Sunday, June 25, 2017

Columbia River RV Park

While we were in Portland, we stayed at the Columbia River RV Park.  It’s located west of the end of the runway of the Portland International Airport.  The Oregon Air National Guard is based at PDX, flying F-15s (which are noisy airplanes).  Fortunately, it’s not a training wing, so they don’t fly as much as the F-16s in Tucson.  I think how one feels about this park will be largely affected by what time you like to wake up.  Commercial flight operations start at 6:00 am.  This is not when Jim and I like to wake up.  The F-15s generally leave mid morning.  We both have been feeling sleep deprived due to the early morning departures.

This is a C-17 on about two mile final.

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The RV park is on Marine Drive, which runs along the Columbia River.  It’s 13 miles to I84.  The on ramp to I205 is convenient.  The Max station we used was at the Expo Center.  If they’re running some sort of an event, you’ll have to pay for parking.  Pay it, it will just be easier for you.  Traffic in Portland has reached the levels of awfulness we observed in San Diego in 2015.  When we drove to the Expo Center to take Max to the zoo yesterday, I5 northbound and the roads leading to the on-ramps were gridlocked at 10:00 am.  I like Portland, but the dificulty of moving about sucks some of the fun out of the area.

The park is pretty good.  Sites are concrete with grass in between them.  We were on 113, which was level.  You are close to the neighbors, but not so much that you’ll have dueling awnings.  Interior streets are paved.  Power is good, water pressure is adequte.  We generally had 4 bars of Verizon 4G with decent response time.  The laundry room is good.  Small washers are $2.  Dryers are 50 cents for 10 minutes.  No data on the restrooms.

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The sewers are way far back on the sites.  Some of the towables are using 30 feet of sewer hose.  Park carefully!

There are many permanent residents.  If you want to stay here, reserve as soon as you know your dates.  They do not give refunds.  if you must cancel, there is a $35 charge for that.

These people were beside us for awhile.  They have a Hoby trimaran.  We wondered how they transported it.  This is how.  It goes in the back of a toy hauler travel trailer.  Given the length of the thing, it makes more sense than a 5th wheel.  They have to pack their furniture in around it when traveling.

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If Columbia River RV is full, there is the Sandy Riverfront RV Resort on historic highway 30 in Troutdale.  We drove by it, it looked ok from a distance.  I would link to their website, but it’s returning an internal server error at the moment.

2 comments:

  1. We will be there for the first 2 weeks of September. It's our go to park for Portland. And we know about the Portland traffic and try to take back roads to avoid it.

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  2. We were near this area (but in a hotel) when we traveled to Portland in our Honda CR-V in 2014. We both cycled and took public transportation (on different days) from near our hotel into downtown and enjoyed seeing Portland for the first time. We enjoyed not having to drive in the city. The bicycling and public transportation infrastructure is so good there, it was a pleasure!

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