Cliffs Park

We arrived and first checked out Giles French Park on the Oregon side of the Columbia river. This is just below the John Day Dam. Giles has no hook-ups but is paved with grass and trees, but it was a sunny Friday afternoon and there were quite a few RVs. And we figured more were coming because it was going to be we think the first sunny weekend this spring.

We could look across the river to the Washington side and see Cliffs Park, we noticed there were many fewer RVs and a lot of space between them on that side. We drove down-river about five miles and crossed the bridge. There is a Washington State Park called Maryhill near the bridge, it has full hookups, and the campground was full. We have stayed there in the past and it is nice but we wanted to try out our new solar panel and do some real boon-docking.

We asked the ranger at the state park how to get to Cliffs but she was a volunteer and did not know. Our GPS took us up a real sketchy backroad. We should have gone back to the highway that we were on when we crossed the bridge. About a mile or two up from the bridge is a highway the runs parallel to the river, very high above the river. Fortunately at the Dam the highway drops to about river level. There is a right turn-off to the Cliffs Park. We took it. The road is a paved 35 mile an hour road that goes by an abandoned Aluminum factory and out to the dam.

As you drive downriver from the dam the paved road turns into a rough gravel road with really soft river rock. We have a 31 ft Winnebago class A and we drove carefully about five miles an hour and had no problems. Up about a mile we picked a very private dirt, gravel and wild grass spot right on the river.

As we drove here we passed several native american fisherman along the river. We met a young Indian fishing near us from the Yakima tribe. The Indians had many, very rickety docks that they have cobbled together on the beach to fish from. There are no designated sites, and we chose a site that was above the water which was very private.

It was great! We watched the barges go up and down the river, and saw the American Queen paddle boat pass us the day we arrived. If trains bother you than Cliffs or Giles across the river may not be your spot. There are east and west going tracks on both the Washington and Oregon sides of the river. We love trains and we train-watched with our binoculars, it was great! There's probably about one train every hour during the day on each side of the river. Maybe fewer trains at night and the engineers don't blow the train whistles much and we find trains going by very soothing. On our side the train tracks are up high and maybe a couple hundred yards away. There is a highway across the river for distant car and truck sounds.

Btw, we have US cellular and it worked great, three balls of LTE! 5 megs of internet.