Brookings, OR

How'd we end up in Brookings?

The reason we chose Brookings was to escape the heat wave that was hitting the West Coast. The most recent major city we stayed in for a couple of days was Redding, CA which was consistently hitting 90+ degrees before noon. We were dying in that temperature! Without the AC running the van would easily get to 95-100 degrees. Fortunately, we had a shore power hook up so we could run the AC when necessary and keep the van to a cool 85 😆. Out of desperation, I kept checking this weather site https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/california/current-weather-maps trying to convince Ray that we aren't built for this type of heat and the coast was consistently showing 70 degrees while Redding was 90-95. Thankfully she agreed and we said our goodbyes after visiting with family for two days one night

A place to sleep

We arrived in Brookings, OR on June 8th at around 8:15 pm. Driving to the town's north side, we found a rest stop across the street from Harris Beach State Park. The first sight you see entering the rest stop is a "4-hour limit parking from 8 pm - 6 am nightly" sign. We took our chances figuring that there's no way they enforce this, right? I think they only have this sign so if someone is causing a ruckus they can kick them out with this reasoning. We found a somewhat level parking spot and settled in for the night. Next thing I know the morning sun is poking through the curtains, success no knock!

Summary of activities at Brookings

Arriving in Brookings we both agreed that we would take it easy and recover over the next couple of days. Sunday and Monday we spent the daytime in the state park and the nights at the rest stop. Sunday was spent at the beach relaxing in the van and at times taking Toby to the beach to let him get his zoomies out. Toby loved the ocean and would run around in the waves forever if allowed to.

On Monday Ray's cousin drove up from Redding to spend a day with us. She got here around noon so we grabbed lunch real quick and then I finished my work day while Ray and Symphony went shopping. In the evening we went for a stroll on the beach so that Toby could show off his speed for her. After the beach Ray cheifed up a taco salad meal which she has posted about on our Instagram page (@vann_ventures)! We finished the night watching the sunset and then had the pleasure of taking a nice hotel shower since Symphony had a room.

video size is restricted which is why the quality isn't the best, we hope to start a youtube soon to post these types of videos to

Rest Stop Rating

8/10 ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ❌❌

Proximity to town: 10/10 At most it's a 5-minute drive from a local grocery store/ Fred Meyer, about a 7-minute drive to a laundromat, and a really good burger spot named Fely's Cafe right next to the laundromat. The fries were amazing!

Proximity to a daytime activity spot: 10/10 Three days in a row at around 8am we drove across the road to the state park and found a spot overlooking the beach/ocean.

Levelness of the rest stop: 7/10 It didn't have super flat ground. Even the best spots we found had a slight bump to the parking spot which made the bed lean slightly towards the front of the van which meant we rolled on our side more often. To combat this we slept with our feet on the countertops and it worked out fairly well!

Bathrooms: 5/10 The second night Ray went to the bathroom and had to deal with fecal matter throughout the bathroom 🤢. That morning I went into the bathroom and only one of the two stalls had any toilet paper. To give the workers credit the third morning both stalls had ample toilet paper.

Rest stop hookups: 8/10 There was a dump station that also had a freshwater spigot to hose down anything. The best part too was they only ask for donations so it's a budget-friendly station. The only negative was the smell of the area by the dump station, fortunately, the smell was isolated to that area and even the closest parking spot to the dump station couldn't smell it.

Safeness feeling: 9/10 The area was great! I saw multiple state vehicles driving through it which would discourage any long-time stayers and hooligans that would cause its demise. Monday morning I even saw a sherif vehicle dirivng through the rest stop. When Ray and I were dumping our grey water there was an interesting character who was walking about 20 feet behind our van and dissapeared into the trees/bushes. Coulda been his home, but I wasn't going to follow him and find out. That was the only time we ever saw him though.

Internet via Starlink: 9/10 The orientation of the parking we chose allowed us to maintain an internet connection at a video-conference/video-gaming acceptable level. For example, there were only a couple of times when I noticed a slight interruption in service which prevented me from hearing my co-worker's full sentence.

Sporthaven Beach

These photos are of the van in the public parking lot right along the beach. Behind us you can see the RVs which are stationary in the RV park right on the other side of the road. We ended up spending a night at the park just because we wanted to spend at least one night right by the ocean. The RV park was fairly nice, the bathrooms were nice and clean and even contained showers just for the RV park guests. Considering our batteries were sitting at ~80% and we had just filled our fresh water tank we were thinking about getting a "dry" campspot (one with no electrical/water hookups) but after looking at the prices it was only 4$ less to get a campsite with hookups. However, be aware we got hit with a 8$ "processing fee" on our 38$ sale without warning. Being in the credit card processing industry, I'm fairly sure this is illegal, OUTRAGEOUS 20%+ "processing fee"!) .

Quick trip to Crater Lake

Before we arrived in Brookings we actually made a stop at Crater Lake. We went to the Rim Village cafe/gift shop and saw all the viewpoints near by it but unfortunately both the east and west rim drives were closed so we couldn't drive the lake. I believe it opens up sometime in mid June so we might swing by there again to check out the drive. Here are a handful of photos from our quick trip to Crater Lake.