New to the Pacific Northwest, Any recommendations?

[Shuckler]

The wife and I are new to the PNW, and we pick up our 2017 Imagine 2950RL tomorrow. We've got a couple weekends planned at Beverly Beach / Cape Lookout (Oregon). Anyone else have any recommendations for nice places in regards to winter camping?

[TucsonJim]

Congratulations on your new rig! Ginnie and I thought long and hard about that floorplan before we ordered our 297RSTS. We stayed in Seaside Oregon a couple of months ago at Circle Creek RV park. It was a vey nice park and it was easy to get to Seaside and Cannon Beach which were beautiful.

Jim

[goldsp8]

South Beach State Park on the South side of Newport is good spot, also the Port of Newport RV Park is pretty much right on the bay. You can walk across the bridge to old town Newport. If you look at the Oregon State Parks map, lot of neat parks right on/near the coast. If you are in to sand dunes, just South of Reedsport is a neat place. If you want to go inland before it gets really cold, Sister's is a very neat town. Up the Columbia River Gorge could be some spots also

[Shuckler]

Congratulations on your new rig! Ginnie and I thought long and hard about that floorplan before we ordered our 297RSTS. We stayed in Seaside Oregon a couple of months ago at Circle Creek RV park. It was a vey nice park and it was easy to get to Seaside and Cannon Beach which were beautiful.

Jim

Maybe you can help ease my concerns. I've never stayed in an RV park, instead always staying in state park campgrounds. Parks are always $20/night more. Is there a distinct advantage or any real benefits?

We love cannon beach but Haystack Hill is booked out to the end of the year. Will definitely try that next year.

[TucsonJim]

I prefer to dry camp myself, but there are some advantages to a park such as power, cable, sewer and water in your site it the park is equipped with them. It's a nice change of pace once in a while to have all the hookups.

Jim

[Shuckler]

Understood, however, I have found that the few places we have gone/booked (Lake Wallowa, Beverly Beach, Devils Lake, Ainsworth) all have full hookups. I'll have to check out one of the RV parks you listed.

As far as dry camping, I love to, but my wife is relatively new to the camping experience. She prefers to stay on the grid.

[notsosan]

We have stayed in state parks at South Beach, Nehalem Bay, Cape Disappointment, Grayland Beach and Fort Worden (Port Townsend) as late as Halloween. All good spots. Enjoyed Bullards Beach as well. Bandon is a neat little town.

[Shuckler]

Will definitely check all those out! Thank you. I'm more worried about December camping. We come from California where it didn't dare get below 50 at night

[notsosan]

Just keep an eye on the weather forecasts, parts of Hwy 101 are subject to slide closures during the winter.

[Deb from Cali]

We love camping in Oregon and Washington. If you want to go over into Washington side of the Columbia River there is a great county park campground in Skamokawa. It is right on the Columbia and you can watch the ships navigate the Columbia. We have camped there twice and can't wait to go back again. They have everything from full hook-up sites to dry camping.

We have been up and down the Oregon coast several times, but don't remember the actual names of the campgrounds, but there are many to choose from.

The one campground that we did do this last trip was Silver Falls State park. That is really a great park that is due East from Salem. We had full hooks-up which is a very,very rare thing at a California state park. The sites are set up for longer trailers and have shrubs and trees between almost every site so you have lots of privacy.

The park has a waterfall hike that is an amazing, but an all day event. 8 miles to see 10 waterfalls. It was a great hike. The only problem with the hike is that there various entrances and sections of loops in the trail, which aren't mark. There are maps, but the maps aren't very clear either with no major reference points. It would be helpful if they put the bridges on that map, then you might have a clue as to where you were on the trail. We ended up missing our cut-off and ended up hiking about 3 extra miles.

Another great hidden gem is Metzler park. This one is east of Portland. This one has partial hooks, which meant that you had no sewer. The pictures on their website don't do the park justice. There is a beautiful little river running through the campground. A swimming hole, little hikes, a really cool bridge over the river. Lots of room for sports, baseball, basketball, frisbee golf, covered picnic areas, etc. They even put up a big screen in the lawn area during the weekends to show a Disney type family movie.

For the record, DO not confuse Metzler park with Metzger park We did that. It was not pretty. I was half asleep when I printed the maps to our destinations, that's my story and I am sticking to it.