Oregon’s newest park is still in its infancy, and so is our trip

Everything is shiny and new at Cottonwood Canyon State Park, but the trees and shrubs are only about 1′ high. It’s beautiful if not a bit desolate. We made this the first stop on our trip to check it out. When we pulled in, the temperature must have been in the 90s. It’s primitive camping, so no AC. There’s a trail down to the river where we took Iris for a little swim to cool her off. Soon after we arrived, the wind picked up and blew quite a bit of dust, so we had to move inside. We balanced keeping the windows open for the breeze versus getting dust in the Casita. The wind kept picking up and howled over most of the night. You could hear the dirt hitting the Casita- it sounded like rain. There’s a fine layer of gritty dust on everything.

This morning, we learned that the coffee pot requires too much power to be ran on the battery. We resorted to Plan B, the Melitta, where Mike boiled water in a teapot and poured it over coffee in the Melitta. Thanks Mom and Dad for our backup coffee pot.