Guppy Among the Whalefish

Notes from Lynn:

Like a guppy in a school of whalefish, our minicamper swam into Pad No. 97. With no public campgrounds near Portland (a common failing in big cities), the Pheasant Ridge RV Resort beckoned from the pages of the AAA Northwest Campbook. We were in Wilsonville, a Portland suburb, and this would be our first visit to one of thousands of commercial encampments for houses with tires. It was dark. We paid $33, keyed the security code into the shower room, brushed our teeth, lowered our curtains and crawled into our tiny nest. At daybreak, a whole new world came into view. We were awestricken.

A self-propelled motor home sprawled on a nearby pad. As long as a 1947 crackerbox bungalow, about 45 feet, it stood at least 12 feet high. Pop-out bays enhanced its 10-foot width. Its name would have been appropriate for a schooner. Across the little street, the morning sun gleamed on the stern of another fat motor home, an Escalade. It was gold, of course. A behemoth house trailer, called Alumascape, appeared to be hitched – improbably – to a Mustang convertible. Scores of motor homes were as big as Greyhound buses. (On the right, a Phaeton.)

In a big corral with 133 pads and few vacancies, assuming an average evaluation of maybe $50,000 per RV (probably on the low side), the Pheasant Ridge adventurers had more than $6 million tied up in their Bluebirds, Allegros, Gulfstreams, Pathfinders and Newells. We saw Komfort, Mountain Aire and Monaco. We saw Phaeton, Bigfoot and Winnebago Adventure. We even saw one lonely Airstream. But we didn’t see any people until a man from Rexburg, Idaho, emerged from his Arctic Fox truck camper. He explained that he and his wife take off about one weekend every month. Usually it’s with a friend from Idaho Falls, also driving an Arctic Fox. Both are retired businessmen, genial and untroubled.

The RV world would seem to offer liberty and freedom, but you couldn’t tell it from the dozens of rules for good behavior at Pheasant Ridge: No double parking, no parking on the grass strips, no "head-in" parking in the lot, absolutely no pets of more than 40 pounds, no kids or pregnant women in the spa, no clotheslines, no mechanical repairs, no “kitchen waste” in the garbage cans, no open fires, no car washing, no skateboards or rollerblades, etc. etc. Before anyone could say no minivans, we wiggled past the leviathans and out into Interstate 5’s river of cars.

Notables:
In Portland, no parking meters. Instead, you pump your quarters – or your debit card – into a nearby machine. It disgorges a piece of paper about the size of a playing card. It’s imprinted with the amount, the time and the expiration. You stick it to the inside of the window on the curb. Ingenious.
At Portland’s Jefferson High School, a big sign says “Home of the Demos.”

Note from Margo:

Everything’s relative.

At the Diamond Lake campground, before our lesson on whalefish, Lynn and I were commenting on an RV-style trailer in a neighboring campsite – it was about 35 feet long, had three pop-out rooms on its sides, and a satellite TV dish on the back. It seemed like a lot for camping. Later, I was talking with the owner as he walked his Pomeranian in the morning. Turns out he and his wife sold their house, and they live full-time in the trailer. Very big for camping. Pretty small for a house. Everything’s relative.

Several months before this trip, I was on a week-long backpack in the Sierra, carrying pretty much the bare minimum. While Lynn and I were packing for this trip, I kept telling him we were bringing way too much stuff. He kept pointing out, “We are not backpacking.” What would be an impossible load in a backpack is traveling pretty light in a car. Everything’s relative.

When we stayed overnight at the Aaslands’ house in Bend, Oregon, they put us up in a queen-size bed, the same size we have at home. After sleeping for several nights in the little coccoon-size bed in the minivan, the queen bed felt like sleeping on a baseball field. I felt like yelling over to Lynn’s side of the bed: “How’re you doing over there?” It’s all relative.

Mileage today (actually yesterday): Wilsonville to Vancouver, Wa.: 29

Total mileage: 733