Our First Oregon stop

Coming up the 5 Highway from California into Oregon is an awesome trip. Took us about two seconds to figure out why the Oregon license plate has tree's on it! Millions and millions of trees! We are traveling with our good buddies Karl and Jeannie and Joe and Barbara so we have this little caravan that plows through the beautiful highways and by ways. We drove through Medford and headed for Valley of the Rogue Oregon State park. I can tell you one thing for sure, the Oregon state parks, at least on average, are much nicer that the California parks. They are bigger, more spacious, seem somehow more efficient and are much more reasonably priced. And in this little state (little compared to California) they have 275 parks.

Valley of the Rogue is situated on the Rogue river a little north of Bend. The Rogue river runs all the way to the Oregon Coast and is pretty mighty already at this point. Our camp area and sites were very large and had plenty of space between them. Large grassy area interspersed with big berry (I think black berry) bush thickets. Lots of trees of different types and lots of wild flowers. The river was actually about a 1/4 mile away, but easy walk. Here is our camp site and some of the flowers.

The section of the park we stayed in was the "F" section. Disadvantages; no sewer hook up and no wifi hook up (as the other sections had both for the same price) advantage, further from highway, quieter, more spacious.

Roxy loved this place, lots of squirrels, an occasional bunny, lots of grass, easy exercise. One night Rox and Dad went for a walk and spotted some cattle, including a few youngsters. Rox loves anything that resembles an animal (I think a prey! :-)) so we went to inspect. The cattle, especially the younger ones were equally curious and came over to inspect us. Eventually both Roxy and Dad got cow kisses, now we both have a cow lick!

One of the local attractions and fun things to do is go to close by Jacksonville. Drive to Medford and go west. Jacksonville is the oldest town in Oregon and very well preserved. Quaint, fun town and lots of history to learn about. Shelle and I just went wandering to get a feel of the town away from the tourist stuff (which is fine and a must do, but we wanted more exploring) and ended up visiting the grave yard. Sounds funny but it was fascinating and also very pretty. I learned what a Madron tree is, never saw one before. I love manzenita and this tree is related, it is like a big manzenita with the really cool red bark and beautiful shape. You can just barely see one on the left of this picture.

Well, I can't end with the grave yard, even though we thought it was a good find so we'll go back to camp and take Roxy to the river. By the way Roxy is enjoying this trip as much as we are. I'll try to find more time to update this blog but there is so much to do and see, well you know!