With just over 180 miles to do we had a relaxed start to our journey on Sunday to Ainsworth State Park, about 30 miles east of Portland. We followed the Columbia River and took the scenic route through Washington. We stopped off for coffee and sat in our chairs looking down at the river in the glorious sunshine – wonderful. We then crossed the river into Oregon and the wind whipped through the valley. Poor Seamus had to hang on to Harvey very firmly as he was buffeted in the wind and by the end of the journey his arms were aching. Thankfully as we neared the park the wind died down. We drew into the site and saw that the very first site was available and so we parked up there. It was just as well we did because we were in the best of the two small loops and there were no other spaces in our loop. We watched people come in and get turned away all afternoon and we were so pleased that we arrived when we did or we may have missed out too. We relaxed in the afternoon and took a very long shower which had been long overdue – it was blissful – very hot running water with no time limitation. Then we discovered that we had an intermittent internet signal and that together with electricity completed our wish list. Being on power we no longer had to worry about Harvey’s battery problem! Unfortunately we did not have a good night’s sleep and that was because, although we did not appear to be too badly off for being level, it was enough to make Linda’s stomach acid to complain and so we tried to sleep upsidedown for the night. It would not have been so bad had we been level right to left but our laziness at sorting this came back to bite us.

First thing on Monday morning we put Harvey on blocks to sort out the sleeping issue. We decided to pack our lunch and head off on a hike to Ponytail falls. The mosquitoes were pretty awful but fortunately Linda had on her beloved “Skin so soft” and they did not touch her – Seamus on the other hand got bitten. We walked over a mile through the forest and eventually discovered that we had taken a wrong turning. Oh well it was back to Harvey for lunch – we would hike to the falls the next day. We both decided that we wanted another long hot luxurious shower and so we relaxed in the afternoon sun and did a few chores before heading for the showers. We had a better night’s sleep but Linda decided that Harvey needed to go up a little more at the back.

So, on Tuesday morning we went up on another block and this felt much better. We wandered around the campsite in the morning looking for new little feathered friends and were delighted to find two, a chestnut backed chickadee and Wilson’s warbler. Straight after lunch we went on the Ponytail falls hike. It was very pleasant but poor Seamus despite being covered in Linda’s special formula was under attack from the mosquitoes – Linda did not get bitten once!! The falls were lovely and the air around them was very cool. We took a route back to the Scenic highway and walked back along the road. It was quite a tiring hike as a lot of it was up a very steep incline and the path was all rock some of which were quite sharp and so it was tough on the feet.