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- Paradise Camp
- Blue Highways
- Valley Livestock
- Eating Well
- Herrick Farm
- Sights Along the River
- Christmas Treasures
- A Return Trip
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McKenzie River: Paradise Campground in August
Clearly I lost interest in recording the rest of my Florida adventures -- spent too much time just gabbing with my cousin and then later my high school buddy and his wife. I had some good times, though, and I might do a couple of chapters later (especially about the manatee and the Everglades and the porpoises, oh, and the turtle hospital), but now I want to report on a short trip "camping" on the McKenzie River with my long-term friend, Bea.
The McKenzie is another of those wonderful Oregon rivers that starts up in the Cascade mountains, but, in this case, the river flows into the Willamette River and then up the valley into the Columbia River instead of going cross-county to the Pacific. I drove the opposite direction to get there, down the valley and then up into the mountains. Late July is a grand time to be driving Oregon's by-ways. The late summer crisped look hasn't taken over yet, except in the most open parts of the valley. Hay, apricots, corn, cherries, green beans, tomatoes and lots and lots of squash are being harvested and the roadsides and ditches, everywhere that's not under cultivation, are covered with wild Queen Anne's Lace and violet-rose sweet peas.
Most of the country houses have glorious flowers -- hollyhocks, roses, gladiolus, dahlias and sometimes those ridiculously huge hanging petunia baskets, 4 or 5 feet across. There are probably lots of smaller flowers, too, you just can't see them driving by at 50 mph.
Bea and I took off from her place just west of Eugene mid-afternoon on Sunday and traveled about 75 miles and 4,000 vertical feet nearly to the top of the Springfield-to-Sisters McKenzie River corridor: a good map. We hadn't made any reservations and planned to camp Sunday through Friday to avoid the weekend crowds. Bea has a wonderful 24 foot motor home, which is I why I indicated that we were "camping," not really roughing it.
The first couple of days we went to Paradise Campground, which is right on the river just a few miles up the road from the community of McKenzie Bridge. Even though it wasn't a weekend, all the river spots where the motor home would fit were taken, but it's beautiful wherever you are (we were in campsite 59, you can see its location on the map at the bottom of the Paradise page).
About half the sites are reservable and about half are first-come, first-served. You find your site, and park and then you have 30 minutes to deposit your money in the box. They're pretty strict about it. The camp host was a talkative woman who came to chide us for not registering properly. "But we DID!" we protested. "Well, maybe it was 45 minutes but it's there now." " Oh, no," she said, "you must have put it in the wrong slot." Grrrr, after some not very relaxing to-ing and fro-ing, we discovered that we had put one amount on the envelope the money goes into, but when we got to the box and read the sign, we discovered that Bea's Golden Age parks pass let us stay for half-price. So we checked the box, entered the pass number and put in only half as much. BUT we forgot to change the amount on the outside of the envelope. So we got thrown into the "not in compliance" pile. One is tempted to mutter the phrase "get a life!"
The rest of our stay there was peaceful and quiet, a lovely respite from the modern world. But. We were "dry camping," no electricity, no water or sewer hook-up and it was very hot, even up in the mountains, even in the middle of a forest. So after sweating through several outfits a day, no proper bath and no hair-washing at all and picking up all kinds of briars and cobwebs on our walks, we were getting a little whiffy and I had a respectable start on dreadlocks (well, not real dreadlocks, just those skuzzy dirty-looking kind white people get).
So we moved down river a bit to The Patio RV Park on McKenzie Drive. There we did have full hook-ups and a clubhouse with showers and a washer/dryer, so it wasn't much like camping, but it was a good place with marvelous access to the river. And a fine German Rottweiler with the curly coat named Spencer. Spencer was a good host and kissed all the women very nicely. It was so hot that Spencer got to live in the office which was the only air-conditioned building. But we didn't mind, because here you could always go down to the river and stick your feet in and that would cool you off in a hurry.
The McKenzie is primarily a fishing and rafting river. There are a few places to swim, but generally it's too cold and too swift and too rocky up this high. It's a biiiiig fishing river, though, and even has its own boat style -- The McKenzie River Drift Boat. These boats were first constructed just after the turn of the century and are designed for maneuverability and durability. Here's a good brief history of the boat.
There are also lots of bicyclists around because there are a good 20 miles or so where you can ride along the highway or one of the side roads quite comfortably. The road shoulders are wide and paved and the section is apparently a kind of plateau before the climb up to the pass, because it's pretty flat. You can rent bicycles quite a few places, the going rate seemed to be anywhere from $5 to $15 a day. I understand there's also good extreme mountain bike riding along the McKenzie but we didn't see any riders and I don't know anything about it.
Bea and I didn't do any of these things, though, we went rambling and looking at stuff instead. I'll tell you about a few of them next.
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