Tuesday, July 10 – Champoeg State Park, St. Paul OR97137

Good morning sunshine, thanks for coming!  This is a nice State Park, well laid out, clean modern bathrooms, well cared for tracks, biking trails and hiking trails.  Neighbours have gone and come last night as well as this morning so we have been entertained.

We are going for an explore on our bikes this morning, first planned stop is the historic Butteville Store a couple of miles west of the camp.  Well, we got past the single lane bridge where we must walk our bikes, then get to the road with still a half mile to go, think ‘can we be bothered’ there is a hill in front of us, decide yes we should, we must be so close, then come to another hill and decide feck it – it is only a store.  When we get back to camp we see the sandwich board for the store, we missed coffee and ice cream.  Hmm, we hadn’t taken any money so would have dipped out anyway.

Communing with nature

We rode back along the bike trail the way we came and then went east away from the camp, where I had walked yesterday.  We check out the fishing pier where a young couple had caught a small catfish for their dinner and were going for another to round out the meal.  The river height is pretty low right now, the ramp down was very steep.  There are some very expensive looking homes with piers on the other side, some of which we can see between the trees on this side.  Reminds us a little of the Murray River.  Look at this swarm of mozzies or other low flying water loving insects, makes you itch just looking at them.

Would make a nice snack for lurking fish

We ride back through the park.  The Bike Repair Station is a nice touch, it’s complete with tools (on wires - protection from cycling kleptomaniacs), a couple of platforms for carrying out the repairs and a robust bike pump.

Pump it up Kim!

We spend a relaxing afternoon outside enjoying the summer weather and watching the world go by.

There is a movie tonight at 9pm at the amphitheatre, it’s about Beavers.  Kim isn’t interested but I go across, its just down the track from us.  There are about 15 of us there and such a nice night.  A brown bat (at least that’s what someone called it) came to visit briefly.  Did you know beavers can chop down 400 trees in a year and only second to man, in the impact they have on the planet.