Summer 2021 Western Trip – 8 – Blustery Wanapum State Park in Washington

After a somewhat reasonable three hour drive we pulled into our full hookups campsite at Wanapum State Park in a very dry section of Eastern Washington.  We find that state parks typically provide the spacious campsites when compared to private campgrounds, but they’re usually sparse on utilities, so it was a nice treat to get this spot with all the utilities included.  What we didn’t count on were the sustained near hurricane force winds.  

Our campsite was under a tree which made things even more interesting.  We figured the tree had seen this type of wind many times before so probably wouldn’t fall on us, but branches were hitting the RV and the nature of the parking pad didn’t give us any room to move.  This was actually the first time we ended up pulling our slide in for the night at a paid campsite.  We did that for a lower profile against the wind, and to keep the tree from banging on the side of our RV all night.  At least the RV did provide a wind break on our BBQing side of our rig so we were still able to grill up burgers and even eat outside at the picnic table that along with the BBQ, was on the lee side.

The wind was in full effect all night which made sleeping interesting.  It died down in the early morning with the RV still upright, so at least there was that.  We were scheduled to stay in the park for just one night so in between morning meetings we unhooked and drove to the empty boat launch parking lot to finish out the work day.  The temperature was about 104 so we needed to run the generator to power the AC, with highly sus (as the kids these days would say) results.  It was pushing 96 inside the RV.  I had meetings most of the day and shvitzed inside, while Lana had a bit more flexibility so took the boys and Boomer down to the river to cool off in the water.

After work we drove to the Gingko Petrified Forest State Park visitors center (connected to the other state park we were staying in).  Of course they were closed by then, but we did get to check out some great views of the dammed up Columbia River and some petrified logs they had on display outside.  Then it was time to hit the road before the nightly hurricane started up again.  There was also the promise of cooler climes at our next stop in South Western Washington – woo hoo!