Some Notes on My Jewelry Business

Posted on July 1, 2018 by Maria Langer

Surprisingly successful.

I started creating wire-wrapped jewelry back in January of this year. I’ve come a long way.

Getting Serious and Developing a Style

My first wire-wrapped jewelry piece. Don’t laugh; I was proud of it back then. And I still think those are excellent swirls.

My first attempts were predictably amateurish. Cringe-worthy, in fact, when looking back on them. I learned from watching a few YouTube videos — which, in hindsight, I now realize were the wrong YouTube videos. But I had a lot of positive feedback from the people who saw my work, including some professionals. (I was in Quartzsite, AZ at the time and literally surrounded by rock hounds and lapidaries.) I realize now that they were probably just being nice. That early stuff was gawdawful, although I subsequently did manage to sell every single piece. (Go figure, eh?)

Finishing this first piece in sterling silver was when I think I started getting serious. That was a really beautiful stone. It was one of the first pieces I sold.

In mid January, I got a lesson from a friend who is one of those professionals. Dorothy guided me to create my first piece in sterling silver. I think this was the point at which I realized that if I wanted to acquire nice stones, I needed to get serious about creating nice jewelry with them. The things I learned really helped put me on the right path.

At around the same time, I found another YouTube wire-wrap artist who showed me additional techniques, such as wire-wrapped bails, that I’d incorporate into my own work to develop my own style. That style now includes hand-formed swirls at the top of each piece, an occasional drop-down wire or two that end in tiny loops, and a pair of tiny loops at the back of the piece.

Since January, I’ve created well over 100 pieces of wire-wrapped gemstone jewelry, most of which are wrapped with silver. I’ve shifted slowly from the inexpensive stones I acquired in Quartzsite to more exotic, higher quality stones I get from gemstone dealers and at gem shows.

It’s All about the Stones

For me, it’s all about the stones. I’ve always liked beautiful stones but never had a reason to acquire them. Making jewelry gives me an excuse to buy stones. I put them on display in cases so I can look at them and choose one for my next piece. It seems silly to folks who don’t have a thing for stones, but if you do, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.

Of course, these stones aren’t cheap and I really didn’t want to continue funding this — dare I say it? — obsession with stones. So I decided to try to sell my jewelry.

The Birth of ML Jewelry Designs

I did a few things pretty much all at once:

I came up with a company name. I needed a name so I could identify the company. I’m afraid I didn’t get very creative. I put about 10 minutes of thought into it. ML Jewelry Designs.
I registered a domain name. Honestly, I don’t know why so many businesses put their eggs in the Facebook basket. There’s nothing that gives a company more legitimacy than an address on the web. So MLJewelryDesigns.com was born.
I set up a Facebook page. (I later pretty much abandoned it when I decided that I’d had enough of Facebook. I did the same for my other company, Flying M Air, LLC.)
I set up a Twitter account for the company. I wanted a way to tweet only company news, including photos and links to new pieces.
I registered my business with the state. I knew I’d have to collect and pay sales tax.
I built a website with WordPress. What else was I going to use?
I started photographing my jewelry and adding it with descriptions to the website.
I set up WordPress to automatically tweet posts about new pieces.
I set up Square to accept credit card payments and, more importantly, an online store.
I designed and bought materials for unique packaging that included clear pillow boxes and card inserts.

All this took less than a week. Maintaining the website and online store to add jewelry pieces would take a few hours every week.

I got my first online sale within a week. It was to a Twitter friend who lived overseas. (Thank you, mdy!) As I packed up the piece, I found myself kind of sad to see it go. But I felt less sad when I saw the money in my bank account and placed another order for stones. It’s all about the stones!

Selling in Person

The one thing I knew for sure is that the photos of my work that I was putting online did not do the pieces justice. They look way better in real life. That was confirmed when I showed photos to several shop owners and got a lukewarm response. (I don’t do that anymore. I tell people I don’t have photos with me.) One of those shop owners saw them in person yesterday and was very impressed.

I knew that Pybus Public Market, a local shop/restaurant/farmer’s market venue on the Wenatchee waterfront, had “day tables” for vendors. The rates were affordable. Some friends of mine were already selling handmade furniture and other woodworking items there on Saturdays. I decided too see if I could get a table there.

My first table at Pybus Public Market. I now use a black tablecloth and have really improved my display.

It was remarkably easy, especially in the spring when there wasn’t much of a demand for space. I set up one Saturday for the first time. My table consisted of several jewelry display busts with pendants hung around them and black burlap-covered boards with the pendants on display. I had the stones on display, too, all priced so folks could buy stones to take with them or have me wrap for them.

