rvSeniorMoments

Jun 12

2 Comments

Lucky Lodge RV Park (Gold Beach, OR)

Emigrant Lake, CA to Gold Beach, OR

We’ve been at Lucky Lodge for about as week and have been checking it out as a possible monthly spot for next summer.

Our first impressions of the park and area are great.

Click on photo to enlarge

Our Site #9

View from our RV Door

Rogue River

Flirt’s Swimming Hole

Jun 6

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A Best Buy – The Kamp-Rite Kwik Set Hammock

One of our neighbors at Emigrant Lake, our previous campground, had a portable hammock that we really liked the look of. So we bought one and had it sent to our next campground.

At under $100 delivered, the Kwik Set Hammock is one comfortable, but heavy, hammock.

Love at first . . .

Jun 5

4 Comments

Campground Internet Report 1

We’re about 1/3 of the way through our West Coast trip. I thought it was a good time to summarize our experiences with campground Internet, a service we depend on in our travels.

At a campground, we can get Internet services through one or more of the following:

Campground WiFi – if, and only if, it’s available.
Verizon – we have an old New Verizon 40 GB Plan and use a USB730L modem plugged into a Cradlepoint 1200B router.
AT&T – we have an Unlimited Data plan using an AT&T Mobley.
HughesNet Gen 5 – we currently have a 50 GB/month plan using a .98M HughesNet Gen 5 dish.

So how did each of these work out in the last 16 campgrounds we stayed?

Here are the results . . .

Click on graph to enlarge

MY CONCLUSIONS:

First, and foremost, any conclusions are tentative as 16 campgrounds is just not enough data. That said . . .

“Satellite Internet isn’t necessary because cellular reception is available at the vast majority of campgrounds” – this is a common statement found on web RV forums. Well, I had to use my HughesNet Gen 5 dish in almost 1/3 (5 of 16) of the RV parks we stayed because there was no Verizon or AT&T cell service available.
“Campground WiFi is crappy” – another popular web forum notion. Though I wasn’t expecting much, I found campground WiFi to be much better than I thought it would be. For example, half (8 of 16) the campgrounds we visited had at least “usable” WiFi, that is, you could use it for web browsing. Also, 4 of those 8 campgrounds had WiFi fast enough for streaming video on a regular basis.
“Verizon is better than AT&T” – I’m not finding that to be true. Based on these 16 campgrounds, I’d drop my Verizon data plan. However, I’ll postpone that decision until the end of our trip.

Jun 3

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Emigrant Lake (Ashland, OR)

Redding to Ashland (click on map to enlarge)

After our stay in Redding, CA, we headed for Oregon.

I drove the first leg of the trip to Ashland, OR and thought I had it rough because I drove our RV through several 6% grades and over a 3,000 foot summit.

Was I wrong. Jan had the same amount of 6% grades plus a long final descent into Ashland from 4,000 feet.

Mount Shasta

On our drive up, we drove past Mount Shasta which had an unusual amount of snow cover.

We arrived at our campsite on Emigrant Lake about 2 pm on Saturday while a large festival was taking place in one end of the county park. Very crowded, but our campground was at the other end of the park.

Our RV Site 8

Emigrant Lake Panorama (We’re the 2nd RV from the right) — click on the photo to enlarge

DOWNTOWN ASHLAND

For Wisconsinites, think of Ashland as a combination of Madison and Cedarburg (university town & tourist trap) . . . an abundance of quaint, pricey shops with a number of theaters including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Plus, beautiful Ashland Creek runs through the town. Yeah, we could live here.