(Zero feathers were harmed to create this blogpost.)
On our way home from California, we stayed a night at the Seven Feathers RV Resort in the hill country of southwest Oregon. It is the most luxurious setting (in the human-made sense) Team Toto has experienced to-date.
We waited behind a shiny, 787-sized coach in the registration lane. After I checked us in, a friendly fellow in a golf cart led the way to…
Site #seventy-something. We parked. We trotted out our cushy chairs. We poured a glass of friend Pat’s homemade chardonnay, and drank in the view.
Even the bathrooms and showers were seriously luxe — so nice, in fact, we were actually willing to use them.
There’s a big indoor pool and spa. There were “barbecue pavilions,” complete with grills of varying sizes and styles, ready for our use (we didn’t). Every parking pad, every patio table, every lawn is spotless, manicured, and impeccably maintained. And the hookups were all functional, safe-looking and well marked. That never happens! Well, yes it does.
These places usually have horseshoe pits, but this one looked to have bocce courts. I didn’t look, though.
The resort is in a canyon, or ravine, or small valley, nestled a good half-mile from the I-5, so it’s reasonably quiet. And, since there are ridges all around, you can enjoy a bit of view even if you’re surrounded by 787-size coaches and fifth wheels.
(Another life lesson illustrated by Toto: At home, huddling next to our modest estate property, Toto looks reasonably sized. Not large, but not tiny, either. Reasonable. But in RV parks and campgrounds — at least so far, here in the western USA — Toto looks like he should have had HGH shots when he was younger. Perspective is everything.)
Oh and there’s a free jitney that comes by every few minutes to take you to and from the reason this place exists: the Seven Feathers Casino Resort. If we weren’t traveling with the boys, we would have taken a ride over there for a dinner out. But we haven’t left the boys alone inside Toto yet — not sure we ever will — so that wasn’t an option.
Instead, I took a ten-minute stroll down a mood-lighted, meandering and shockingly clean concrete sidewalk that hugged the bank of a gurgling stream (of course!), to arrive at the Seven Feathers Travel Center, which promised restaurant, mini-mart, and deli along with the rows of diesel pumps and semis. I would order dinner to go, walk it back up to our site and we would enjoy a light, nutritious, refreshing meal.
But the deli looked… unappealing. It was probably fine, I just didn’t see anything that called to me. The restaurant had closed after lunch. And the grocery choices were sub-optimal. I did the best I could.
We did not starve. But there were no raves about the imitation pepperoni pizza-flavored Hot Pockets — just a sharp intake of breath from Sooz and a wary look from Wally.
This is the kind of cooking I was born to do.
So, aside from the merely adequate meal, and short of being in one of those completely natural settings, surrounded by wilderness, that appear to be reserved only for production companies filming RV adverts, the Seven Feathers place was really, really nice. Interestingly, the nightly rate was less than other, less comely RV resorts we encountered. We got a 10% discount with our Good Sam Club membership, and we could have snagged another 10% off by joining the casino’s Players Club.
I think it likely that the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe of Indians are not trying to make a bundle at the RV Resort. They just want us to visit, and perhaps hit the tables and slots for a few hours. (More power to them!). Whatever their motivation, they run a first-class RV park. Okay, RV Resort. I’ll concede it, this time.
Would we choose it as a destination? Maybe not. But maybe. Because just look at those hookups! So clean! So well labeled! We’ll probably be back here, on the way to or from some other place.
But we’ll make sure we have something for the grill before we park.
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