#9 - Big Pines Campground - Our New Home

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Our original plan was to head into the northern Cascades after visiting Coulee, but it is being reported that there are three fires going on up there. It is also closer to British Columbia, so we are choosing the go southwest towards Mount Ranier and around Seattle via the southern route. We're a little under the gun to find a good place to hunker in over Labor Day.
As we drove away, we quickly saw  that we could have spent another day riding around Coulee. The drive was just beautiful heading south and we ended up stopping at a place called Dry Falls. Can't tell you a lot about it but the first three pictures will show you.
After our last RV site, Rick was ready for some 'back to nature' camping and I agreed. We had done some research and were hoping to get into a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) non-reservable site around Yakima, WA. Sure enough, we found a place about 65 miles east of Mount Rainier called Yakima Canyon. Big Pines Recreation Site would be our new home through Labor Day. We're about halfway between two cities; Yakima and Ellensburg with a beautiful ride through the canyon to either. Big Pines also sits along the Yakima River and about every 2-3 hours a big train meanders around us. It follows the river all the way through the canyon and I'm happy. Mountains, trains and beautiful blue skies...what more could I want? Electricity maybe? Internet? TV? At least phone? Not to be but I can do this. Rick has wanted to test Shorty and see how we do with "boondocking". That is, living with what's in the RV; limited water, 12v lighting, limited holding tanks, etc. We will run the generator for an hour/day to keep our batteries in good shape. Big Pines is our test site. Nine days worth. I'm willing to give it a try. 😯
Here's hoping for...

Happy trails. 🎵🎵