We finally decided to head to Portland towing our 2004 Honda Element. A little way down the road, we saw a sign that said Ainsworth State Park. We have been impressed by what we’ve seen of Oregon’s State Parks so we decided to go take a look. We didn’t end up in the Park, but instead, we found ourselves on the “Scenic Byway”. We couldn’t turn around and there were no exits, so we had to stay on it until it let us out onto Hwy 84 again. It WAS scenic and beautiful, and I’m sure the waterfalls it passed were beautiful, but there was nowhere to park 57 feet of RV and tow vehicle. And parts of the road were so narrow which sheer cliffs and no guard rails that I thought surely we were going to topple over the edge.

Fortunately, we made it through.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, except that the park where we had planned on staying and showed vacancies on the internet the night before, was full by the time we got there, so we ended up making a huge loop around Portland and finding a park in the cute little town of Troutdale. The park was called Sandy River RV Resort. It was clean and very well kept with strips of real green grass between the parking pads. AND it was right on the Sandy River which is a little subsidiary of the Willamette (Dammit!). It did indeed have sandy banks and where we were it was so shallow you could wade all the way across. On Sunday when we arrived, both sides of the river were full of families enjoying the water and sunshine. Monday, it was almost completely deserted so it was another kind of delightful day on the river.

While we were in Portland, my main goal was to visit with my cousin. It turned out that our friend, Maryam was in town for a funeral, and our friends, Kevin and Arla, from the Hood River Rally, were also in town. We called all of them to see if we could get together, but we only heard back from Kevin and Arla the next day so we invited them over for dinner. Arla brought a delicious salad plus fresher picked lettuce and raspberries from Kevin’s aunts garden. It was fun to see them and hang out with them again. 

We never did get to see Maryam before she and we left Portland, but at least we talked to her and let her know we were close and thinking of her and her family. 

Tuesday we drove over to the Oaks Park, which is a cute little amusement park that my cousins Katy and Lynne were taking their kids to for the day. We hung out with them for a couple hours and they were all VERY impressed with our bus!

We left there headed for the Oregon coast.