And I sold three pieces of jewelry.

Now that might not seem like a lot, but I’m not making cheap stuff. My prices range from $49 to $59 for most pieces, with a few cheaper ones (clearance items and quick wraps for folks on a budget) and a few more expensive ones (especially lately with the high quality stones I’ve been acquiring). The cost of the table was cheap enough that if I sold just one piece, I’d be ahead of the game. I considered three a good day.

I came back other Saturdays with mixed results. None of the Saturdays were bad, but some were better than others.

After talking to other vendors, I decided to try Fridays. With the exception of one day that no one did well — they didn’t even charge our table fees that day — I did fine.

Saturdays got busier when the Wenatchee Valley Farmer’s Market started up outside. That didn’t necessarily mean more people were spending money indoors, though. It was hit or miss, but never a complete failure. It did start getting better when the Seattle weekenders started coming in.

When the Wednesday evening farmer’s market started last week, I started coming on Wednesdays, too. I sold two pieces the first time — and I had to leave at 2 because of weather. (I’m still cherry drying pilot.) I sold four this past Friday. And I sold five yesterday.

Although I sit there making jewelry as I chat with shoppers, vendors, and employees, I often sell more pieces than I can make in the same time. Sometimes the jewelry I’m making is a special order for someone who really liked a stone in one of my cases and wanted a jewelry piece made from it.

I get lots of complements from everyone who stops to look, even if they don’t buy. (After all, I know that not everyone is interested in wearing a pretty rock on a cord around their neck.)

And a shopper yesterday, as I gave her my usual spiel — “I buy the stones already cut and polished. I do all the wire work to make the pendants and earrings in sterling silver, copper, or both.” — said, “I know. My friend told me about you.”

Whoa. Word of mouth. How cool is that?

The Gallery

Of course, a better way to sell my jewelry was to have someone else sell it for me. So I continued looking for places that might take my work.

I quickly learned not to use the phrase “wire wrap” when describing my jewelry to a shop owner. And not to show photos. The best way to approach a shop owner was to go in when it wasn’t crowded with my case of finished pieces.

You see, I store all my pieces in a glass-topped jewelry display case when it’s not on display on the labeled board at Pybus. The case has dividers and each piece fits into a slot on black velvet. It looks neat and impressive.

This piece of Native Silver sold at the Two Rivers Art Gallery last week.

And that’s what I took into the Two Rivers Art Gallery when I went to ask if they’d display them — despite the fact that the manager told me they had no room for me when I called him on the phone. They were suitably impressed and they made room. I’ve got a whole shelf in a locked case in one of the front rooms. And last week, I got a check for the sale of two pieces of jewelry, including my most expensive piece (Native Silver), which sold for $89.

But I’m not done. I’m hoping to get my jewelry into a handful of other stores in the area and beyond. (If you’re reading this and am interested in helping me sell my work in your store, please get in touch.)

Looking Ahead

I’m always looking for ways to improve my display with the goal of increasing sales at events.

Here’s my current display board with some of the cabochon cases in front of them. (And yes, it’s a terrible photo.)

Over time, I modified my display to include a bigger board, labeled hooks that included the name of the stone and the price (so people wouldn’t have to fumble with the tag or unnecessarily touch anything), and lights. There was an easel to lift and tilt the board without having to depend on boxes behind it. My selling junk (iPad, Square, packaging, etc.) is hidden behind the easel, leaving the table neat. The three gemstone display boxes, which have plexiglas tops, are unsnapped so they can be easily opened to remove a stone for inspection by someone who is seriously interested, while keeping kids and light-fingered passersby from touching or taking home souvenirs. Not perfect, but better.

I’m also looking into other venues, specifically one where artwork is displayed and sold. I have a lead on an “Artisan’s Booth” at the Grant County Fair in August and am still sitting on the fence about it. I suspect I’ll give it a try just to see what it’s like, even though I don’t think it’s the kind of crowd my work would appeal to.

I’d like to get into some events in a metropolitan area like Seattle where people are willing to spend more money.

Meanwhile, I’m buying more rocks. I can’t tell you how many complements I get on my selection of stones.

The second Shiva shell piece I made yesterday sold, too.

And since I’m starting to learn what sells best, I’m making sure I always have pieces using those stones in stock. Kingman turquoise, Shiva shell, rose quartz, lapis lazuli, and K2 are nearly impossible to keep in stock. On Thursday night, I made a Shiva shell piece and it sold on Friday. On Saturday, I made one and it sold before I was finished. I made a second one and it sold before I packed up. I have one on order for my best customer and need to make at least two more — one for the gallery and one for Wednesday at Pybus. So you can guess what I’ll be doing this evening — or this afternoon when the wind invariably kicks up. (What is it with the wind this year?)

