Rufus, OR - Boondocking

Saturday - We are staying at the boondocking location in Rufus, OR, for another day. It is pretty nice here with some windsurfer activity in the Columbia River including some that look like hydrofoils. The main part of the board is about 20" above the water. Kind of cool. 

This afternoon, we visited the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in The Dalles, OR. It was a nice museum with most of the emphasis on the Lewis & Clark expedition and the building of the dams. There is a fair amount of shipping going on and I hadn’t known about all the canals and locks.

As we were leaving, they were setting up for a wedding so it was starting to get a bit crowded. Speaking of crowds, this boondocking area is getting busy with all the people playing on the water. 

By this morning, our batteries were down to 45%. I think the StarLink may draw almost as much power as the refrigerator. We ran the generator for 3 hours this morning to get it back to 80%. The solar barely kept up through the middle of the day. 

Sunday - A very quiet day. Most of the people didn’t stay the night. Maybe because it was pretty windy. I adjusted the pressure in two of the rear tires. The 12V air compressor takes a long time with the RV tires. I saw a Dewalt compressor that uses the 20V batteries but it is hard to find. I kept checking at all of the Home Depot and Lowe’s but only found one in a demolished box (no discount offered). 

This morning, there was only one wind surfer on the water. Maybe it’s not windy enough today. The CoE park we are headed to this afternoon says that their water needs to be boiled before drinking. So we are looking at getting some water before arriving. The Sinclair gas station wants $5/10 gal for water. We have essentially four days of dry camping ahead of us so it may be worth it. 

Our new spot at the CoE park near the mouth of the John Day River. Pretty nice and we are sheltered from the wind.