RV Travels With Huggy

I decided to fit a few photos from two campgrounds on our trip into one post. These are both on the Cascade Loop trip that is pretty popular here as it gives quite a variety of climates and landscapes to see. This part of the state is hotter in the summer than what we like and colder in the winter but it is great in the spring and fall and we were in both of these places in early May.


This first campground is a large city park on the shore of Lake Chelan and in the city of Chelan, WA. Lake Chelan is many miles long and I think the third deepest lake in the country. If you look at the mountains surrounding the lake you can visualize how far down it would be to the bottom. We stayed fairly close to the entrance as I wanted to be able to connect to the free WiFi the campground offers but there are some sites that are much closer to the lake. The only negative is that the place is already full with reservations for every weekend until September!


Our RV hooked up in our site. There are 165 sites and all but two are full hookup sites. I didn't hook us up to the sewer until we started to pull out when we left. The connection was farther forward than what I wanted to run our drain hose. We only spent two nights in the park and our holding tanks will easily cover that long even with two daily showers.


The other side of the RV. I have raised the front with the jacks to level the rig so we added our little step stool below the steps coming out. Notice the hill in the background and the house up there on top. The Chelan area has really been gaining popularity as a place to get away to from Pugetopolis since it is only about a two hour drive from Seattle. That of course has pushed prices up. A lot. I understand that waterfront land along the lake is now sold by the inch of frontage on the lake. I don't like the idea of paying half a million dollars for a two bedroom cabin, even if it is on the lake!


Our last campground stop on the Loop was in the town of Winthrop. It is on the east side of the North Cascades Highway that crosses two high mountain passes on State Route 20. The road closes in the winter as they don't even try to clear it of it's 60+ feet of snow until spring arrives. Winthrop has adopted or stayed with a Western theme, with board sidewalks, etc. The photos I posted earlier of the deer crossing the highway were taken right out in front of this KOA campground. This sign is on the front of the store/office as you enter. I have stayed here over the years and always enjoy it. The place is owned by a brother and sister and their families. I don't normally stay in KOA's (too expensive) but make an exception for this one.


Pat is entering the RV and you can see the front is up pretty high. I don't know why we always seem to park in sites where the front is low. The jacks took care of leveling the rig but I did add two wood blocks under each jack in order to get the height we needed. The sites here are all on grass which is really more comfortable in the heat of the summer, and it does get hot here. The day we arrived, May 4th, it was about 80 degrees. Add another 20 to that for July & August.


The North Cascades Hwy had just reopened on May 1st and the town is just waking up from it's winter nap. Many of the residents here close things up for the winter and go south, including the owners of this campground. The swimming pool is in the background of this photo, up on that little hill, and they are just getting it ready to open. You can see the store/office building at the right side of the photo. The Methow River runs alongside the campground, in front of our rig. This is one of the best fishing places in the state.

I'll have a post on our wine tasting in Wenatchee and Chelan to post soon, as well as some photos from in the town of Winthrop and the pass going back home to our wet but cooler side of the mountains. Hwy 20 drops us right into our back yard on the west side of the mountains. There was a lot of snow up there and just a couple of weeks later the pass was closed again for nearly a week due to avalanches dumping lots of snow, rocks and tree parts on the roadway.

Labels: Pat and I, Photos, RVing, Small towns, Trips to see things