This little piece of black pyrite came out a lot better than I expected it to and is currently my favorite piece.

I need to stress that I enjoy making the jewelry. I find it strangely relaxing and rewarding, especially when a piece comes out better than I expected it to. I’ve never felt so creative before. Artistic, even. And although I’m kind of sad to see a piece I really like get sold, I’m also thrilled every time I make a sale. I’m creating something visual (as opposed to the millions of words I’ve sold as a writer) that people want to buy. How cool is that?

So at this point, I think it’s safe to say that this is not just a passing phase for me. I feel invested and rewarded and even still excited about this work. I’m looking forward to continuing and improving my technique and style for years to come.

A Weekend of Flying

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Maria Langer

15+ hours of cherry drying, hop rides, and horse roundup in three days.

My new old helicopter, Mr Bleu, had a lot of time to rest after our flight up from Arizona to Washington in April. Too much time, if you ask me. I did a 2-hour photo flight one day not long after I brought it home and then a handful of hour-long tours of the area for locals and tourists. I took it down to Cave B Winery for lunch with some friends and to pick up my wine club shipment. And I ran it over to the airport once for a bit of maintenance. But other than that, it’s been parked, mostly waiting for cherry season and my big June event.

Cherry Season

The work that pays my bills every year is cherry drying. I started doing this way back in 2008, making this my eleventh season.

I’ve blogged about this extensively since I started, so if you want details or more information about cherry drying, use the search box to search for “cherry drying.” Then read what comes up. Or watch this surprisingly popular video or this more informative video I made.

The short version is that cherry growers hire helicopters to stand by during the last 3-5 weeks the cherries are on the trees. When it rains, we fly low and slow over the treetops to blow the water off so the cherries don’t split. It’s slow, tedious, and often dangerous work and very few pilots do it more than one or two seasons before they find more interesting things to do. But I’ve stuck with it and built up a bit of a reputation based on consistent customer service.

My business has grown over the years. About seven years ago, I started getting more contracts than I could handle alone and began hiring pilots with helicopters to work with me as a team. Every year, I have a few core guys I can turn to and a number of slots that are filled with different guys every year. Last year was tough — although I had a lot of acreage to cover and six pilots with helicopters to join me, it didn’t really rain. That turned off a lot of guys who thought they’d make big bucks. The previous year was the opposite; it never seemed to stop raining and we flew more than I thought possible.

That’s how it is, though. As I tell my crew, the only thing you can count on is the standby pay; if you can’t make it work financially with just that, you shouldn’t come.

This year, I have a small team: there are just four of us. I started on June 1 with the other guys joining me as my acreage load picked up. One guy started June 15, two more will start tomorrow. Then, as cherries are picked and the acreage load drops, the pilots will leave and I’ll finish up alone. As of now, I should be done by August 11.

I work mostly with R44s, but this year we have a Bell 206L with us, too. (Last year we had an S-55.) They’ve been pulling out a lot of acreage in my area due to small cherry virus so I lost a few contracts for that. And since last year was so dry, a handful of growers and orchard managers decided to skip helicopter coverage and toss the dice with Mother Nature. There’s always crop insurance to prevent a total loss.

Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think about the entire state of Washington, it isn’t all as rainy as Seattle. I live on the east side of the Cascade Mountains which is desert-like. In fact, I’d say our climate is almost identical to Flagstaff or Prescott, AZ. So we have a lot of sun and, without irrigation from the Columbia River, which flows right through the area, we wouldn’t have orchards or farming.

I did some flying the first week I was on contract. On Friday afternoon, I took two pilots out to see the orchards that were going on contract within the next few days. Then, on Friday evening, with one pilot just settling in after his flight up from Mesa, AZ, and another already on board and prepped to do a handful of local orchards, it rained again. I launched at 8:15 PM. I only had 20 acres of bings to dry, so I was able to get the job done before sunset, which is at about 9 PM this time of year.

That turned out to be the first of many cherry drying flights that weekend.

Here’s Mr Bleu at its temporary home after Friday’s last flight.

The Big June Event

On the Saturday before Father’s Day every year, Pangborn Memorial Airport in East Wenatchee holds its big Aviation Day event. There are static displays of airplanes and helicopters, informational booths manned by Alaska Air and other aviation-related companies, a fire helicopter rappelling demonstration, and, of course, helicopter rides. I’ve been doing the rides with my cherry drying crew for the past six or seven years.

One of the planes on display was this beautiful DC-3, which I got a chance to photograph both inside and out on Thursday and Friday. (Blog post to come.)

