Summer Travel Map

Monday, June 11, 2012

June 5-11: Valley of the Rogue State Park


June 11, 2012
Rogue River, Oregon

We had a nice week at this Oregon state park, right along the Rogue River.  It’s not often that we stay at state parks, mostly because so many were constructed before motorhomes, much less ones of our size.  But, there seems to be a growing trend toward modernization that hasn’t been completely sidelined by recovery economics and we were happy to have a nice long back-in site with water and 50 Amp electric for the week.  The park has a mixture of full-hookup and water/electric sites (with a few tenting sites as well), but I selected ours based on using Google Earth to see if I could guess which sites would be “satellite friendly”.  I guess that means that TV is more important than a sewer connection.  Who knew?

The park is fairly large and, even though it’s sandwiched between I-5 and the river, it was relatively peaceful.  We had a visit from a lone deer that was grazing in the pasture right behind us several nights, so were able to check the “wildlife” box.  Actually, I watched a bald eagle fishing in the river one morning as well, but I was too far away to get a good picture with the phone.




The park also features a set of nice, paved walking trails along the river, stretching all the way to the little burg of Rogue River downstream.  I found that a walk to there, turning around at the Rogue River Bridge (actually at the loo in the city park by the bridge) gave me just over the 5-mile brisk walk I’ve been aiming for on the exercise front.

We did make a few side trips this week.  Since Medford is the largest “population zone” nearby, we used that as our shopping base as needed.  Costco, Walmart, Freddie (Fred Meyer) - all the biggies.  We picked up a camp oven that we’ve been eyeing, saving almost 10% in tax-free Oregon, so that led to a Pork Tenderloin with Mushroom Risotto dinner (Mmmm).  We also visited the Rogue Creamery, specialists in Oregon Blue Cheese (yes, we tasted and loaded up) and found, much to our surprise, a wine tasting room right next door.  Bonus!





Keeping an eye on the weather, we made a trip down the Redwood Highway (aka US-199) from Grants Pass to Crescent City, just across the border into California.  It’s quite a scenic drive, and we were able to park and have lunch on a bluff overlooking the Pacific.  It was pretty breezy and a bit cool, but there were still a few people out on the beach and feeding the seagulls.  Crescent City is right on US-101 and we’ve passed through several times over the years but never stopped.  We might check it out for a few days on our way south later in the year.  On the way back, we made several stops in the Redwoods, and Geri checked out one of the Burl Wood shops.










I mentioned watching the weather because our other side trip was up to Crater Lake.  The day I’d planned to go there it was snowing, so we decided on the ocean instead.  But, today the forecast was for clearing and warmer temperatures so we headed off, backroading (is that a word?) across OR-234 to OR-62, one of the main access roads to Crater Lake.  We’ve been there before in June, about 20 years ago on one of our RV rental vacations, and found similar conditions: snow melt incomplete and several sections of the Park not yet open for the season.  But, that wasn’t a problem, as we had some fine weather for pictures and a picnic lunch.  We definitely got our “snow fix”, with drifts still quite high in some places.  The altitude was getting to Geri, so we limited our time at the top.  I have a few pictures that I’ll try to work into composite panoramas when I have the time and inclination to play around with Photoshop.











OR-62 follows the upper Rogue River, so we had a chance to stop for some pictures on the return trip as well.  With snow still melting at the upper elevations, water flow was still pretty strong.  Several parts of the Rouge River National Forest were identified as off limits, though, or we’d have spent more time exploring the area.







No comments: