Rainstorms and bunnies, an essay on RV parks

(Susan)

(Note that the previous post now has all the proper pictures uploaded.)

Tonight we’re in Kettle Falls, at the base of the enormous Sherman Pass. Getting here today the weather was schizophrenic–the rain would start coming down and we’d have to stop and put on all our layers, and then the sun would come out and it’d get hot and humid and we’d have to stop again and take everything off. There was pretty scenery:

Once we got into camp we had to lay out the tent, fly, and etc to dry them out in the sun after the good soaking they got this morning. The RV park we’re camping at here is another really nice one, complete with a flock of tame bunnies:

I briefly noted in yesterday’s post that the Ione RV park was subpar, but didn’t explain why. This may be a good opportunity to go into the relative differences between good and bad RV parks, of which we have become quite the conossieurs. In short, nice ones are nice because somebody cares enough to keep them up–mow the lawn, make sure there’s no dog poop on it, clean the bathrooms, replace things as they get broken, etc. Often the nice ones, like this one here in Kettle Falls and the one we stayed at two nights ago in Newport, are accredited or recognized by national organizations of some sort and feature recreational areas as well as just the pull-in spots and hookups. But, as Tolstoy said, nice RV parks are all the same, and the bad RV parks are all bad in their own ways. For example, the park in Gackle, ND that we’ve been warning all the east-bound cyclists about for a thousand miles had no working bathrooms and was littered with trash that included a broken toilet seat. However, the owner appeared to be in possession of all his faculties and let us stay for free to boot, perhaps out of a sense of guilt. In contrast, the bad RV park we stayed at last night in Ione, WA, featured an owner who was completely baked out of his gourd when we first met him, but somehow not quite stoned enough not to spend the entire night getting outrageously high on his front porch, which doubled as the RV park office. Unfortunately, we had to walk just feet front the porch to get around to the bathrooms–which, though technically functional, had not been cleaned since the last time the owner was sober. The owner, who looked just like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, shared the evening with an odd collection of men ranging in age from 19 to 50-something; by the time I walked past for a late night bathroom trip the conversation had devolved to making odd noises at each other and then giggling, an occupation which stopped uncomfortably when I came by. [“Herrrrooooo,” said Dennis Hopper to me from the porch.*giggles* “Hi.” “How are youuuuu?” “Fine, how are you?” “Being noisy!” *giggles*) Then, after we’d gone to bed, we were woken up by the lot of them arguing about where their shoes had gone. In short, we were pretty motivated to get out of there this morning despite the incessant rain.

Anyway, tomorrow it may or may not rain as we ascend our 4000 feet in 20 miles, so we’ll try to take lots of pictures as long as we’re not miserable. Tuesday is supposed to be solid downpours all day so it looks now like we’ll be taking a rest day in Republic before continuing on with the next 3 passes.