This is a huge rides event for us. After all, how often can a helicopter company fly non-stop all day long with three helicopters giving rides? Honestly, I think that if we had a fourth helicopter on the team, we’d still be flying all day.

We had a good ground crew this year. With three people on that crew — one to sell tickets and two to handle safety briefings and escort passengers to and from the helicopters for hot loading — the pilots never had to wait more than a few seconds after touching down for the passengers to be swapped out. The quick turn time is vital for maximizing the number of rides you can do and keeping passenger wait times short.

Part of the equation is also making sure the pilots space themselves properly so there’s only one helicopter on the ground at a time. The rides we 8 to 10 minutes long so even with three helicopters, there were a few minutes between each landing. Any time one of us looked like we might land before the one ahead of us departed the landing zone, we slowed up to improve spacing. It worked like a charm.

And it should. The three pilots doing the ride had a lot of aviation experience. I’ve got about 3700 hours in helicopters and have been flying for about 20 years. At this point, I must have done close to 100 rides events. Woody, who retired from American Airlines in March of this year, has over 30,000 hours as a pilot and is a partner in a flight school that also does rides at events. And Gary, who owns and operates a fleet of helicopters at a flight school near Salt Lake City with his wife Lorri, has probably done even more rides events than me. Lorri is, by far, the best ground crew manager I’ve ever worked with.

Our three R44s, parked on the ramp later in the day, after the event. Oddly, all three are blue.

More Cherry Drying

The forecast for Saturday called for rain. Some forecasts said 50% chance, others said 80%. The rain came in the form of fast-moving storms that seemed to come up out of nowhere and blow through the area. I really thought it would impact our passenger count, but there were always people waiting to fly. We just adjusted our tour routes to avoid flight in the areas where the rain was pouring down and the wind was howling. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to work around the weather.

ForeFlight kept track of some (but not all) of one of my afternoon cherry drying flight. Fun stuff, eh?

Of course with rain came calls to dry cherry trees. They were evenly spaced. I took the first one since I was prepped for it: 34 acres of mostly bings and Rainiers up a canyon about 7 miles from the airport. While I flew over the trees, Woody and Gary kept doing rides. I heard them on the radio making their position calls as I flew back and forth blowing water off the trees.

I was just finishing up when the second call came. Since Gary was prepped for that orchard, I put him on it and I went back to doing rides with Woody. By then, the wind had shifted and we reversed our tour direction. With more rain over downtown Wenatchee, we flew mostly over Malaga. That was kind of neat because we passed close enough to where Gary was working for my passengers to see him. On one tour, I even circled the orchard to make sure he knew where the Rainiers he was supposed to dry ended and the bings they didn’t want dried began.

He finished up, refueled, and joined us for rides. That’s when another grower called. This time, Woody was prepped for the orchard so I sent him while Gary and I kept doing rides. By then, the event was winding down and, as usual, the only crowd of people around was the crowd at our landing zone. Lorri stopped selling tickets and, by just after 4 PM, we took the last group. Gary and I set down near the landing zone. Our ground crew loaders left, we packed up our gear, and we went into a hangar where Century Aviation was displaying two antique aircraft it was restoring for clients. Woody joined us a short while later.

My friends at Century Aviation have restored the sole remaining Curtiss Flying Boat in existence. I’ll be the photo ship for its first test flight next month at Moses Lake.

Between the three of us, we’d flown 12.4 hours of rides flights and another 5.2 hours of cherry drying flights. Needless to say, it was a good day.

More Storms, More Wet Cherries

We all refueled and headed back to our parking areas. I’m based at a neighbor’s landing strip, Gary’s based at an orchard nearby, and Woody is based at a client orchard. We met up back at my home where Garry and Lorri are staying in their RV and Woody is staying in mine.

We were just talking about dinner when my phone rang again. This time, a client in Quincy was on the line. Although his contract didn’t start until the following Friday, a big storm had come through Quincy and he was wondering if he could have his cherries dried off contract. Since Gary was the guy who’d be drying his orchard when the contract started, I put it to him. Sure, he said. And he drove off to return to his helicopter. Fifteen minutes later, he did a flyby on his way to Quincy, which was 15 air minutes away.

I snapped this shot of Gary as he flew by enroute to Quincy. I suspect there will be a lot of helicopters flying by my home this summer.

Woody was getting ready to put a rib eye steak on my grill when we both noticed the storm clouds to the east, right where Gary had gone. A few minutes later, he called to say that he’d hit weather and had made a precautionary landing in a field. I checked radar and saw a huge cell right over the orchard he was headed for. Putting radar in motion showed me it was heading our way.

