RV Travels With Huggy

We got away a bit after 11am on Monday, Aug. 11th and drove south on I-5 through Seattle (slow traffic even at that time of the day) to Olympia where we turned west toward the ocean beaches. Across the Black Hills to Elma where we stopped for a late lunch at the Rusty Tractor Restaurant. From there it was just about an hour on out to our destination, Ocean Mist Resort at Ocean City, WA. We arrived about 16:00 and were able to check into space B-108 which is one of the spaces in the outer part of the park, nearest to the ocean. I got us hooked up and we hopped in the car to run over to Ocean Shores for a stop at the grocery store for a few things that we forgot to bring along. I'll break this down into multiple posts about various parts of the trip, with this first part being about the Resort itself.


The sign along the highway is the first thing you see. This park is one of nine that are in the group owned by my membership park, K/M Resorts. Ocean Mist is one of the original four they owned when I first joined the group in June, 1998. I haven't yet been to all of them but have been back to this one many times as it is a favorite, but this was Pat's first time here.


The park is made up of two parts, the original front part and the newer back part which is across a bridge over a creek and right out on the beach. This photo is of the clubhouse which located in the older part. There are a volleyball court, horse shoes, children's play toys, a fire pit and lots of grass outside plus large TV, kitchen, puzzles, book exchange, etc. inside. These membership parks have events going on all of the time, especially during the summer. We didn't partake in any of them as I am not a poker player and most things happen on the weekends. We are retired so usually go camping during the week, leaving the facilities for those still working on the weekends.


There is no swimming pool here but there is a hot tub, located beside the men's showers & restroom, across from the clubhouse. For those who really want to swim, there is the ocean, but it is cold and there is a lot of surf.


The outer part of the Resort is across this bridge that goes over Conner Creek. This bridge looks a bit imposing but I don't find it any problem to drive over. It is no problem in the RV which is pretty large but in a car you can feel like you are about to drop the wheels on one side of your car off the side into the center part. The walkway on the right side is fairly new, having been added since I was last here in 2002. When I was first here in 1998, the outer area had not yet been developed.


This photo was taken from the bridge, looking north along Conner Creek. You can see the next bridge beyond ours. I think the water here is fresh water and it never seems to go up and down, so I'd guess it isn't affected by tides.


This is a view of the outer row of RVs. Ours is the one you can see the front of just beyond the blue pickup and it's trailer in about the center of the photo.


Here is our rig in it's space. Our electric jacks did not want to work on the right side so I ended up using the plastic blocks to raise that side to level the RV. You want to be as level as you can both for the benefit of the refrigerator and to help the slide out work smoothly. We will have to have the jacks checked and they should still be covered on warantee as I recall they were to be covered for two or three years. There were three nice groups of pampas grass just outside the door of our RV.


This view shows my favorite lady walking ahead of me as we were walking toward the bridge to go check out the clubhouse. Just beyond Pat is the building here in the outer part of the campground that contains the laundromat (there are two- one at the clubhouse) and both men's and women's showers & restrooms. Straight ahead is the bridge and it really isn't as far as it looks to be in this picture as this was taken with a fairly wide angel lens (18mm.) You can see her cell phone hooked to her belt. We had good cell phone connections all along the beach.


Ever since the outer area was opened there have been a couple of rental trailers available for members to rent. It used to be that you would get the space beside the trailer for your RV, the idea being that non-RVer friends or relatives would stay there while the member had their own rig close by. Now they have added a couple of what look to be park model RVs in those spaces.


The trail to the beach is just to the right of the right hand park model RV shown in the previous photo. The beach is about a quarter of a mile walk along a sand path through the tall grass. This part of the beach is always above the high tide line, although some areas here might get some salt water at high tide along with strong winds, like sometimes happens in the winter. And you do want to heed that warning sign about the tides. These beaches are notorious for rip tides. Some people drown every summer on the Washington beaches from not understanding how they work and being sucked out to sea. The open ocean is not a good place for people who are just learning to swim to practice. I'll show you some photos later of the waves that break on shore. This is the open Pacific Ocean. The next big land mass to the west is Asia.

We spent three nights here and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was 192 miles down there from home or 384 round trip. Our RV gets 8 miles to a gallon of gas which cost $3.919/gallon when we filled up, or about $188 for the trip. The campground cost nothing beyond my $280 plus tax dues for each year. $188 would not have covered three nights in motels down there and we ate all meals except lunches at the RV rather than paying restaurant prices. So, I think that even for a short trip like this one, it was cheaper to take the RV than it would have been with the car. And besides, I like being off in the RV. More soon.

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