Cove Palisades State Park, OR…

The drive from Culver, Oregon to Cove Palisades State Park seemed innocuous until I saw the sign for 7% grades. It was then apparent we were going to drop off the edge of the earth as Cove Palisades State Park was nearly a 1000 feet lower than where we had been. With our engine brake working furiously we began the decent toward Lake Billy Chinook. Signage in the park was mostly absent and since we had reserved a site in loop B we were looking for signage that said loop B. There were no such signs so we finally pulled over and talked with a ranger only to find out that the campground we reserved was another five miles away.

The drive along the narrow roads with sheer drop-offs down to lake Billy Chinook was almost too much for Sharon. Then we came to a very narrow bridge and we were both glad that no other cars were on it as it would have been extremely tight to fit another, even a smart car! We finally located our site and noticed it nearly impossible to get into so we were reassigned to the much more accommodating emergency spot where we now are parked in.

We like the park as we have full hookups however there is one major problem. Both Verizon phone and internet signals are very weak. I even had to dummy down my droid from the normal 4G setting to allow it to use CDMA networks or my Thunderbolt wouldn’t have gotten any signal. Odd that none of the reviews we read mentioned weak Verizon service. Well, at least the geology here is impressive!

Back to the fun… We took a day trip over to Bend, OR for some Trader Joe’s shopping and then made our way over to Sisters, OR as we had heard about a Wine and Brew Festival. Traffic in and around Bend was not very pleasant and as a result we didn’t spend much time there but the quaint town of Sisters was more our cup of tea.

Entrance into the Wine and Brew Festival was free and then you could purchase 10 tokens for $10.00 to “trade” for tastings and samples of the elixirs provided. We wandered around a bit seeing what liquids were being offered and as we did we noticed that the sample sizes offered here in Oregon were much, much smaller than those we were used to in Texas. Ten tokens might get you a small glass of wine if you used them entirely for wine samples. Not a problem though since the samples of Brews being offered were nicely sized. We sampled a few and then settled for a couple of glasses of beer from Ninkasi Brewing Company out of Eugene Oregon. I liked their Total Domination IPA and Sharon preferred Conservation Ale.

Despite the shortcomings of our Verizon signal we are enjoying our stay here at Cove Palisades. We will leave tomorrow and head for a Corps of Engineer park near Richland Washington called Hood Park where we will stay for 6 days and then we can finally head for the coast as it will be July and there’ll be more welcoming weather!!!