We left McMinnville and headed northeast toward Portland and the Columbia River Gorge, looking for Cascade Locks and the Bridge of the Gods. It was only about 100 miles to our next campground, so it was a truly enjoyable ride. After a bit we got on I-5 north and once in Portland proper took the exit to I-84 east toward the Bridge of the Gods.
It is a beautiful drive along the river. I was surprised how big the river is. I haven’t seen large ships on it yet, only tugs pushing barges and the occasional river boat with a working paddle wheel for propulsion. When I looked at www.MarineTraffic.com for ships on the river east of Portland, they all appeared to have drafts of 12′ or less, suggesting the river isn’t very deep. I haven’t seen any channel markers in the river yet.
We were hoping to find a rest stop along the river, but we never did and soon we were at the Cascade Locks exit heading over to the toll booth for the Bridge of the Gods. During my prior recon using Street View, the
toll booth charges were written on a small A-frame sign on what looked like flip chart paper. It said $3 for a motorhome. Today the sign looked more official and was mounted on the booth itself and the price had gone up 66% to $5 for a motorhome. Now that’s some inflation!
We paid the toll, and as we exited the booth, noticed how narrow the bridge was. Just then a truck coming towards us veered over into our lane
because of a pedestrian walking on the bridge. Why they allow pedestrians on a very narrow bridge without a sidewalk is puzzling. There is no way to stay in your lane while going past them unless you are a motorcycle.
On the other side of the river we found our “rest stop” on a small hillside where we walked the pup and made lunch. We needed to kill some time as check-in time wasn’t till 2pm.
We were there for about an hour and then headed east on Washington State Highway 14 toward the hamlet of Home Valley. One thing you notice when driving along the river is the train tracks are on both sides and the trains are long with lots of containers stacked two high. I’m guessing Portland must have a very large container ship port or maybe all the goods from Seattle/Tacoma ship east thru here too.
It was probably a 10-mile drive on Hwy 14 to our turnoff on a small road heading up the mountain, which kept getting narrower till another turnoff that got even narrower than the first road. It was there I 
wondered if I made a mistake choosing this park to get farther away from the train tracks. Luckily it was just a short hop on the extremely narrow road to the park and we got there unscathed. We had an easy spot to back into right down near the office with a big gravel driveway to maneuver the coach.
The owners were a young couple from the LA area that wanted out of the rat race. They definitely found that. This place is surely not part of that.
This is a very nice campground and you can just barely hear the train whistles if you listen closely, which is just perfect to me. I like to hear them in the distance; but from what I read about park reviews down near the river, they sound more like you are stuck on a grade crossing with the train barreling toward you.