We continued our adventure from Yellowstone towards the coast. Our first camping spot was Bannack State Park in Montana. Bannack is an old gold rush town and used to be the capital of Montana when it was a territory. The park has preserved the old town and you can tour through the houses, shops and buildings and even see the gallows, where they hung the Sheriff of Bannack and many others. The hotel and one of the houses are supposed to be haunted and although we didnt see any paranormal activity, the town definitely has a eerie deserted vibe to it.
After speaking to a couple from Oregon, we changed our route and headed through the mountains at the heart of Idaho instead of taking the planned interstate route. The roads through the mountains were interesting to say the least, twisting and turning, narrow and in many spots no guard rails. This is when I’m very happy to be the passenger and not the one navagating the motorhome down the road. We spent only two nights driving across, we had planned to take our time but at one point the forecast was expecting 9 – 12 inches of snow overnight and we elected to drive further to a lower elevation rather than drive the roads covered in snow. At one point in the mountain drive a bolt snapped off of our bike rack. Luckily, we noticed it while the secondary bolt held and no bikes were lost, but we finished the mountain drive with four bikes inside the motorhome instead of on the rack.
We spent an afternoon in Boise, Idaho getting repairs done to our bike rack and then headed to Bruneau Dune State Park. This park has the tallest single structure sand dune in North America and my legs felt every one of the 470 foot climb to the top. The run back down the dunes was the most fun though, it was so steep we had to zig zag in order to avoid rolling. It was interesting to see the desert climate at Bruneau Dunes was so hot and dry compared to the mountains we had just from that were chilly and rainy and they exsist so close together.
We headed into Oregon and spent the first couple of nights at Farewell Bend State Park, which wasn’t our favourite campground but ok for a couple of nights. We continued through the interior of Oregon with stops at Unity Lake State Park and Clyde Holliday Park. We spent Father’s Day at a campsite overlooking Unity Lake and had a relaxing day fishing and hanging out in the hammock. We spent a few very hot days at Clyde Holliday State Park, where we had a shallow river behind our campsite. We found lots of ways to stay cool in the river with a tube we picked up at a local tire shop. An Oprey nest was perched along the top of a post at the end of the nature trail in the park. One day, while the kids were catching tadpoles and crayfish in the small pond, an Osprey swooped in and grabbed a fish out of the pond and then returned to the nest to rip it up and feed in to the babies.
At LaPine State Park, our campsite was nestled in the tall pine trees with the beautiful, clear Dechutes River running behind our site. We got the kayaks out and did a 10 mile paddle down the river while we stayed at the park. It was a perfect day on the river and we stopped for a picnic part way down. The river was very clear and also very cold.
From LaPine we headed to the Oregon Coast and split our time between Jessie Honeyman State Park and Beverly Beach State Park. The coast of Oregon is comprised of a whole bunch of state parks which has prevented development along the coast, and left rugged beaches and mossy green forests all along the coast. We spent four days exploring several different pull off spots from the coastal highway, walking beaches and exploring tide pools. The highlights of the coast were finding bright purple and orange star fish in the tide pools and seeing a cave full of sea lions.
On our last day at the coast we noticed that our fridge wasn’t working in the motorhome. After stopping at a repair shop, we got the crappy news that the fridge had to be replaced and it turns out not only are they expensive but extremely hard to find since the manufacturers have been shut down due to COVID. It took us calling about 30 repair shops to find a place that had something similar in stock that they could “make it work”. We managed to squeeze in a night at Silver Falls State Park and hike five miles around the spectacular falls before heading three hours into Pasco, Washington for a new fridge.
As the virus numbers in the US are quickly on the rise, we headed for the boarder to complete our 14 days of quarantine before exploring British Columbia and heading to Jasper and Banff.
The Travelling Herrons 