Camping at Sun Lakes

We took the 240 square foot portable silver shelter (also known as the Silver Eagle Vintage Airstream) 2.5 hours north for some camping at Sun Lakes Resort for the weekend. This was a small get together with some friends and family. There were 5 families and 4 of these portable dwellings in the Sun Lakes Resort campground. Ten adults, six kids and three dogs shared the campground with about a gazillion other human beings and canines.

As an update from the last Airstreamized travel adventure, most of the electrical issues have been resolved, at least to get things workable for more adventures. Wires have been reseated and clamped down. Small hidden obscure enclosed automatic breakers have been replaced to allow the truck to charge the Airstream battery while driving. About half of the high powered mini heaters known as 1141 automotive light bulbs were removed to conserve on battery consumption. When connected up to shore power, no breakers tripped, no appliances started beeping and no wires were sparking. This is all good stuff. What still needs to be done is a new fuse panel that is more protected. The current fuse panel is fastened to the bottom of the wardrobe wall. It’s exposed to everything and in a really bad spot. There’s a lot that still needs to be done so this Airstream is relatively maintenance free for Miette when she hauls it off to wherever it is she goes when she moves out of the house. I figure I have about 11 years to get it all done before she’s ready to Airstream off into the distance 🙁

Sun Lakes Park Resort is situated inside a coulee, at the north end of Park Lake. It’s a private campground that is inside Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park. There’s a 9 hole golf course, miniture golf and recreational boat  It’s in the desert, so the foliage is manually planted. It is not a pine tree campground. However, since it is inside a coulee there are towering cliffs on each side so its not without geographical spectacles.

The drive from Tri-Cities is, how we say, “lacking” until just north of the town of Soap Lake. At that point the road meanders between cliffs on the right and long lakes on the left. Before we got to interesting geographical features, we were hungry hippos and stopped in Eltopia for some grub. Low and behold, there was a sushi place in Eltopia. Interesting. Mama Yum Yum was the place and it was actually very good. Better than most big city sushi places. Whodathunk one has to go to Eltopia to get good sushi. After scarfing down the Yum Yum goodies we continued on.

The Campground

The camping spots are pretty close together with pretty much no privacy. The trees are large but few. There are no shrubs or bushes to separate the sites. The picnic tables are on top of concrete slabs and each slab is about 2-3 feet part (to give you an idea on how close the sites are). It’s more like an RV Park. There’s even a sign showing the direction to the “Trailer Court”.

If you’re looking for privacy, don’t go here. If you’re looking for easy access to a lake, this place provides that along with peddle boats, row boats, plastic canoes and kayaks. There were virtually no bugs there which was excellent. The temps were cool as well, except for Sunday. We were worried about the smoke from local forest fires settling down in the coulee but that wasn’t the case either. The fires throughout the state did make it to where we couldn’t have a camp fire though – campfires are banned statewide at this point. That was a bummer.

The girls went on the peddle boats, Indy went fishing (of course) on the two man canoe and Brier played his first mini-golf. We all played mini-golf in the heat and ended up bailing out early in favor of ice cream cones and shade. It was a good decision. During the weekend the Moka Pot was out again. I tell you, making coffee with a Moka Pot is a labor of love (for coffee) – that hand grinding is work. While I drink my cup of joe hot about 99% of the time, on these adventures I’m willing to go with cold brew for the afternoon fix- er, I mean, latte.

Thanks to the group for setting up the weekend getaway. We’ll leave you with one last picture…