The convention is over and it now is time for us to head for home. The morning began with a few clouds and a small rainbow in the distance directly in front of our motorhome.

This small rainbow greeted us as we began our day of departure

Part of our group has already left and the remainder will all be going their separate ways. Kay and I will drive over a new section of highway we've not seen before. The first thing on our way home is to find a dump station as the fairgrounds has no place to empty RV holding tanks.

There were a lot of empty campsites as we plan to leave Redmond

After looking over a map, it was decided that we would take Oregon Highway 126 from Redmond over to Eugene and go south on I-5. This route took us to a very convenient place to dump the motorhome holding tanks. Just before entering the town of Sisters, Oregon is the Three Sisters Overnight Park which has a dump station with a reasonable fee of $5.00. We had to wait on two RVs in front of us; however, this gave me time to drop my payment into the fee box without delaying the dumping process. The park looked like it would be a nice place to stay in the future if we are in the area for a visit.

This is the first time I've seen an "Honest Box" for paying campground fees

It wasn't very long before we were back on the road driving through the scenic, little town of Sisters. We followed highway 20 out of Sisters and headed for the familiar I-5 corridor. Along the way we passed a large area that had been burned out by a forest fire. The smoke jumpers and fire fighting tanker planes are located not far away in Redmond. Of the total distance driven, the burned area was small while most of our drive was through scenic forested country.

Click on image below to view more photos of this highway It seems that not many motorhomes came this way after the FMCA convention

As lunch time came along, we decided to pull into the parking lot of a restaurant located in the small town of Walterville*, Oregon. The restaurant had a familiar first name; the name is Tina's Lucky Logger Restaurant. In the restaurant, I placed an order "to go" that we would eat in our motorhome.

While waiting for my order to come out of the kitchen, I looked at a couple of pieces of tin-can artwork I hadn't seen before**. Hanging in a window were two robots made of various types of tin-cans with a funnel serving as a hat. The feet were made out of what appeared to be sardine cans. Bottle caps were used for buttons and eyes, while hands and ears were shapes cut out of sheet metal.

The first time I saw tin-can robots

NOTES:

*I would later see tin-can robots in several places as we traveled. ** Since this story was written it appears as if the city boundaries have changed. The street address for the restaurant is still the same, however, the city changed from Walterville to Springfield.

After our midday meal it wasn't very long before we turned south on I-5 and headed to an, as yet undecided place to stop for the night. Our original plan was to stop at the Seven Feathers Casino in Canyonville for the night. However, when we arrived at Canyonville it was too early to stop, so it was decided that the Valley of the Rogue State Park would be a good place to spend the night.

Our campsite in one of our favorite RV campgrounds— Valley of the Rogue State Park

We arrived with time enough to take a walk around the park. There are several nice trails in the area, one of which I always like to take along the Rogue River. Next to this trail are panels containing information about the river, the local animals and the history of the area.

One panel explains the life-cycle of the salmon that pass this way on the way to their spawning grounds. By the time the big fish are seen here they have traveled a long way from the ocean. There is one sign that really got my attention the first time I saw it; the sign warns that a cougar had been spotted in the area.

The weather was getting cloudy as we went for a walk around the park

At this time of year the wild raspberries and blackberries are beginning to turn ripe. I like to pick the fresh berries along the trail as we walk. Unfortunately, most of the times we've visited Oregon in the past, the best berries are just out of reach. This is the result of people preceding us getting the easy to reach berries. On this trip we seem to be some of the first people to arrive at the beginning of the berry season before the bushes have been picked over. I was able to get my fill of the fresh, sweet and juicy fruit.

Yum, ripe berries ready to eat

Our motorhome was in a nice campsite in a setting among the trees that are common in this park. Actually most of the sites in this campground are very nice. This would be a very restful place to spend our last night on the road.

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