Falls.
VooDoo Doughnuts
No visit to Portland is complete without a stop at VooDoo Doughnuts! The crazy donut toppings have become famous. Personally, we found them to be just too darn sweet for us. We couldn’t even finish them, but we’re glad we crossed this place off our bucket list.
Ghost Tour
We went on the Beyond Bizarre ghost tour run by Portland Walking Tours. We choose the adults only tour, which started later in the evening. The only issue with this tour is that you run the risk of having others on your tour who may have imbibed a little too much beforehand. Besides our drunk tour mates, the overall experience was enjoyable. The tour guide hands out EMF meters to everyone and then the tour starts by exploring the basement of the Portland Walking Tours office. The basement was once connected to the Portland underground (it is now all filled in) so legend has it there are plenty of trapped spirits down there. The tour then takes you up to the streets to explore other haunted locations around the city. A must do if you are in Portland (but maybe not the adults only tour to avoid drunkards).
Breweries
You can’t go to Portland without stopping by a brewery or two (or three!). We started off our tour of breweries when we met an old friend from high school at Bailey’s Taproom. This was a high tech bar that had TV monitors with the available beers on it. It even displayed the level of the kegs so you know if it’s a freshly tapped keg or almost gone. We enjoyed a local beer while catching up with our old friend.
The next stop was PINTS Brewing Company. We stopped here as we strolled around downtown for a quick snack and a refreshment. There was nothing special about this place, seemed like a typical run of the mill brewery. The buffalo wings were good and the beer hit the spot. What was odd to us though was hearing our bartender complain to another patron about his coworkers; it was his last day on the job and he seemed a bit disgruntled. There was also a homeless man that tried to fight another customer for literally no reason at all. Thankfully the disgruntled bartender threw him out. I would say it’s safe to skip this place if you’re going to Portland.
We had plans to meet with Tarah and Tip (@fittwotravel) for dinner at 10 Barrel Brewing. We arrived an hour early to put our names down since we were exploring downtown all day anyway. Thankfully we did because the wait time was an hour and a half! We decided to walk across the street to Rogue Brewery to grab a beer and pass the time. Since Rogue is distributed nationally we had imbibed in their beers before but nothing is like getting a beer from the source. When it was finally our time to sit, 10 Barrel Brewing did not disappoint. We had an amazing night of food, beer and great conversation with Tarah and Tip!
That wraps up our week in Portland, check out what we did in week 7 when we finally made it to Seattle!
