RV

Posts featuring the coach.

Portland Fairview RV Park

We stayed at Portland Fairview RV Park in Fairview, Oregon. (Campground Reviews listing.)

Our second stay here; this was actually the first campground we stayed in with our coach. Not the best place, but convenient to Portland.

Dates:

  • Check in: 2025-10-04
  • Check out: 2025-10-08
  • 4 nights

Weather:

  • Sunny
  • High temps 67-75°F, lows 47-53°F
  • Little wind, gusts to 17 MPH

Noise:

  • Significant road noise
  • Occasional train noise, but no horn
  • Frequent plane noise (in the flight path of PDX)
  • Little neighbor noise

Site:

  • #38, pull-through, concrete
  • Needed to disconnect toad, parked beside coach
  • Somewhat level site; high on passenger side; used hydraulic leveling
  • Concrete driveway about 45 feet long by 10 feet wide, plus 24 feet long by 12 feet wide car park
  • 16 feet to neighbor on both sides
  • Just grass between sites
  • Picnic table
  • One tall tree
  • Mostly clean site
  • Elevation 80 feet, front facing NE

Utilities:

  • 50 amp power, conveniently located; lost power for about 15 minutes one day
  • 55 PSI water, though the pressure dropped significantly when in use; conveniently located
  • Good sewer connection, conveniently located (1 10-foot pipe needed)

Internet (in usage priority order):

  • Starlink: 50-80 Mbps down, 8-13 Mbps up, 30 ms ping
  • RoamLink: 12 Mbps down, 8 Mbps up, 133 ms ping (RoamLink uses whichever is best of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile)
  • AT&T: 14-55 Mbps down, 0.05-4 Mbps up, 40-90 ms ping (I have AT&T on my iPhone)
  • Campground Wi-Fi: not used

Amenities:

  • Garbage dumpsters
  • Pool

Our review on Campground Reviews:

Not the best park around, but convenient

Usually, when we make our annual trip through Portland, we stay at Mt Hood, but this time we had errands to do in town, so we stayed here for a couple of days. It’s still not the best park we’ve ever stayed in, though. The site was just barely big enough for our motorhome, and we had to squeeze our tow vehicle in the space alongside, but it was pretty close to the neighboring site. The roads are still uncomfortably narrow, and weeds are popping up through the cracks in the concrete. Maintenance is still an issue, as is the road and train noise. If I want a quiet place in the woods, I’ll still return to Mt Hood, but if I need to be nearer to the city, this will have to do because for $20/night (as part of the Thousand Trails Collection), you can’t really beat the value. We camped at Portland Fairview RV Park in a Motorhome.

Campground map:

Map

An interactive map:

Our site:

Our site

Our site

Our site

Our site

Very Portland: by the garbage dumpster was these bins, presumably for people to reuse items:

Recycle / reuse

Looking towards the office and entrance:

Office

Other sites:

Other sites

Other sites

Other sites

Not a great park, but convenient when in the Portland area, so we’d stay here again.

Travel from Shelton, Washington to Fairview, Oregon

We drove our coach 158 miles, about three hours of driving, from Shelton, Washington to Fairview, Oregon.

Here’s a map showing our route, heading south:

Map

An interactive map, with potential stops pinned:

Bay:

Bay

John Prairie Road:

John Prairie Road

Electrical work:

Electrical work

I-5 South:

I-5 South

I-5 South

Rest area:

Rest area

Cowlitz River:

Cowlitz River

Train:

Train

I-205 South:

I-205 South

Entering Oregon:

Entering Oregon

Entering Portland:

Entering Portland

Welcome to Oregon:

Welcome to Oregon

I-84 East:

I-84 East

Exit to Fairview:

Exit to Fairview

Arriving at Portland Fairview RV Park:

Arriving at Portland Fairview RV Park

Entry steps stuck

Our entry steps have been dodgy for a while, making horrible noises when extending and retracting, and sometimes not fully retracting until they are nudged. I tried cleaning the tracks and lubricating several times, and even got a couple of techs to look at it, without improvement.

Recently, it’s been getting worse, where it sometimes wouldn’t move at all until I tapped the motor with a hammer (a recommended workaround). So it was clearly on its last legs.

