Milo McIver State Park, Oregon - June 27th to 30th, 2024

We like to camp in state parks. Some are good and some are not so nice. But Milo McIver State Park was a nice one. In addition to spacious camp sites in the woods, there are interesting things to see and do.

Thursday was a short travel day, less than hour. It was a cold and rainy morning, so we decided to get needed chores done along the way.

Red Tail was due for an oil change. We found a Valvoline Instant Oil Change in Gresham because we’ve found that they can accommodate our larger rig in the past. However, that was not the case this time. Their bays were only nine feet tall. Luckily, one of the staff noticed us get in line and came out to ask how tall our rig was. He recommended trying the Jiffy Lube in town. Jiffy Lube was only a couple of miles away, next to a grocery store. Since we needed to go shopping anyways, we just drove over to the Jiffy Lube instead of calling.

Just like the Valvoline, there were no posted height restrictions at Jiffy Lube, but the bays looked like they were tall enough. While Keith waited in line with Red Tail, Ann went grocery shopping. We should have asked how tall their bays were, because Keith noticed that there was only about an inch to spare when the guy pulled Red Tail into the bay, brushing the sign that hung down from the ceiling by chains. You would think places like that would post the height of their bays. Hopefully, nothing on the roof was damaged.

By the time the oil change was complete, Ann was done grocery shopping. There was a gas station affiliated with the grocery store, so we pulled in to fill up. Oregon used to be one of the few states in the country that required full service gas stations. However, it seems like they have been easing up on that. The gas stations we have stopped at so far have both full service and self service pumps. Keith noticed that the self service pumps in Oregon seem more complicated and harder to use than any pumps we have used across the country and Canada. This one seemed particularly frustrating and took a few minutes and several attempts to figure out. Do they do that on purpose to try to get you to use the full service pumps?

By the time we reached Milo McIver State Park, it was about noon. We dumped our tanks on the way into the campground, but didn’t fill since our fresh tank was still about 50% full. Our site was partial hookups, water and electric. We didn’t need anything, so we didn’t connect anything. Our batteries were full and it was too cool to run the air conditioner.

By the time we set up camp, the rain stopped and the sun was poking out. After lunch, we went for a walk. There was a lovely trail that led us over to the fish hatchery. A variety of plants with berries lined the path. Some looked like some type of raspberry, while another had blue berries that we believe was Oregon grape holly.

The berries and flowers kept Ann busy taking pictures, but we had to be careful where we stepped. The trail was popular with horseback riders and plenty of road apples dotted the trail.

When we reached the fish hatchery, we discovered it was closed that day. They were re-sealing the asphalt surround the hatchery. We’ll have to come back another day for a tour. Nearby is a boat ramp for putting in rafts. A map showed a twenty mile long river trail that included class 1 and class 1+ rapids.

On the way back to the campground, we stopped at the dam overlook. The state park is along the Clackamas River, right where the River Mill Hydroelectric Project is. It has been in continuous operation since 1911.

Continuing upstream along the trail, we also checked out the boat ramp. At this point, above the dam, the river is called Estacada Lake. It was wider, deeper, and calmer than the river below the dam, but it still looked like a river. It looked like a great place to go paddling.

Friday was our reservation for the Waterfalls Trolley. We covered that in our previous post (Mount Hood, Oregon - June 24th, 26th, and 28th, 2024).

Saturday, we spent all day in Portland. We’ll cover that in our next post.

Sunday was a short driving day, from Milo McIver State Park in Oregon to Lewis and Clark State Park in Washington. After dumping and filling our tanks and before we left Milo McIver, we drove over to the Clackamas Hatchery to check it out. It was closed the first day we were there.

The fish hatchery has a small visitor center with some informational displays. Then you can walk around the hatchery ponds. We could see the young fish jumping in the ponds. There were so many of them jumping, that it almost looked like rain on the surface of the water. At one end were pipes feeding a strong rush of water into the ponds. The flow of water seemed to trigger an instinct in the fish as they were trying to jump up into the flow of water.

At the far end were holding ponds for the adult fish. It looked like a fish ladder led up to the ponds, trapping the fish. The tank was rather crowded and some of them didn’t seem too happy about it. Every now and then, one would try to jump up and over the tall concrete walls of the tank.

Although we didn’t spend a lot of our time inside the state park, we enjoyed the time we did spend there. Nice hiking trails, a dam, and a fish hatchery. If we spent more time there, Ann probably would have gone paddling on Estacada Lake. The park was also a great base to explore the Portland and Mount Hood area.

Check out our related video: Milo McIver State Park, Oregon

(Ann)