Champoeg State Park, Oregon

Champoeg State Heritage Area is one of our favorite state parks.  We paid $24 for a full-hookup site with 50 amp power.  Only a few of the sites have full-hookups--the partial hookups (electric and water) also cost $24, and both types of sites cost a few dollars less during the winter off-season.  Verizon cell service is not great, with 0-2 bars in the B loop.  Champoeg is also a popular day-use park and parking is $5/day.

Site B24

The bicycle and walking path at Champoeg State Park goes through all areas of the park and includes both forest and meadow terrain.  We saw many different birds during our bike rides.  The park also contains a popular disk golf course.

This basket was looking pretty muddy after all the rain.

Champoeg (pronounced sham-poo-ee), was an important settlement in the Willamette Valley in the early 1840s and was the site of the first provisional government of the Oregon Territory. 

The town continued to exist after Oregon statehood. However, on December 2, 1861, the adjacent Willamette River rose 55 feet above its normal summer stage, flooding the town with seven feet of water.  Champoeg was never rebuilt after the disaster. The town site is now preserved as Champoeg State Heritage Area and Archaeological Site. A 1901 monument records the names of the 52 settlers who voted to establish the provisional government at the 1843 meeting. Dams installed since the 1930s make another catastrophic flood unlikely.

The original townsite isn't much more than a trail now.

A pioneer cabin was built by the DAR and is open for tours on weekends.

Riverside day use area

Oak Grove day use area

We saw a couple of sets of bleachers out along the bike path.  We couldn't figure out why they were there.  Dave's idea was to watch mud wrestling, and my idea was to watch the weeks grow.

Mud wrestling or weeds growing?  Cast your vote.

Now we are home again for a few days, and then we will head out on a short RV trip to McMinnville, OR. 

More pictures from Lebanon, OR

Dave is refereeing a semi-pro football game in Portland tonight and I am hanging out here at home. 

While we were in Lebanon during the holiday weekend, Dave and I found a few geocaches.  We’ve been looking for the easy ones and we usually find them, but not always.  One of them was supposed to be hidden at this old train depot which has been remodeled into offices.  We searched all over but couldn’t find the geocache. Another cache was hidden on a trail at Waterloo County Park which is not too far from Mallard Creek Golf Course.  Waterloo Park is always busy when we are there.  The park recently added a disc golf course.  The park offers several group day use areas as well as a camping area.  Some of the sites have water and electric hookups, but no sewer.  This geocache was called Alley Cat because it was located in an alley.This cache was located, of all places, near Safeway.  It was a bird-themed cache and was located in a tree in a cleverly-disguised nest.While we were in Brownsville, we saw this sign outside of a store.  It took three tries, but I finally got a picture of it that I liked.   One of the hanging flower baskets that decorated the town of Brownsville.

Disc Golf

Champoeg is one of several Oregon state parks that features an 18-hole disc golf course.  The game is played with frisbees which are thrown into baskets like this:

For people who, unlike me, can aim a frisbee and throw it correctly, it's a fun game.  The game is popular all year, not just in the summer.  There is even a Professional Disc Golf Association.  One time we were camping at Milo McIver State Park which has a very well-kept up disc golf course.  We were playing like the amateurs that we are, and we were "shushed" by some "professionals" who were playing in a tournament there.  Evidently the protocol is to be very quiet when they are throwing their shots, just like in real golf.  We didn't realize that they take the game very seriously.

We had beautiful weather today.  I tried to capture a picture of the sky so that you could see how blue it was.  The trees in this park are gorgeous. 

Besides cabins, this park has a few yurts:

We went for another bike ride and today I was able to ride 9 miles.  That's an improvement from yesterday!  Dave rode 10 miles, but I was busy taking pictures during that last mile.