We left Fort Stevens this morning so we could continue our northward trek. Fort Stevens is an amazingly beautiful campground in a gorgeous area and we were sort of sorry to leave. We hooked up and drove a few miles toward Astoria to get back on US-101 but once in town, we turned east on OR-30 for a run along the south shore of the Columbia River. It is a squirrelly road for the first 30 miles or so but it eventually straightened out and we got the truck and trailer up to 55 for some short runs.

We crossed a bridge over the Columbia and soon we arrived in Kelso, WA. From there, we took I-5 for 40 or 50 miles before turning east along the north shore of the Cowlitz River. Maybe 15 miles later, we arrived in Silver Creek, home to a U.S. Post Office and not too much more. We pulled into the Thousand Trails Paradise Campground and, remarkably, found an RV site with full hookups and satellite TV reception. In this campground, there are very few sites with satellite reception because it is situated beneath a full canopy of large Douglas fir trees that are very pretty but rough on signal reception. The campground is also built on the side of a hill and the spaces can be scary to pull into. Mysteriously, we pulled into our RV space with a single pass, surprising not only us but also our neighbors. It was nearly a miracle and I would love to take credit for highly talented driving but I think actually I was just lucky.

We probably did not drive over 100 miles today but it took three hours on the road. This part of the world offers truly magnificent scenery but areas of that ilk frequently have serpentine and hilly highways to get around the stunning terrain. We are not in a hurry so slow transit just does not matter to us.