Valley of the Rogue State Park, Oregon

The Rogue River

From Valley of the Rogue

We've spent the last two nights here at Valley of the Rogue. When we lived in Oregon this was often our first stop when we were leaving on a long trip, not too far from home, but enough to get us a few hours head start on the second day. It's a beautiful park, and certainly worth making your destination and staying several days, as there's lots to do in the area. The park web page describes most of it, so I won't go into too much detail here, suffice it to say you could easily spend two weeks exploring within a day's driving distance in several directions. We did discover today that there's a laundromat in F loop, where we stayed, and that's not listed among their services - a good thing to know if you're on the road for several days.

The park is beautiful, especially this time of year with leaves turning colors. There are more varieties of trees here than in any state park we've ever stayed in. Some are young, recently planted, and others are quite elderly, but carefully pruned. They clearly take great pains with their maintenance here.

The trail along the river is wide and covered with wood mulch, and the campgrounds are open and free of weeds. There's a nice mix here of utility and non-utility sites as well as yurts. Some of the loops close at the end of October, but the others are open all year, and at reduced off-season rates in the winter. The camping loops are laid out in a string paralleling I-5, but the traffic noise isn't too noticeable as the freeway is some distance away, and on the back side of the loops you can barely notice the traffic at all. There's a meadow between the campground and the river, a good place for kids and dogs to play - fly a kite or whatever. The spaces are generous so even when the attendance is high you have some elbow room.

Can't we stay just one more day???

It rained most of both days, so we stayed in except for the occasional walks to limber up the muscles.

Molly likes days like that, and she gets pretty comfortable in her new "home", then looks crestfallen when we pack up and tell her to get in the truck. She likes camping, but doesn't care much for the getting-there process.

Steve watched football and I worked on sewing projects, did a little reorganizing and a little research on places to visit when we get to our next stop.

We'll be staying in Red Bluff, California, for a couple of days. It's an area rich in history, so we'll see what we can find.