9-26-2020 Alder Lake Main
Camping has just not been on the to do list this year. (#theseuncertaintimes) We were supposed to have put close to 6000 miles on the camper this year. 3 trips to eastern Oregon, a couple trips to the coast, a couple trips to Spokane, a couple trips to southern Oregon. absolutely none of that happened. Couple the pandemic lock down with all these wildfires shutting down every forest, park, and outdoor recreation area... We are spending too much time at home.
This weekend we decided that we should just pack the camper and drive. We ended up here on Alder Lake. The campgrounds are managed by Tacoma Public Utilities. Everything has power and water, some have Sewer. They are all on the more expensive side. Still, the sites are reasonablely far apart, its well maintained with manicured lawns in each site, reasonable privacy.
It’s rained last night. Everything is so dry that even with the rain there is still a state wide burn ban. No fires of any kind.
We walked out to the dam. At the time it was built in 1945 it was the 3rd tallest in the US. It’s really tall. No fish ladder so they must stock the lake. Fishing seems pretty popular here. There is a giant group camp section here too. There must be over 100 sites dedicated to group camp. There are massive fire pits, large communal outdoor kitchen areas. Every site has power water and sewer. I think we need to look into that. Might be an idea for getting everyone together. Special arrangements would need to be made for mom and Jenny. I’m sure its a solvable problem.
I had a shop replace the water pump on the pickup. I suppose I could have done it myself, but on this Ford it’s a 3 hour pain in the butt job. I was happy to pay someone an obnoxious amount of money to do it for me. It was a little low on coolant this morning, the overflow bottle was empty. Probably just a bubble in the system when they refilled. I forgot to pack my tools. I should pick up a small tool box with wrenches and sockets to keep in the camper.