Drones and Disappointments and Connections

Once I left Wallowa Lake and Joseph, I drove a few hours to La Grande, OR  where I planned to spend the night in an RV park. I took my time, stopping in Enterprise to mail a package and gas up and visited the Nez Perce informational center in Wallowa and a thrift store in Baker City.

I’d heard great things about the Grande Hot Springs Resort. It’s funky and potentially haunted. I wanted to check it out. Turns out the RV park is about a half mile down the road from the resort, which appeared to be closed. And even though the RV app I was using gave it great reviews, I was not impressed.

First of all it was about 90 degrees. And like a lot of commercial RV parks, it was nothing but a big field with no shade. Showers and bathrooms were closed due to Covid, but the hot pools were open. But only until 5pm. I arrived at 4.  I’d made a reservation in advance because I didn’t want to be stuck my first night out of Wallowa Lake and asked for a shady spot. When I went to my site, it had one tiny tree, hardly giving off any shade and worse, it was packed between two big trailers and I didn’t think social distancing would be possible. I asked to change sites and they did give me one far from everyone at the edge of the field.

I dragged my picnic table into the little shade Squeaky was throwing off and sat down to do some work and take advantage of the Wifi—at least there was that! I heard a buzzing sound and saw that someone was flying a drone. It stopped and hovered over my campsite, even after I waved them off. I was so pissed off. It felt like such an invasion of privacy. When you’re camping, your campsite is your home and I felt like someone was spying on me in on my home. I wanted to complain at the office, but the office was closed. I paid $42 for all of this, when I’d been spending $0-$16 night at beautiful pristine riverside campgrounds while I was in Wallowa County. From here on out, no more commercial campgrounds unless I’m desperate.

I woke super early and was off, driving along The Journey Through Time Scenic Byway through the small towns of Union, North Powder and Baker City. Union Creek Campground on Phillips Reservoir looked promising. When I pulled in at about 1pm on Friday all the sites were full, but the park host guided me to the “RV Overflow Area,” which was actually the day use area parking lot. I was super pleased, the day use area is right on the lake and I had my own picnic table. All for only $12 night. Since it was a Friday night, I decided to stay for 2 nights, rather than risk not finding a place the next night, even though it would mean a long drive into Bend on Monday.

Olive and I both went swimming. The shores were a little muddy, but once I got away from them, it cleared up nicely. I rode my bike around a bit. We hiked along the lakeside trail, where we saw white pelicans, tons of osprey and a bald eagle who flew right in front of us.

Since I was finally back in the land of cell phone coverage, I got online and checked in on some of my Facebook groups. (And learned about the horrible activity in Portland, where ununiformed federal agents were snatching people up on the streets and taking them away in unmarked vans.)  In one of my women’s RV groups I saw that someone had posted she was being harassed while dispersed camping in central Oregon. Another person invited her to come on over to Union Creek campground. ‘Hey! That’s where I am!” I posted. And then sent the woman a private message.  I then looked out the backdoor of Squeaky and saw a new van parked at the other end of the lot, an older Ford conversion, the kind solo women travelers are often in. I was sure it was her! I grabbed Olive and started walking toward the van, which had its back doors open with a curtain covering it.  Two little dogs started barking and I recognized one as the dog in the woman’s Facebook profile. I yelled out a hello, but got no response. Remembering my creepy feeling from the drone invasion of privacy, I decided not to get any closer, but did walk Olive past two more times in the night, nothing.

I was disappointed. I’ve been part of a few women’s solo Facebook groups and was originally hoping to connect with other solo women on the road. As I sat at my site and made dinner, I decided that if it was meant to happen, it would.

Sure enough, the next morning, she was walking her dogs past my site and stopped to admire Olive. I asked if she was part of a women’s FB travel group and she immediately lit up and was super excited to meet me. We talked for an hour or so about solo van life, stealth camping and traveling with difficult dogs. We exchanged numbers and talked about trying to meet up again later in the summer.  Then I packed up and headed to Bend, excited to catch up with more friends.