Steamboat Rock State Park (or, I Frickin’ Love Washington State)

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I like posh hotels. Luxurious numbers with 800 thread count sheets and big deep white jacuzzi tubs. I like them a lot.

But you know what I’ve decided? As wonderful as an expensive hotel can be, camping in an RV is a great way to get a little closer to the local world around you, and still have some moolah left to spare.  Sure, it’s not the lap of luxury, but you’re hardly roughing it. And hey, our cheapy Target comforter set isn’t only pretty cute in our travel trailer, it’s also plenty comfy.

RVing is especially dog-friendly – we love that, and Angelyne and Lizzie dig it, too – even though Angel thinks it can get a little chilly at times, with all that swimming and being outdoors and stuff.

And so for this trip, we scored a last minute reservation in Steamboat Rock State Park, in Eastern Washington. See the tree-filled areas just below the rock? That’s it!

First though, a bit about my beloved Eastern Washington. Many folks think of Washington State as a drizzly region with snow-capped mountains, towering fir trees, and ferries gliding across the Puget Sound. But just east, over the Cascade Mountains, is actually something totally different. Where Western Washington is mild and often gray, much of Eastern Washington experiences the seasons – snow and freezing temps in the winter, consistently hot and dry summers (with impressive gusts of wind now and then). Eastern Washington is often nearly barren, with lazily rolling tan hills dotted sparingly by the occasional silvery sagebrush and Ponderosa pine tree. And then there are the wheat fields. Miles and miles of wheat fields.

For us Western Washington folk, it’s actually a surprisingly refreshing antidote to all that green.

This side is where your Washington apples come from, along with plump pears, insanely juicy peaches, the grapes that make up those amazing Washington State wines… many crops flourish here, and farms and orchards (and fruit markets!) are everywhere.

Farther east, the brown terrain makes way now and then to spectacular valleys where the mighty Columbia River flows – or where it used to flow, before the Ice Age – and where it carved impossibly massive swaths out of the land.

And so, we parked our trailer down in one of those impossible valleys, also known as the coulee (and home to the massive Grand Coulee Dam) – where all that’s left of the Columbia is a series of stunning royal blue lakes. Steamboat Rock State Park is on a peninsula that juts out into one of those lakes, Banks Lake. You camp with the 800-foot-high Steamboat Rock at your back, and the beautiful lake ahead.

The state park has 26 tent spaces and 100 RV spaces with hook-ups, all fairly grassy with at least a tree or two for shade, and many of which have direct access to the water.

If you can’t see the water from your spot, no worries – just turn your chair toward the magnificent Steamboat Rock. Or better yet, get up off your duff and hike to the top of the thing, check out the view of the valley for miles in either direction, and poke around the 600 or so acres up there. Yes – that’s right – 600 acres. Steamboat Rock is really an enormous plateau that used to be an island in the Columbia River. (Note: This visit, I have to confess that we opted to stay on our duffs, gazing up and sipping mojitos.)

It’s the perfect place to take a boat. Many folks tied their boats along the surprisingly sandy beach below their camping spots – perfect. It’s also the ideal place to take the Relaxation Station you’ve been dying to use… if only you remember to bring an air pump. Needless to say, ours sadly stayed in the box, its maiden voyage yet to be taken. Bugger.

The weather? Perfect, too. High 70′s to mid 80′s for the four days we were there, with a mostly-gentle breeze to move the air around and plenty of beach and sand bars so you can plop your beach chairs right in, or next to, the cool lake.

Sigh. We’re back on the west side, and I love it here, too.

But I wish we were still there.

Exactly right here:

(That last photo courtesy of my unforgivably filthy iPhone.)

I just really love Washington. The dreary winters make me doubt, but then the summer comes along and I get out there and I’m head over heels once again. I love that you can drive an hour or two in any direction and find something amazing, then drive an hour more and find something completely different yet equally jaw-dropping. As a native, I’ve been exploring this state my whole life, and I swear every single time I’m awestruck by something new.And I can’t wait to get out and explore again.