Annual Spring Camping Trip

Every year we get together with friends to camp and ride ATVs on the Oregon Dunes. This has been a tradition for what seems like almost a decade (ok… well it has almost been a decade).

Normally we stay at the KOA at Hauser just north of Horsefall. We like having full hook-ups for the trailer and the larger riding area with a huge variety of trails, open dunes, and fairly good sized sand hills. However, for a change of pace we went to Winchester Bay. Although Winchester is somewhat smaller, the sand hills there are much larger (not quite as large as St. Anthony Idaho, but pretty close).

Three years ago we moved the trip up to mid April from our usual Memorial day outing. The difficulty in getting a campground around the first big holiday on the coast proved to be far to complicated. April is still well within the coastal rainy season, but we have managed to get lucky and have fantastic weather for the most part.

I was very surprised at the weather, every time we’ve camped or ridden at Winchester we’ve been rained out, but we really got lucky this trip and had some good weather. I must say that I liked the close proximity to the sand (no long, tedious, whoopy sand roads) and it was windy enough to keep the sand smoothed out on a day-to-day basis. Wind of course is a double edged sword. For the sand it makes a clean slate to keep it smooth, but it can make for cold evenings by the fire.

This year there were a total of twelve people, five dogs, and enough stuff to keep us busy for four nights. As we’ve gotten older (what?) it’s not as cool to get up at the butt-crack of dawn and hit the sand all day long. Sore joints, muscles, and internal bleeding can put a damper on the fun…

Consequently, our other hobbies came along. We played with RC trucks, did some Geocaching, and I took some photos. Bridgett kept her riding toned down as she is still somewhat recovering from her surgery so took her Kindel and read a dozen or so books. Morgan, of course (still young) was chomping at the bit to ride as much as possible, even through some pretty deep water.

It was a great trip and we planned our follow-up at Winchester Bay again next April. This of course will not be our only ATV camping trip of the year, but it will probably be our only large group trip. Schedules being what they are never seem to be free at the same time.

A side note about Winchester Bay is Dunefest, an annual insane ATV sand enthusiast event in August. For more info: http://www.dunefest.com/