I had a couple reasons to book a campsite at Champoeg State Park for December. I wanted another night to test out the Eberspacher Espar B2L heater and I am working my way towards twelve consecutive months of camping in Clifford.

First off, let’s discuss the name of the park. Champoeg (Sham-poo-ee). The G is silent. Next is the significance of the park, the first (white settler) government body in Oregon was created here back in 1843, so the history geek in me was intrigued. Third was its location, not far from home but far enough to make it an interesting journey. Everything up towards the Cascades is closed for the season and I didn’t want to drive for hours after work.

I scooted out of work a bit early so I could arrive while it was still light out. The afternoon was mild in the low 50’s and there was no rain forecasted until Saturday morning.

I was really interested in the Butteville Country Store, it is a two mile journey along the paved path from the B-loop camping. Earlier this week I found out that the store was closed from December 16th – January 31st though, so scrapped that idea until another time. I will probably make dinner reservations there for Mia and myself for spring time.

So instead of heading towards the store, I decided to check out some of the park. It become apparent that the park was much larger than I thought it would be as I drove in. There is the old townsite, the pavilion commemorating the founding of the provisional government, a visitor center/gift shop and a boat launch area (plus a whole bunch more). The sun set before I could make it to the old town area and the visitor center was already closed. So the more touristy/educational things were not seen.

Champoeg is apparently one of the busier campgrounds in the state park system. Even on this weekend before Christmas there were plenty of sites taken with RVs, #vanlife vans, 5th wheelers and even a couple tent campers. All the yurts appeared to be reserved and half the cabins that I saw had people in them.

I saw a bunch of deer in one of the fields as I was walking back to my campsite. I also startled the hell out of some racoons when I popped off the paved path and back into the B-loop area. Then as I was eating dinner and chilling by the fire, I could hear a whole bunch of coyotes calling to each other to the east of me.

Oddly enough I was hoping for much colder weather during the overnight. I wanted to really give the heater a good test run. Overnight temps only dropped down to the mid 40’s but I ran the heater for a few 90 minute cycles set at 64F. Temps never dropped below 54 inside after warming it up from 46F at first (I had the slider open while I was at the fire). I had to fiddle with the fuses a bit at first. For some unknown reason the thermostat couldn’t “find” the heater. It even lost the heater after the first 90 minute cycle and I was crawling around under the bed at 10:30pm shutting off my battery to fuse box connection a few times before they paired again. I will have to keep an eye on this and see if there is something particular causing it. The van had been sitting in the driveway for two weeks unused, and my guess is that my lithium battery went to sleep at some point and then the thermostat couldn’t communicate with the heater when everything woke back up. That isn’t the best explanation, but basically with no sun lately to hit up the solar panels, the lithium battery went into sleep mode.

The rain moved in about 7am on Saturday morning. Going out for more exploring wasn’t appealing, so I laid back for a while and read my book. Made breakfast and took a bit of mental break. I’m just exiting one of the busier times of my work year. We have a small lull in action before budget kickoff on January 9th. After that, the next several months are busy. I’ll take some relaxing moments while I can get them.

I was home by 11am after taking the more scenic route to get back there. I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to at the park for this visit. I’ll look at my calendar and book another weekend for March or April before we start taking trips to the mountains and other places that are not accessible right now.

Thanks for reading,

-Pete