Campgrounds we loved, and didn't

©2013 Lydia Hinshaw

 Neighbor-free at Iron Creek

Dozing by the river at Ohanapekosh

 WANDERING ACROSS WASHINGTON STATE -- There are campgrounds and then there are campgrounds.  
 We've seen both ends of the spectrum, and all in the last week.
 Start with the great ones.
 Thursday night we found a wonderful spot in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest south of Randle, WA.  It didn't have much in the way of facilities, just occasional water spigots and SST's (sweet-smelling toilets, otherwise known as outhouses.)   But it was 10 miles from the highway so there was no traffic noise, just the faint hiss of the creek that runs below the campground.
 And it was nearly deserted.  There were 95 campsites, give or take, and we looked at all of them.  Only one was occupied.
 There is such a thing as too many choices.  We spent nearly an hour trying to select the perfect spot -- close enough to the SST and the running water, flat so we wouldn't have to use our levelers and with a picnic table that had not been ravished by termites (or something similar.)
 It would have been much easier if there had been only one campsite available.
 As it was getting dark, we began to have second thoughts.  We were miles from a telephone, with no cell signal, and no one on earth knew exactly where we were.  The only other people in the campground were strangers, out of sight several hundred yards away.
 We broke out our only weapons -- bear spray -- and slept with the canisters close by.  The night passed without incident.
 Friday we advanced a full 40 miles on our journey and landed at Ohanapekosh Campground in Mount Rainier National Park.  Since we were there at 10 a.m., we got our choice of sites, and this time there weren't so many and it wasn't so difficult.  We claimed a water-view site, overlooking the Ohanapekosh River, and checked in for two nights, because we didn't want to be fighting weekend crowds in finding a place to stay Saturday.  With our geezer passes, this site cost us $6 per night.
 This National Park campground had flush toilets, a big improvement, but by the end of our two nights here we had been four days without showers.  This is not a good situation to be in for all the obvious reasons and also because it leaves you willing to settle for almost anything in your next campground, as long as there's plenty of hot water.
 And so we wound up in the pits Sunday night.  The directions to our campground in Ritzville, WA, told us to look for it behind the Conoco station.
And there it was, a gravelly parking lot next to a shower house.
 I've included no pictures of this place, because it doesn't deserve any.  We camped next to a derelict motorhome that, according to its license tag, had not been driven legally since 2010.
 We had water, electricity and even a sewer connection (though no means to use it), but no picnic table.  In decades of camping, this was a first.
 When we checked in, at the desk of the adjacent motel, the clerk didn't know anything about picnic tables, and seemed puzzled that we would want one.
 We surely enjoyed those showers, though.