We finally decided not to spend the entire month of September camping in Montana. Wildfires were still raging in Eastern Wash, Idaho and Montana. And Covid was on the rise again with the delta variant surging in areas where folks were refusing to vaccinate. Neither of those factors gave us a warm fuzzy “hey let’s go there” feeling. So we decided to take a little staycation and maybe one or two more quick local camping trips.
I was watching where other folks were talking about great campsites, and started reading about Fort Stevens in NW Oregon and Cape Disappointment in SW Washington. Between the two was the mouth of the Columbia River.
Fort Stevens is a 3,763-acre Oregon State Park with beaches, hiking & biking trails, a historic fortress, a 1906 shipwreck, and the south jetty on the mouth of the Columbia River. All the campsites were booked, of course, but here and there were some cancellations in the middle of the month. I finally found a site for two nights on a Wednesday and Thursday and booked it.
A few nights later I started looking for a spot at Cape Disappointment, which is the Washington State Park on the SW coast just across the river. It is a 2,023-acre camping park on the Long Beach Peninsula, fronted by the Pacific Ocean and looking into the mouth of the Columbia River, including the north jetty of the river bar. And what should show up but a 4 night vacancy starting the Friday we ended at Fort Stevens. So that was booked and our week of camping was locked in.
Fort Stevens is a shockingly beautiful campground. It felt more like a fancy private park than a state park. We’re curious now about Oregon’s other parks and whether this was a one-off or a result of their very high standards. With only two days to explore and so much territory, we were busy discovering all there was to see. One day we pulled out the power bikes and rode on beautiful paved trails through the woods and around the old fort. Another day we drove out to the south jetty to see the view of the entrance to the river, but construction on the jetty has all of the viewing platforms closed, so this will have to wait for some other time.
Friday morning we packed up the camper and headed north across the Astoria bridge. After a lunch stop in Ilwaco we found our spot at Cape Disappointment. Our initial impression was a shocking disenchantment at the difference between the two parks. The bathrooms were filthy, the park employees were snarky compared to the ones across the river, and there is just no good reason why that should be. But once we got past the lack of care for the facilities and started exploring the park we soon fell as much in love with Cape Disappointment as we had Fort Stevens.
We knew some weather and serious rain were coming in over the weekend, so we did a bit of “car touring” between the downpours. One stop was at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center where we learned all about their journey and saw many of the artifacts from the trip. It was really interesting. We also hunkered down and got out a puzzle one very rainy night. Of course neither of us were going to give up until it was done, which resulted in a very late night.
Eventually the weather passed and the sun came back out and we got to take the bikes on the riding trails on the peninsula. This Discovery Trail winds along the shoreline all the way to the north end of the town of Long Beach. It was a beautiful day for a bike ride and lunch on the beach.
As an added bonus, the last night of our trip the burn ban that had been in effect all summer in all of Washington State was lifted and we got to have a campfire. There are many reasons why these two state parks are so popular, and we definitely will be looking for opportunities to visit again. Hopefully when Max and Murphy are old enough to ride bikes longer distances, we can get them down to enjoy all there is to see. Here are the rest of the pix I took in our photo site: