Cold Nights and Names that are Right

(2023 Alaska Revisited Ep 2)

Since picking up our truck camper on March 30, it has been COLD.  Daytime highs have been in the 40s most days and it has dropped below freezing each night.  Early in the week, portions of I-84 in eastern Oregon had winter travel advisories.  One morning In Idaho, our water connections froze when the low was 15!

The cold weather has restricted our daytime outdoor activities and we have needed to use electricity each evening.  Thank goodness for our portable electric heater!

As we drive south to find warmer weather, we have met a number of other campers doing the same! 

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We left Portland on a chilly morning, truck camper mostly set up and stocked for the trip ahead. 

Our route was I-84 along the Columbia River Gorge.  There are tall bluffs on both sides of the river and across the river is Washington (state).  

A number of waterfalls are visible along the route and we stopped to see an iconic Oregon waterfall,  Multnomah Falls. 

The falls are the tallest in Oregon at 620 feet.  There are actually two falls (the upper portion is 524 feet) and we walked up several switchbacks to the Benson Bridge, a footbridge at the brink of the lower falls.

It was fairly crowded, with a number of families posing for photos on the drizzly Sunday afternoon.  Of course, we did the same!

Continuing on I-84, we saw several impressive hydroelectric dams and ship locks along the river. 

We stopped at Bonneville Dam, 40 miles east of Portland.  It was completed in 1937 as the largest water impoundment project in the US at the time.  The dam is half a mile long and 171 foot tall, and produces enough electricity for a half million homes!

Although security was tight and photos weren’t allowed, we toured the visitor center, remaining inside due to a heavy downpour.   On the bottom floor we saw a few fish swimming about behind large windows that provide an underwater view of a fish ladder.  Charts on the wall indicate many more fish are visible during late summer salmon migrations.  

We crossed several snow-covered mountain passes and although the rains had ended, it actually got colder!   We slowed our travels a bit to avoid threatening winter weather on a couple of the passes, and it was snowing as we arrived at a Boondocker’s Welcome location in Cove, Oregon. 

Bob, the host, kindly let us join him by a warm, wood-burning stove on his back patio, enjoying a view of mountains on one side and distant valley on the other.   

Names Needed!

As RabbiTRAILS blog followers, you may have noticed our prior Chevy truck and two travel trailers had names.  There is a story behind each of these names:   

Max, our 2017 Chevy Silverado 1500, came equipped with the ‘max’ trailer towing package that allowed us to tow more than 11,000 pounds.  We never towed anything that heavy thank goodness, but the name stuck.

We adopted Pancake, our 2008 Funfinder travel trailer in 2011.  The prior owners named it for their camping tradition to make pancakes the first morning whenever they camped in the little trailer.

In 2019 we purchased Oscar from an RV dealer in Frankfort, IL, just south of Chicago.  We made a connection between Frankfort and frankfurters, and a well known producer of frankfurters: Oscar Meyer.  Thus Oscar became the name of our Shadow Cruiser travel trailer.

We’d welcome your suggestions of names of our new camping setup.  Here are some details to get your brain cells working:

Truck – 2023 Chey Silverado 3500HD.  Purchased from a dealer in Harrisburg PA.

Camper – 2023 Wolf Creek 890 truck camper.  Purchased from a dealer in Portland OR.

Next week:  join us as our long road takes us to the La Grande, Oregon plant where our truck camper was birthed. We continue to Twin Falls, Idaho where we view Shoshone Falls on the Snake River and the site where a well-known daredevil attempted to jump the river on a rocket-powered motorcycle.

Until then, please like and comment, and don’t forget those truck/truck camper name suggestions!