Today was a travel day. Since the Thousand Trails Pacific City Preserve has fabulous scenery but few sewer hookups, our first stop was at the park’s only dump station. This particular dump station has very narrow lanes bordered by yellow painted pipe bollards to protect the drains and hose reels. We know about this because when we visited here 5 years ago I turned just a bit too sharp for the conditions when exiting the challenging conditions and ended up with some of the yellow paint on the very back section of our trailer’s right side wall. We cleaned it off so I wouldn’t look so clumsy.

This time, we got through the dump station much lighter and unscathed and headed for US-101. US-101 is a superb highway but the section from Pacific City to Seaside is very twisty and there is quite a bit of climbing and descending as one passes north through the coast range of mountains. By the time we made it to Hammond, the town next to Fort Stevens State Park, we had taken 3 hours to do just over 90 miles of spectacular highway. Our average, despite the 55 mile an hour speed limit, was 30 miles per hour. It was strange coming across speed limit signs that indicated we better not be exceeding 55 followed closely by cautionary signs with a curved arrow suggesting a proper speed in the upcoming series of turns was probably no more than 30. We pulled over whenever we got more than a couple cars behind us, which occurred regularly.

We got to Fort Stevens SP about 2:00 PM and Peggy headed into the Ranger station to get the paperwork associated with our reservation. We then moseyed down the park roads until we found Loop M and then Space 54. It is a very nice pull-through space with spruce and hardwood forest surrounding it. There are full utility hookups here. What there isn’t is proper phone signal or WiFi. The towns of Seaside, Warrenton and Astoria are all nearby and we figured, incorrectly, that there would be phone and data communications. We were mistaken. Nevertheless, the park is absolutely beautiful with old growth spruce and alder trees, good roads and lots of stuff to see. We rewarded ourselves with cocktails in the shade after our arrival and setup. This is our second visit to this state park, the last time being in 2014 on our initial trip with the Barbarian Invader fifth wheel trailer and our sturdy Ford F-250 truck.