Huntley Park, Solar Update

Huntley Park, near Gold Beach, Oregon

Huntley Park is operated by the Port of Gold Beach.  The Port Commission is an elected group of five individuals who meet monthly and as needed to conduct the business of the Port.  Established in 1955, the Gold Beach Port District has grown to own and manage a diverse portfolio of interests in the Gold Beach area.

    

There is a camp host here, which looks to me like a full-time, year around job…even has a cover over the RV area with full hookups (upper left picture).  There is also an assistant camp host (upper right) which also has full hookups…and when they don’t have an Assistant working, then that site rents out for $22 a day, just not sure “when” they don’t have an assistant here.  There is also a fairly nice bathroom, as camp bathrooms go.  Went for a quick tour of the men’s room and found three showers, at a cost of $2, but I understand there are long time limits for that $2.  The bathroom looked a bit “industrial”, nothing fancy, but clean.

    

    

Above are just shots of some of the open spaces here…most for tents and small RVs.  I counted three, perhaps four, river spots for any size RV…but that doesn’t mean that people with tents can’t use them…we have a tent next to us right now…but on the other side, as of yesterday, it is empty.

Took the dogs down to the River yesterday for a walk.  It is not too difficult getting down there from our campsite…but from others deeper in the park one would definitely need to find a longer route to do so.  The park sits along Huntley Bar.  I am sure during extremely high river conditions the bar is covered in water…but most of the time it just gives you a nice area to “fish”, although most everyone I have seen down here were either going for a walk, or taking their dogs for a walk off leash (despite the signs that ask you not to do so). Of course, probably remembering the time she got into the Rogue River up by Crater Lake, Skruffy gets her feet wet as she smells along the bank.  This, from a dog who frankly has not enjoyed being in or near water!

Without the dogs I found the road which leads down to the bar.  I had seen a few cars and trucks down there…no RVs because they don’t allow camping on this bar, but they do along a few other of the bars west of here.  Now in actuality, I cannot say “they allow it” as much as say, “people are doing it”… a good number of people, but it is in now way crowded at all.  Access to this “boondocking area” is at google map coordinates 42.460635, -124.369402.  But here at Huntley, it is strictly prohibited…as the sign says to the right.  When we drove up to Huntley, I looked for signs in the area where people were camping along the river, and saw none.

    

Picture to the left above is the west end of the Bar, looking out to the west…you can see the sky is just a bit hazy out towards the ocean, which is 7-8 miles away.  Picture right is me turning 180 degrees and looking to the east…you can see the length of Huntley Bar and the curve in the river…and the bluer sky.  Talked to neighbors who arrived the day we did, but left the next day…both were raised in Oregon, one was raised near the community of Agness, just a 20 mile drive from where we are to the east along the river.  They said that in Agness, the temperatures can reach over 100 degrees during the summer…yet here at Huntley Park the temperatures are nearly always mild.  The road beyond Agness will eventually lead one to I-5 near Grants Pass…but it is a paved, mostly one lane forest road which gets no traffic during the winter.  Unfortunately, not everyone knows this…there is a story in the NYT dating back to 1995 of a salesman who wanted to take the scenic route home in November…got snowed in after his truck went off the road, decided to stay in the truck until help arrived instead of walking the 18 miles back to Agness.  Help did not arrive until the wreck was found in May.  It just shows you how quickly the climate changes in such a short distance. 

    

Today I walked to the far eastern portion of the campground, and looked for access down to the river.  The land is higher up from Huntley Bar than it is down where we are…although there is a path shown in the picture upper right, it was too steep for me.  Now when I was a kid, I would have just got on my butt and slid on down it…but those days are long ago history.

Saw a couple of Kayakers headed upstream on the Rogue River, against the flow.  Not sure what this conversation is about (picture right), but my guess is that “someone won” because just a few minutes later they were headed down stream nice and easy at a fairly fast pace.  Most of the boats that we hear are tour boats, which go up the river, and then back down again, about six or eight times each day…there are two different companies that offer the tours.  Next are the fishing boats, but not many as most go to the mouth of the river at the ocean where the Salmon enter the river. 

Every once in awhile I get an inquiry about our Solar…and since we just put in new batteries, I thought I would give an update.  Our Solar is a “Go Power! GP-PSK-120 120W Portable Folding Solar Kit with 10 Amp Solar Controller” that we got from Amazon for $543.99 back in October, 2014.  We also bought a 60’ extension for $69.   The solar system has gone up $50, but the cord is still $69.  It is a 120 watt system, includes the controller, and offers two different ways to connect to the battery.  We really felt that for our occasional use, this was the best way to go.  It is stored under the bed when not in use, or in the front seat at night once the sun has gone down when we are at parks where we do use it.  Yesterday when we got up our house battery was at 12.5.  Today they were at 12.4.  The ocean fog does not burn off until around 11 am, there is a bit of a haze during the day, and we loose the sun around 7 when it goes behind the small mountain on the other side of the river…so we get around 8 hours of use.  It boost the battery back up to 12.7 – 12.8 during the day, but by 7 pm it is down to 12.5 – 12.6.  At 8:40 last night we had dropped to 12.4, so I turned on the engine for 20 minutes, and like I said, we were at 12.4 this morning…but it was at 12.3 before we started to see benefits from the sun.  We have two computers going most of the day, and into the night, although I sometimes use the Kindle.  We also have to recharge both Kindles and the Aircard each day.  We have two “cigarette” type 12 volt outlets in which to do this with.  At night we also have the floor lights on from 8 pm to 7 am.  And then there is the refrigerator, the CO detector, the propane detector, miscellaneous lights that get turned on and off during the night (there is a LED light above our heads that we keep on until we go to bed), and the pump for out toilet when we flush.  So yes, this one solar cell keeps us charged when we sit stationary for so long without electric hookups.  And for a side note…our living area TV is on the blink…and we will replace it back in Sacramento with a 12 volt LED HDTV with a DVD player.  Not that we will use it much when we boondock, but it will give us options.