When departing our home base, it did this again. I had bought a replacement motor, but it was too awkward for me to get to it in order to replace it, due to a cover plate partly over the motor. We had a service appointment coming up, so I figured I’d get them to replace it for me. I managed to get the steps to retract by tapping the motor, and rather than risk them getting stuck out again, I disconnected the motor, and secured the steps in place with a ratchet strap (probably not necessary, since the motor was still engaged with the step gearbox, but better safe than sorry).

Here’s the step motor:

Step motor

I disconnected the motor, a simple plug:

Disconnected motor

And added a ratchet strap to hold the step in, just in case:

Ratchet strap holding the step in, just in case

In order to get in and out in the meantime, I had also ordered some metal and wooden steps, which we used at our next campsite:

Temporary wooden steps

The good news is that the aforementioned service place, the Oregon Motorcoach Center in Eugene, Oregon, was later able to replace the step motor, and it is now working like new again. It’s certainly nice to have this issue resolved.

Back from New Zealand

Speaking of home, a real-time update: we are back in the US from our trip to New Zealand. It was nice to see my family, and explore more of the country.

We took lots of photos during our trip, of course, so I plan to do blog posts about it. Probably one post for each day, since most days were traveling from one location to another, with lots of sightseeing along the way.

We still have a couple of months backlog of posts about our travels before the trip, plus the traditional yearly summary posts, so look for the NZ posts around the end of January.

Van on beachfront with lighthouse in background

Our Washington home

We stayed for a month at our official domicile, aka Mom’s house, in Shelton, Washington.

It was good to be home! An opportunity to catch up on dentists, doctors, optometrists, etc, and of course with family.

Dates:

  • Check in: 2025-09-04
  • Check out: 2025-10-04
  • 30 nights

Weather:

  • Partly cloudy, rain
  • High temps ranging between 70-82°F, lows around 57-60°F
  • Wind gusts to 20 MPH in the area, though much less when sheltered amongst trees

Noise:

  • No road noise
  • No train noise
  • Occasional neighbor noise

Site:

  • Front in, concrete in front, gravel in back
  • Disconnected toad; parked next to coach
  • Fairly level; high in front; used hydraulic leveling

Utilities:

  • 50 amp power, located on house in front of coach, used extension cord
  • 40 PSI water from the house
  • No sewer hookup; used macerator and hose to dump into house septic system

Internet (in usage priority order):

  • Starlink: 80-230 Mbps down, 10-40 Mbps up, 30 ms ping
  • RoamLink: 13 Mbps down, 0.2 Mbps up, 160-215 ms ping (RoamLink uses whichever is best of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile)
  • AT&T: 10 Mbps down, 0.5 Mbps up, 40 ms ping (I have AT&T on my iPhone)
  • House Wi-Fi: not used

Amenities:

  • House

Our coach parked in front of the house, with our Starlink dish on the flagpole, to peek over the trees:

Our coach at home

Our coach at home

Our coach at home

Using the macerator to dump our waste tanks (as previously documented):

Using the macerator to dump our waste tanks

The other end of that 200 feet of hose goes into septic tank:

Hose into septic tank

This time I kept the hose in place, with foam weather stripping sealing the gaps on either side of the hose; this let me just turn on the macerator and open the tank valves to dump, without having to go around to the septic tank to open it, insert the hose, then remove the hose and re-close it after each time:

Hose into septic tank

The RV electrical outlet box we added on the house last year had an issue, so we had it replaced with a better one, so were able to have 50 amp power:

Electrical box

Electrical box

Nice to have full hookups at home.

While there, we cooked some pizzas in my Ooni pizza oven, which had been stored in our shed:

Pizza oven

Pizza oven

Pizza

I decided to take the pizza oven with us, as we’ll be staying in one place for even longer early next year.

It was good to be home!

Travel from Ephrata to Shelton, Washington

We drove our coach about 250 miles, about four hours of driving, from Ephrata to Shelton, Washington.

