Finishing off the long road
We continued south along the backcountry byway, dodging potholes as best I could and a few trees from time to time. Most of the trees gave us just enough clearance to squeeze underneath, but one in particular came up short by about a foot. That one required a little more convincing than the rest: another fallen branch propped up on one side gave us the nine and a half feet of clearance we needed to pass underneath. Kerri and I have been discussing our impending need for a chainsaw, but we still haven’t made the purchase. Soon.
One point of interest on this route is a small ice cave. After a night’s camp in the nearby forest, we popped in to visit. A cave it was, with many, many large fallen rocks at the bottom, but no ice. It was still an interesting explore, but we cried false advertising and moved on down the scenic byway.
In search of a clearing in the trees to recoup some battery power from the sun, we ran across miss after miss. Eventually we settled on a clearing that provided just enough sun for a few hours of charging each day. Trees to the south blocked the early sun from hitting our panels, and the later afternoon sun was blocked by more trees to the west. It doesn’t help that the sun barely clears the treetops this late in the season. Nevertheless, the spot worked well enough for a couple of days. It was, however, a place where someone, sometime, had been living. Trash littered the nearby forest. A log cabin was in the process of being built, but had stopped for one reason or another. A little creepy, yes.
We eventually made our way far enough south to run into the Columbia River. Across it is Oregon, but this was as far south as we would go on this trip. We would turn north for another family commitment in a few days, but first Kerri came up with a brilliant plan.
Not far from where we popped out of the forest is the Skamania County Fairgrounds Campground at the Columbia River, where we had the place to ourselves for a couple of days. Why stay in a campground? Because two days later Kerri had planned for us to visit Carson Hot Springs to get cleaned up and relaxed after nearly two weeks on rough dirt and gravel. We would have had a scent about us by then, for sure. The hot mineral bath hit the spot more than anyone could imagine. The only downside was that we had to enjoy it separately, as the tubs are segregated by sex. I went off to my side while Kerri did hers. She got the add-on wrap, so mine took half the time, and we met up at the van, where I was gleefully working on my post-bath popsicle.
We spent one more night in the same town, this time in a parking lot overlooking the river. During our few days in Stevenson, WA, we visited a few restaurants, walked the small downtown, and watched a near-death encounter on the river. As we returned to the van one afternoon, we spotted a person in the water, swimming. At first I thought, “what a nut job,” since I know firsthand how cold the water is in the PNW. But after pulling out our monocular and spying on what was happening, we realized this wasn’t a swimmer. It was more likely a kite surfer who had lost his board and was slowly working his way back to shore. To make matters worse, a tourist paddle boat was coming up river, headed directly at him. The boat missed him, with what looked like a very uncomfortable distance, and continued on, clearly not seeing the person in the water. Kerri ran down to the cruise boat dock to notify them in hopes they could launch a rescue boat quickly. I stood at the van and watched. A crowd began forming on the shoreline. A few minutes passed before the paddle boat reentered the scene. Clearly some passenger had notified the captain, and the boat was returning to give aid. As it neared the swimmer, I could overhear a conversation between him and a deckhand. Not the words, only the tone. The swimmer really sounded unconcerned about being rescued, but eventually gave in and accepted being plucked out of the water. That was done on the far side of the ship so no one on land could video it. One gentleman in particular was quite upset about that.
We finally left Stevenson and spent one more night at a nearby Forest Service campground. We were lucky to get in, since all the campgrounds shut down on some arbitrary schedule here in Washington State. This was the final night the campground would be open for camping, even though it was still half-filled by sundown. Someone higher up needs to look at the vacancy rates before setting these closure dates, if you ask me.
In the morning, before the drive north, we stopped at Beacon Rock to see the sights. It was a big rock, yes. It also had a trail to the top, but halfway up my knees were crying uncle and Kerri’s vertigo was kicking in too. Good timing, if you ask me. We got the gist of it and returned to the van to start our journey back to family, where we would park Marcel for ten more days of mom-sitting while my sister and brother-in-law took a much-needed vacation.