When the storm hit, it hit with a vengeance. Honestly: I have never experienced such wind and rain at my home. Because it was coming from the east, it even blew water under the door to my deck at the front of the house. Poor Woody had to go out and turn his steak on the grill with a towel draped over his head.

The power went out, came back, went out, came back with some flickering, and then went out again. It stayed out.

I knew the calls would be coming, so I headed down to Mr Bleu, leaving Woody to gobble down a beautiful steak and some salad. I parked in my truck near the helicopter and turned off the engine, leaving the radio on. It poured on me. My neighbor drove up and parked beside me. We rolled down our windows and chatted. He told me he needed to spray his apples and was hoping to do it that evening, but with all the rain, he’d have to wait. We chatted about a few other things, including my asshole neighbor who no one in town seems to like. The rain stopped. My phone rang. Five minutes later, I was in the air, heading toward one of the orchards on my list.

Meanwhile, Gary had made it to Quincy and was drying 50 acres of very wet cherry trees.

A call came in for Woody’s orchard and I told the owner that Woody was on his way.

I dried an 18-acre orchard, then zipped across the river and dried another five-acre orchard. The owner of the orchard Woody was drying asked if Woody would do one block again when he finished. I passed on the request via radio and Woody immediately reminded me that it would be dark soon and there were wires in the block the orchardist wanted dried. I told him to do whatever he felt comfortable with. (We didn’t know then, but another pilot had crashed after hitting wires farther upriver. She’s okay, but the helicopter is out, at least for the season.)

Another call came in for five more acres close to my home. By that time, it was getting dark and the wind was kicking up. I started to dry those last five acres but soon had trouble maintaining control in a gusty wind. Another storm was coming through. I decided to break off for safety’s sake. Maybe Mother Nature would do my job with the wind.

It was a good thing I stopped when I did. The wind was howling all the way back to my landing zone and, although it was light enough to see, it was darker than I like it to be when I’m working low-level. I managed to set Mr Bleu down in its parking spot. I cooled down the engine and shut down just as it started to rain again.

The power was still out at home. Woody had landed safely and was on his way back in my Jeep. Gary texted to let me know he was done but he had run low on fuel. Lorri was on her way over with their truck and fuel tank. It would be a 40-minute drive each way for her. Meanwhile, Malaga was still dark from the blackout, although Wenatchee and East Wenatchee seemed unaffected. I later learned that lightning had struck a transformer in the area during the first big storm of the evening. When Gary flew past on his way to his landing zone, I got back in my truck to go pick him up since I knew it would be at least 30 minutes before Lorri returned.

I shot this photo from my deck at about 9:30 Friday night. The power was still out in Malaga.

It was 10 PM by the time the helicopters were all tied up for the night and the pilots were back at base.

But I’d already begun getting calls for the next morning. We all knew we’d be up by 4 AM.

Drying at Dawn on Sunday

I was up at 3 AM. At exactly 3:56, I got a text from one of my clients asking me to dry his five acres in East Wenatchee again. I already had 48 acres lined up for Gary and 28 acres lined up for me.

I dropped Gary off at his helicopter on the way to mine. He launched at 4:40; I was five minutes behind him. I finished the first five acres before dawn and was nearly done with the second five acres when the sun broke over the horizon.

It was a beautiful day and I said as much over the radio. A guy in the ground crew at Pangborn Airport, checking the runway for FOD before Horizon’s 5:30 AM flight would depart, replied “Why wouldn’t it be?” Gary’s voice came through next: “It sure is.” I shared another piece of wisdom over the radio on my way to the 23-acre orchard waiting for me: “Any morning you get paid to fly is a beautiful morning.” Someone double-clicked a mic button in agreement.

I’d forgotten my sunglasses and cap, so I had to deal with the low sun shining in my face while I dried the parts of the orchard that were already in sunlight. No big deal; I’m used to it. The trees weren’t that wet and I was able to finish the job quicker than usual, saving the owner some money.

I was done and back at my base before 7 AM.

Here’s Mr Bleu parked in its landing zone after Sunday morning’s cherry drying flights.

Herding Horses

I wasn’t done flying for the day, though. I still had a big job ahead of me: herding horses on the Yakama Reservation south of Yakima, WA.

I went home, took a shower, had a second cup of coffee, and made breakfast. At 8:30 AM, I was back in my helicopter, climbing out past my home to get some fuel at the airport.

While the fueler did his job, I rigged up one of my GoPros, hoping to capture some footage of my flight down to Yakima, the work I did there, and my flight back. Although I used to mount the camera on the outside of the helicopter, the local FSDO wasn’t happy with my setup so I had to mount it inside the cockpit bubble. I had a solution with a suction cup mount and it worked good enough, although it wasn’t ideal. I was able to get it plugged into the intercom system so I’d have audio in.

