Watercraft in the RV Park

Most RV parks we stay in tend to fill up on the weekend and empty out on Sunday afternoon. This is true here at Crescent Bar RV Resort. People began showing up on Friday afternoon and the park was near full capacity by Saturday morning. But it’s a little different here.

A number of the sites were occupied by tents or small slide-in campers on pickup trucks. The reason for this was the number of people arriving towing a boat or trailer full of personal watercraft. The section of the Columbia River at Crescent Bar is also called Wanapum Lake and it’s a popular recreational area for watercraft.

Our neighbors to the west of our site pulled in late Friday evening with a pontoon boat. They have a travel trailer on their site. They pay an annual fee to have the site full-time. They come here every weekend in the summer, making a drive of more than three hours from Edmonds, Washington, north of Seattle over Snoqualmie Pass after work on Fridays and returning to their home on Sunday afternoon.

Our neighbor's pontoon boat

Our neighbor’s pontoon boat

On the other side of our site is another annual park resident with a ski boat. He stores his boat in a yard a couple of miles away from the park. On weekends they drive here on Friday, bring the boat to their site and spend Saturday and Sunday on the river. They arrived Friday around 9pm. After boating Sunday morning, they spent a few hours cleaning the boat before they took it to the storage yard and headed back to western Washington. Whew!

Our neighbors ski boat

Our neighbor’s ski boat

Many people here follow a similar plan for the weekend. Others pitch a tent so they can spend the day on the river and party at night.

Tent and boat

Tent and boat

Camper and jet skis

Camper and jet skis

Another annual site with a boat

Another annual site with a boat – jet ski in the background

The site across from us had a few tents and canopies set up. They arrived with a group pulling trailers loaded with jet skis. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the sunny weather and recreational opportunities. This morning, many of the sites are empty and most of the boaters are gone until next weekend.

We’ll get the kayak down to the river now that it’s a little less hectic on the water. On Friday afternoon, Donna ordered a cart for the kayak from Amazon. One of the hassles we face with our inflatable kayak is getting it to the water. With the cart it will be much easier. Donna ordered it through her Amazon Prime account with free two-day delivery. It showed a Sunday delivery, which I thought was probably wrong – but the site did say that Sunday delivery was available in this area.

The cart arrived Saturday morning – less than 24 hours after she ordered it. How do they do that? Assembly was breeze. All I had to do was remove the retaining pins from the axles, install the wheels and re-insert the pins. Job done!

Donna prepared her mojo marinade recipe Sunday afternoon and used it on a pork tenderloin. I grilled the tenderloin while Donna prepared the sides – green lemon rice and summer squash sauteed with red onion.

Grilled pork tenderloin

Grilled pork tenderloin

Served with Orzo salad with spinach and feta and sauteed zucchini and red onion

Served with green lemon rice and summer squash sauteed with red onion

It was a tasty and nutritious meal. We enjoyed the dinner at our picnic table. It went well with an Apocalypse IPA from 10 Barrel Brewing.

Al fresco dinner

Al fresco dinner

The temperature reached 90 degrees in the afternoon, but by dinner time it was comfortable outside in the shade of our canopy. The forecast for the rest of the week calls for daily highs in the upper 90s. I think we’ll be hitting the beaches.

 

*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to make a purchase, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!