Armitage County Park, Eugene, Oregon

We woke up to a grey rainy day at Maryhill.  Just a couple hundred feet above camp is was a grey, snowy day.  Our plan was to head south to Eugene, Oregon.  Now we previously wrote about re-supply towns and Eugene was on that list.

Eugene has some great characteristics for a resupply town.  A great campground close to town.  We will post more information on that shortly.  All the shopping that you can possibly want and NO sales tax.  We also noticed prices significantly lower than in Wenatchee due to the practice of locality pricing.  The same LCD TV at the same warehouse store was $228 in Wenatchee and $178 in Eugene. 

Great bookstores, good hospitals, and most important for us a storage location for the Cameo outside of the snow and freezing temperatures.

There are lots of things to do in Eugene from the Saturday market to the wineries and covered bridges in the county.  But for us this was a trip to supply the Cameo, park it and  head back to Wenatchee.

We camped at Armitage County Park.  A beautiful campground on the McKenzie River and close to town.  The campground has pull throughs and back in spurs that can fit almost any size RV.

The campground has 37 units with full hook-ups.  It also has a off-leash dog park at one end.  So this is one of those campgrounds that your dog will enjoy as much as you will.

Western Oregon is not well known for its blue skies.
This scene out of the rear window of the Cameo shows a more typical day.

Thankfully, Lane County has wireless internet in the campground.  The first day there, the download speed was 13 MBPS and upload at 8 MBPS.  The following day the speeds had come down significantly with only 8.76 MBPS download and 3.54 MBPS upload!!


Of course, this is Eugene.  And camping in Eugene would be incomplete without a magic bus complete with a woodstove sticking out the window.

While we were there the campground only had four or five campers a day.   In summer time and football weekends I suspect the campground fills up.  A great place to camp for $25 dollars a night for full hookups and high speed internet.  Here is the county web site for Armitage County Park.

Thanks to one of our readers we found a perfect storage area for the Cameo just a few miles from the campground.   We winterized the Cameo when we read the weather forecast for the next week.  Seems there it an cold, cold front coming down from Canada.

Whoops what an ugly picture to end the blog entry!  Here is a picture of the river next to the campground.

So we left Eugene in a pouring rain to head back to Wenatchee.  East of the Cascades the rain stopped and we had cloudy skies just short of the Kittitas Valley.  From there it was snow showers with snow covered roads back to Wenatchee.  Just a few short weeks and we will be Arizona bound with views of snow-capped peaks from the desert floor.

Traveling in rural areas is pretty easy without a GPS.  Once, you get into an urban area like Eugene a GPS unit is essential for driving.  Yes, it minimizes the "lost" driving around at slow speeds trying to figure out your next move. 

We would not be without ours.  Prices are dropping.  This is the unit we have and we paid almost $200 less than two years ago.  Basic features for driving.  The only thing we would add is lane assist in current models,  but this GPS does give you plenty of warning.

Here is the link to the complete review posted last spring:  GPS and Backroads.