Why move wild horses?

If you’re wondering why they bother to move the horses, the answer is pretty simple: with no predators and decent grazing in the spring, the wild horse population booms. (I think I saw at least 300 horses in this one area of maybe 20 square miles that day and I know there are a lot more in the hills to the south.) Soon, the horses have devastated the grazing area, leaving nothing for them or any other animal — including the cattle that the Yakama nation depends on for its own food — to eat. As winter comes, these herds begin to starve to death.

While we all love the romantic idea of the Wild West filled with herds of wild horses, the overpopulation in some areas is a serious problem for both the horses and the people who are trying to live on the land.

When I asked what they do with the horses, I was told that they put them up for auction. I think it’s a hard sell; it’s unlikely that the adult horses can be trained to work on ranches or do horseback riding. The colts and fillies, however, have a chance at being trained to serve a useful purpose and would likely be bought by someone who would keep them alive.

I didn’t dwell on this aspect of the work I was doing. I recognize the problem and want to be part of the solution. I believe, however, that the best solution would be to try to limit reproduction. I believe that a better solution would be to somehow introduce birth control into the herd. Ideally, if possible, it could be done by darting from a helicopter. I’m assuming there’s some reason — technology? availability of drugs? cost? — that they don’t use an approach like this.

It would be sad if the problem got as bad as the wild pig problem in Texas — they shoot those from helicopters and leave their carcasses for scavengers.

I started back up and pointed the helicopter south, climbing steadily to clear the cliffs behind my house along the way. I had a nice little tailwind and did the 52 NM flight in less than 30 minutes. On the ground, I had the fueler top off both tanks and went inside the FBO to wait for a passenger. He was a no-show, but my client had texted me GPS coordinates to meet him. So when it became certain that my passenger was not going to show up, I climbed back into Mr Bleu and flew another 12 miles southwest over a ridge to a flat area in the middle of nowhere.

On the way, I saw a herd of about 20 horses on the south side of that ridge.

I was over the coordinates wondering where my client was when I suddenly saw him and two other people standing on a two-track road. The truck they’d come in was hidden out of sight behind a small rise. I landed on the road, cooled the engine, and shut down.

I met Troy, his nine-year-old son, and his cousin or nephew — I can’t remember which. We talked about what had to be done — get the horses that were up on the ridge down into the flat area and up against the fence and drive them up into the trap. I asked where the trap was and Troy just pointed up the road beyond the truck.

Meanwhile, they were looking out to the west where other wild horses were being driven into other traps by other members of their party: Troy’s father, brother, cousins, and nephews. I could barely see the activity — it was quite a ways off. We’d start off working separately and then maybe help them.

I gave Troy and his son a safety briefing and loaded them into the left side of the helicopter where they’d be able to see the same thing. I didn’t discover until later that it was Troy’s son’s first time ever airborne. (Please, parents, don’t introduce your kids to aviation on an animal roundup flight.)

We took off to the east, heading slightly north to the ridge I’d come over. I assumed he wanted to start with the herd I’d seen, but he wanted to go farther east than that. I’d estimate we went at least three to five miles from our starting point. He instructed me to go up a sort of canyon in the hillside with the idea that we’d get beyond whatever was up there and start moving them west.

It didn’t take long before we started seeing horses. A lot of horses. Maybe 15 or 20? Mares, colts, fillies, and always at least one stallion. I descended and moved in close from one side and, as I expected, they began running. I stayed behind them, just far enough off to keep them running without scaring them to death.

I could try to give you a play-by-play of the movement — after all, the video camera was running for most of the time and both Troy and I were talking — but do you really want to read it? I wouldn’t. Although it was sometimes a bit of a rush to fly, it wouldn’t make good reading. I basically had to keep the horses moving southwest down the ridge and into the flats. I did this by flying low behind them, moving right or left to “encourage” them to go the right direction.

Troy captured this image of me at work with a herd of horses up near the top of the ridge.

When Troy was confident they were going the right way, he’d instruct me to go back up and find another herd. It seemed that he wanted to gather all of the horses together into one big herd and get them all moving southwest toward the trap. So we went up and found another herd and started driving them down. And then another. And then another. And then we’d come up for a look to see where they all were and go back down to get the ones who were wandering back in track.

ForeFlight kept track of part of my first horse herding flight. Can you understand why a kid on his first ever fight might get pukey?

This went on for at least an hour. In the back seat, Troy’s son got sick — how could he not, considering our motion? — and I was very glad that Mr Bleu’s previous owner had left a barf bag in the front passenger pocket.

