Camp Sites in the Greater Northwest

Today I drove to Estacada to check out sites for a possible camping trip this weekend. I've described what I want in earlier entries: cool and green. Big shade. I used to be against all human improvements, was a luddite, but with age comes laziness and sedentia (a precursor to dementia, I'm certain) and I'm all for picnic tables, fire pits and flush toilets. Showers.... not so much. I can dip in the river and feel clean enough to get by.

Then, after work, we had received some tips on possible camp sites out past Vernonia. I'd put in a link to Vernonia here, but I'm not sure what it would show. I think it might be a scene from Deliverance. So, being naturally inquisitive, we ventured out in search of Big Eddy Park on the Nehalem River. If you've ever been to Bolder City, Oregon, the only difference is that Big Eddy sits right on the banks of the Nehalem. And so do the campers. Campers may be too transient a term for the occupants of Big Eddy. They looked camped out in the most sincere sense of the word. Perma-camp. And it was one of those campgrounds with little underbrush to distinguish one site from another. It was just pretty much a cluster-fuck of broke down Winnebagos, sagging tents and the ever-popular blue tarp. This raises a question for me. Why blue? Why are all those goddamned tarps that godawful bright blue? Do they think it blends? Do they think you throw the shimmering blue tarp over, say, the woodpile or the children, and suddenly think the landscape has altered to include an unexpected fragment of low sky? I don't get it. I have some, but they bother me. I guess they could be made out of camouflage fabric, and I know some are, but I guess the risk there is that you'd cover, say, the children, and lose them.

Oh god.


Anyway, Big Eddy didn't get it, so we continue the search for the perfect campsite.

addendum/revision: Just made reservations for Labor Day weekend at Metzler Park. Big shade. Yay.