Well this stop was quite a departure from the last few stops in Oregon. The last few parks have been small, intimate, and somewhat pricey. But for some of the prime spots on the ocean, that isn't unusual. However, this time we checked into Fort Stevens State Park, located at the meeting point of the Columbia River and the Pacific. And this is no ?intimate? little RV park. Fort Stevens has over 500 sites of all types. FHU, Electric and Water, and tenting. They are arranged in a series of loops, and most of the loops are among stands of giant trees, easily 100' tall. While this makes for a lot of shade in the warm parts of the year, if the weather is cool you may never see the sun all day. All the campground roads are paved as well are the parking pads. The rest of the site is dirt and gravel, so bring a rug if you have one. There is also large bushes growing around many of the sites, so your neighbors are partially obstructed. Each site has a fire ring and a picnic table, but the tables are a little worn. The site itself was decent size, but we goofed up and picked a site that had the walkway to the restrooms right next to us. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but the kids on bikes riding on the ?no bikes allowed? sidewalk to the bathroom got a little annoying. The other problem with the huge tree canopy was that satellite signal was impossible. The roof mounted dish didn't have a chance, and after about 90 minutes with the remote dish, I gave up and went for the OTA antenna. It worked OK, but most the channels were PBS and a few locals. So not much TV was used during the stay.
The bathrooms and showers are handicapped accessible and are in good condition. Our Verizon air card worked decently well here, but there were periods of unexplained dropouts so the service was not 100% reliable. There is no Wifi offered by the park itself.
This is a great park to bring bicycles to not only due to all of the paved loops to ride through, but there is a whole system of paved bike trails that run throughout the park that take you to the various historic Gun Battery's in the park. We would have loved to bike the trails, but soon after arrival I inspected our bikes that we have had with us since we left on the trip in April. They had not had much use up to this point, and because of the small parks on the coast we have stayed in for the last few weeks, and considering the damp ocean winds we had, both bikes were about rusted solid and wouldn't move! Our bikes have been around for about 5 years, and have been back and forth across the country, sometimes twice every year, riding on the back of the Jeep . I have been repairing stuff as I went along, but they just may be done for this time.
Without bikes, Diane and I walked and even ran many of the trails in the park. One day we took off walking with Heidi (our faithful mutt) to visit Battery Russell, which is about 1.25 miles from the campground. The trails are mostly shaded and are gently rolling hills for the mots part. After Battery Russell, I had the great idea to walk to the next set of Battery's down the road, it couldn't be too far, right? Well we did the walk and by the time we got back to the campground, we had covered over 7 miles! Heidi thought we must have lost our minds. Another fun thing to do is to drive the beach. There is a access road in the park that takes you to the remains of the shipwreck Peter Iredale. Right next to it is the access road to the beach. We drove access road #1 and popped out on the beach and headed south. You can drive the beach for about 10 miles, and there are a total of 6 access roads in the 10 mile stretch. A 4 wheel drive is recommended because of the loose sand on the access roads. Once on the firm damp sand, any car could easily drive the whole 10 mile distance. We drove it twice while we were there, and on the second day we noted that access #6 had been graded and smoothed. Any passenger care could make it easily to the beach.
The other big change with this park, and the reason that it was usually sold out, is that for a FHU site we paid just over $33 a night, quite a switch from the last few stops. Interestingly, directly across the street from the entrance to Fort Stevens is a KOA campground. It looked to be a pretty big park, and they usually had a sign out saying that they had sites available. KOA tends to be much more expensive though, and they also charge a pet fee and a resort fee per day. Another reason why the state park usually sells out first.
Also on the way to Fort Stevens we stopped off in Tillamook at the Tillamook Cheese factory for lunch and some goodies from the factory store. It's about 40 miles south of Fort Stevens, and really worth the stop. It has a huge parking lot and special lots just for RV's. We also visited Astoria while we were in Fort Stevens. It's an interesting town with lots of shops and restaurants, and we patronized a few. Diane's blog will have more detail pics about these locations.
Cool stuff about this park:
1) Great price for a FHU site.
2) Paved roads and parking pads.
3) Lots of shade trees for sunny days.
4) Tons biking trails, and separate hiking trails as well.
5) Driving on the beach.
6) Lots of stuff to see and do in the park.
7) Separate play ground for the kids.
Not cool stuff about this park:
1) No patio's for chairs.
2) Super heavy canopy makes satellite impossible.
3) Trash dumpsters are not in the camping loops. Set aside in a special parking lot that is quite a hike to get to.
4) No park Wifi, and sketchy cell signal.