At one point, we had about 100 horses all in one big group following their established horse trails west in the foothills of that big ridge. It was a beautiful sight.

Little by little we got close to the trap, which I still hadn’t seen. A lead group of horses peeled off and started going back up the ridge. Troy told me to move the back down. I was working on it when he said, “Too late. They’re past the trap.”

What trap?

Here’s the second herd we tried to herd into Troy’s trap. This is a screen grab from my GoPro; it gives you an idea of the kinds of attitudes required for this work.

We went after another herd and had better success. I kept them south of an imaginary line only Troy could see and then moved them west to the fence line. That required me to jump a small power line and pick them back up on the other side. Once against the fence, Troy had me move them north without letting them move east. I drove them as he instructed, going only close enough to keep them moving. They followed a road and I suddenly began seeing red ribbons tied to the sagebrush. And then old wooden beams. A corral.

They got right up to the entrance of the corral, saw what was up ahead — a dead end — and stopped. For a moment, I hovered about 20 feet away from them and they all looked at me. It was a sort of standoff. Then I inched forward. They turned around, ran into the corral, and Troy’s cousin/nephew pulled a tarp across the entrance to trap them inside.

My camera didn’t capture this — Troy had accidentally disconnected its power about 20 minutes earlier — but Troy’s cell phone camera did.

Here’s the moment when the horses finally ran into the trap.

We went back down the road and I landed. I wanted Troy’s son out before he puked again and messed up my nearly new carpeting. (Mr Bleu might need an overhaul in 200 hours, but its carpet was obviously replaced just a short while ago and is in excellent condition.) I also wanted a closer look at the trap which, in my mind, wasn’t very big or sturdy. So we got out and walked up to where Troy’s cousin/nephew was attempting to get the horses to move from the “big” capture area to a much smaller holding pen.

We’d caught four mares, who of which might be pregnant, a colt, and a stallion. While the two guys worked the horses, the stallion got excited and jumped the fence. That left a total of five horses.I didn’t think that was very good — especially when you consider the 100+ horses we’d been moving all over the area — but Troy seemed happy enough.

Here’s a shot of the five horses we ended up with in the smaller holding pen.

I was ready to go get some more — I wanted them to get their money’s worth — when Troy got a call from someone working the other horses west of us. They needed help. So he and I got back on board, leaving his son with his cousin/nephew, and headed west.

There were more horses there and a lot more guys working them. Two guys on horseback, one guy on a dirt bike, and a woman in an SUV. There was a herd of about eight near the mouth of one of the traps and they wanted us to help them get it in. I got into position and started moving them with the vague idea of the trap being in a patch of woods. The horses got close, saw the trap, and broke into two groups. I went left and moved that group back toward the others. Then Troy told me they’d missed the trap and we’d get them in the next one.

The next one was at least a half mile away. I moved the horses along the top of the ridge and then down a hillside to another patch of woods. The dirt bike came into view and herded from the left as I moved them from the right. Together, we funneled them down to where a two-track road went into the woods. The dirt bike pulled up quickly — I couldn’t get close because of the tall trees. A moment later, the rider was off the bike closing the trap. I caught a glimpse of a bunch of horses in the woods there and Troy told me they’d already caught some. They now had 15 in that trap.

He guided me around to the west to find a few more herds. We spent another 30 minutes driving them down one ridge to the flats and then to the east where we had to drive them up another canyon. At one point, we were driving a herd of about 30 horses toward the trap. He got a call and we broke off to help them move another bunch of horses that they were working near the trap.

Of course, although I’d topped off both tanks in Yakima I’d also been flying almost nonstop for hours. My helicopter’s endurance is roughly three hours and we we’d been flying for about two and a half. I told Troy we had about 20 minutes until I needed to refuel. He understood and he told me that he’d only been cleared for a total of four to five hours of flight time. With the 90-minutes estimated round trip to get to him, our three hours in the air was all he could do.

We worked the large herd of horses near the second trap for another 20 minutes and couldn’t get them any closer. The trouble was, the woman in the SUV had revealed the vehicle to the horses too soon and the horses wouldn’t go past it. We had no way to contact her — she wasn’t picking up her cell phone. To make matters worse, every time we got the horses closer, she’d move the vehicle and spook them. Troy was really pissed off; I was just frustrated. Back and forth, back and forth. We had those poor horses running in circles while we flew around them, trying to keep them together moving in the right direction.

Here’s the last group of horses I worked with. The goal was to get them into the trap, which is in the woods at the end of the road in this photo. You can see the SUV that kept spooking them. I had these horses running around in this 40 to 50 acre area for about 20 minutes before I had to give up and go for fuel. This is a screen grab from a GoPro video.

