Moving west again

Our plan was, when we left Welcome Station, to head west a little ways and then north toward Crater Lake in Oregon. We are on our way to an appointment at Henderson's Line-Up in Grants Pass scheduled on June 7.

Dwayne and I had visited Crater Lake in July of 2018 and it was beautiful; Sue and Carl had also visited Crater Lake in the fall of 2014, but unfortunately it was overcast and the views were not of the picture perfect variety. Carl had expressed that he would like to see Crater Lake in the sunshine. We had thought that if we went to that area, staying a little outside the park (boondocking) for 5-6 days, there bound to be at least one nice day. Well, we checked the 7 day forecast and it was all cloudy and rainy!

I didn't feel like doing a different plan on Monday, so we decided to go just as far as Winnemucca, Nevada on Tuesday, since that would be the place that we would turn north to go to Oregon or continue west if we decided to go up through northern California instead. I had researched some boondocking areas for the Oregon trip, and had a couple of places identified in or near Winnemucca, so we decided to try that.

Amazing clouds and sky as we drove west on I-80.

The places in or near Winnemucca -- a casino that would allow parking in town (but the parking lot looked rather small), and a BLM campground in Water Canyon a little south of the town. I was a little concerned that, since we had had some wet weather the last few days, that the roads could be difficult heading up to the BLM campground, but we found good hard-packed dirt roads as we drove up about 1000' above Winnemucca.

The information we had read about the campground indicated that the first 4 campsites had decent Verizon service, so we were happy to find that the second campsite was available. We pulled in and set up.

However, the site was not very level, and we were concerned about how much we had to jack Gracie up... so we decided to drive further up the road to see if other sites were available. We drove all the way to the end of the road (and campground) -- there are about 10 sites in total.

As its name implies, it is a canyon with a stream running through it...

Beautiful views (Winnemucca is way down there in the middle of the picture)

Cattle pastures on the east side

We found that the site just above ours (site 3) was available, and appeared that we may have better success at getting Gracie level. This was the view from site 3... the Verizon signal was better... so we decided to move Gracie.

We left the Jeep to hold site 3 for us and walked back down to site 2 to pack up Gracie and make the short move. We commented as were walking that the last time we decided on the spur of the moment to move from one site to another for better cell signal was when Gracie broke down a couple of weeks ago... surely that would not happen again!

Site 2 was a beautiful site -- not with the far-reaching views, but right by the creek with babbling water right outside our door.

But... we decided to move, got Gracie down off the jacks, aired up, and successfully drove the short distance up the hill to site 3.

Information about camping at Water Canyon Recreation Area.

Gracie in her new spot at site 3

View up the hill from site 3

Looking down at Gracie parked in site 3

We had also read that the view of the lights in Winnemucca was pretty -- and it was! You can also see a tiny, tiny sliver of the moon up in the sky.

We are happy to have found such a beautiful spot and decided to stay at least 2 nights. The internet is good enough for me to be able to do planning about what route we should take to get to Grants Pass... we have 4 days to get there... and should be able to see some interesting things along the way!