#176 Milo McIver State Park, Estacada OR south west of Portland for 3 nights

We made a reservation at a state park south of Portland Oregon called Milo McIver State Park.

I would have enjoyed visiting Portland anyway but I remember Ben was so jazzed up about moving there as soon as he could. We wanted to go by and scout it out for him and learn a little something about it. We talked to him a little bit about it on the phone. As we were leaving Astoria going east I noticed a lot of clear-cut forests along the way. If you replant that's okay but this was just cut and left for dead. It bothered me to see the land treated so badly. We were out and about and I rode by a ranger's station and asked the forester on duty why so many abandoned clear cuts? Her answer surprised me. She said if you are participating in the forestry program you are required to straighten out the deadfall, till things up, and plant rows of seedlings that will be harvested again in 30 years or so. However, if you want to buy a piece of land clear-cut it and walk away that's your business, and no law against it. There are no laws against being a horrible steward. All I could say to myself is what a shame that that's the world we live in.

We had noticed already that there was smoke it's in the air from forest fires. It wasn't like you would gag you or anything but it kind of hovered in the low places. You would always smell smoke and when you looked across the way you would see a haze. These were forest fires from god-knows-where up in Washington state or Canada. It made my throat feel sore from constantly breathing it.

We landed and got set up and I remember riding into Portland just to be a tourist. We rode around the center of town to see kind of the artsy-fartsy area. We had a meal somewhere I just wanted to say I had experienced downtown. We also took a little ride 30 minutes out of town to check out several apartment complexes. We wanted to give Ben a general lay of the land and that's about all we did that evening

I did make a note about how it was odd that we had no phone service but we had 4G data. There was a heatwave in Portland this week. It was quite hot at about one hundred degrees. The weather reported 109 today and 106 tomorrow. Hearing this made me think it was nice to visit but let’s stay long this time of year. To say the least but we are glad to be at a place that has electricity. We stayed for three nights. As I was leaving the site I didn't allow enough room on the passenger side of the RV and crushed the awning tube in an inch and it never worked properly again after that.