Here’s a map showing our route, heading west (with the ultimate destination omitted for privacy):

Route

An interactive map, with potential stops pinned:

There was roadworks on the bridge over the Columbia River, with a 9-foot width restriction, so we considered avoiding that and taking a more scenic route, as follows, but it would have added 1.5 hours to the travel, and been more stressful with curvy highway roads, so we stuck with the above route instead of this alternative:

I-90 West and the aforementioned Vantage Bridge:

I-90 West Vantage Bridge

Narrow, but good enough for trucks, so good enough for us:

I-90 West Vantage Bridge

I-90 West Vantage Bridge

Thorp Fruit & Antique Mall:

Thorp Fruit & Antique Mall

Rest area:

Rest area

Wildlife bridge:

Wildlife bridge

Keechelus Lake:

Keechelus Lake

Snoqualmie Pass:

Snoqualmie Pass

Crossover intersection:

Crossover intersection

Joining I-5 South:

Joining I-5 South

Fuel stop:

Fuel stop

Tacoma Dome:

Tacoma Dome

Route 101 North:

Route 101 North

We previously took this exit, but it is more difficult getting through Shelton:

We previously took this exit, but it is more difficult

Instead we took this exit, which is much more straightforward:

Instead we took this exit, which is much more straightforward

Downtown Shelton:

Downtown Shelton

Starlink Mini mounted on our truck

We sometimes explore areas without cell service, as we travel around the US… plus we are exploring New Zealand in a van. 

We really enjoy using Starlink with our coach, and wanted to bring a dish to NZ, but our gen 2 dish is rather bulky. We decided to get a Starlink Mini dish, which is much smaller, and has the router built in. It was small enough to fit in carry-on luggage for our NZ trip, and mounts on our truck and the NZ van via a magnetic mount, powered from a 12V outlet (aka cigarette lighter).

It isn’t needed all the time, so we can pause the dish when not needed. In fact, with Starlink’s current policies, they charge $5/month for Standby Mode, which has unlimited slow data (500 Kbps), so is still useful for occasional or minimal use.

Here’s the 12V power in our truck (the white USB dongle is a wireless CarPlay adapter):

12V power

The cable is routed out the rear window, which can still latch closed:

Cable out rear window

The cable is clipped to the roof, with a couple more clips on the edge to hold the cable when the dish is removed from the roof:

Cable and clips

The Starlink Mini dish is securely attached to the roof via a magnetic mount:

Starlink dish in magnetic mount

Handy!

Ephrata RV Park & Campground

We stayed at Ephrata RV Park & Campground in Ephrata, Washington. (Campground Reviews listing.)

Our last stop on our way home. Good to be back in Washington!

Dates:

  • Check in: 2025-09-03
  • Check out: 2025-09-04
  • 1 night

Weather:

  • Sunny
  • High temp 100°F, low 68°F
  • Little wind, gusts to 10 MPH

Noise:

  • Some highway noise
  • Occasional train horn noise (including overnight)
  • Little neighbor noise

Site:

  • #P23, pull-through, gravel
  • Didn’t need to disconnect toad, and didn’t, since only one night
  • Somewhat level site; a little high in the front; used air leveling, since only one night
  • Gravel driveway about 60 feet long by 10 feet wide
  • 10 feet to neighbors on both sides
  • Picnic table
  • Tall trees
  • Clean site
  • Elevation 1,240 feet, front facing SW

Utilities:

  • 50 amp power, conveniently located
  • 60 PSI water, conveniently located
  • Didn’t connect sewer until departure; good sewer connection, inconveniently located (2 10-foot pipes needed)

Internet (in usage priority order):

  • Starlink: 111-240 Mbps down, 9 Mbps up, 35 ms ping
  • RoamLink: 8-13 Mbps down, 1-3 Mbps up, 270 ms ping (RoamLink uses whichever is best of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile)
  • AT&T: 3 Mbps down, 0.25 Mbps up, 85-235 ms ping (I have AT&T on my iPhone)
  • Campground Wi-Fi: not used

Amenities:

  • Garbage dumpsters
  • Pool

Our review on Campground Reviews:

Convenient stop off I-90

We stayed for one night on our way through Washington, and it was just fine for that. I don’t think I’d stay any longer, though, between the narrow site and the aroma of cow manure. The internal roads and sites are gravel, making it difficult to distinguish between the site and road edges, and if we were parked within the boundaries of our site. We camped at Ephrata RV Park & Campground in a Motorhome.

Campground map:

Map

An interactive map:

Our site:

Our site

Our site

Our site

Our site

Other sites:

Other sites

Other sites

Other sites

A tight site, but a fine place for a brief stay. We’d be happy to stay here again.