And then it was bingo time. If I didn’t go get fuel then, I might not make it back to the airport to get fuel.

I told Troy, fully expecting him to tell me to bring him back to his truck at the far trap where I’d picked him up. But instead, he told me to drop him off anywhere.

So I flew us to a nearby hilltop where it looked flat enough to land, set down, and let him off. He thanked me, shook my hand, and closed the door. I checked the door, made sure he was clear, and headed back to Yakima Airport, 15 miles away.

I was on the ground before the low fuel light illuminated, which is always my goal, but especially my goal in a helicopter that’s new to me. With fuel expensive at Yakima, I told the fueler to just top off one tank. I went inside, got change for a vending machine, and ate the only thing I’d consider food that was for sale: a package of Knott’s Berry Farm cookies. I chatted briefly with two airplane pilots snacking on popcorn after a cross-country flight up from Bend, OR. Then I settled my fuel bill and went out to start my trip home.

The Flight Home

I flew pretty much direct from Yakima to Wenatchee Airport. The tailwind I’d had on my trip south was now a headwind. There was some turbulence, but not much. I popped over Jumpoff Ridge just south of my home and started a long spiraling descent to the airport, swinging past my home on the way down. I saw Gary, Lorri, and Woody hanging out in my driveway.

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At the airport, I asked the fueler to top off both tanks. (Although I have cheaper fuel in a DOT-approved transfer tank at my landing zone, I’m saving that for when I need fuel when the airport is closed.) During cherry season, my helicopter’s tanks are always topped off so I’m ready to fly for a full three hours when client calls start coming in. When the tanks were full, I fired it back up and made the three-minute flight back to my landing zone, flying past my home as I made my descent.

I landed, cooled down, and shut down. I took a snapshot of my hobbs meters so I could enter the time in my logbooks. A short while later I was backing my truck into the garage, glad to be home.

I later calculated that I’d flown more than 15 hours in 48 hours, nearly all of it revenue time. A good weekend for business.

Sunset on Sunday night, after a good dinner with friends and a two-hour nap.

First Tries at Bottle Slumping

Posted on June 14, 2018 by Maria Langer

Yes, I’m firing up the kiln again.

Years ago, in the autumn of 2014, when my building was first built but my home inside it was barely started, I took up yet another hobby to keep me busy while I waited for my wasband to get his head out of his ass and pay me what he owed me from our divorce settlement. That’s when I started doing “warm glass” work — specifically, making things like Christmas tree ornaments and jewelry with melted down, repurposed wine bottle glass.

Some Backstory

Here is one of the Christmas tree ornaments I created from broken bottle glass in my tabletop kiln back in December 2014. The blue glass is from a sake bottle.

I bought a tiny desktop kiln and tinier molds to fit inside it. I then acquired countless used wine bottles from the wineries in the area, broke them into tiny pieces, and melted down the pieces in the molds. Some of the resulting items — especially the Christmas tree ornaments — came out rather nice. But beyond that, I was disappointed, mostly because of problems with devitrification. Simply described, the rough edges of the broken glass, when melted down, prevented the final product from having a smooth, shiny surface.

I did all kinds of experiments to get rid of the unsightly marks and finally concluded that they’d have to be polished out. I bought a lap grinder as a sort of universal polishing tool — I was also trying to turn wine bottles into drinking glasses and needed to polish the rims — but it never worked the way I needed it to. I got discouraged and, as I usually do, set it aside and picked up another project to keep me busy. In this case, it was wiring my entire home prior to professional installation of plumbing, insulation, and drywall.

That took me through the winter and into the spring of 2015. I moved into my home and continued working on projects there: finishing my deck, trimming out the doors and windows, finishing up the loft. With flying work and an active social life, I didn’t have much time for playing with broken bottles and a kiln, especially since the results were so frustrating. Yet sometime around then, I bought a bigger kiln. I think I was considering larger glass projects, but don’t remember. The kiln arrived, I assembled it on a wheeled platform I built for it so it would be easy to move around my shop, and I promptly forgot about it.

Last autumn, before departing for my winter trip south, I finally got around to trying out the “new” kiln. I was able to set up several molds inside it. It took a few tries to get the firing schedule right and when I did, I was satisfied with the glass fusing of the items I put into the molds. But I hadn’t licked the devitrification problem, so I wondered why I was even bothering.

Of course, devitrification would not be an issue if I purchased glass specifically made for fusing in a kiln. It was available online from a variety of sellers and would make beautiful pieces. But that wasn’t my goal. My goal was to take garbage — wine bottles — and turn it into something desirable. And I was failing — at least to make pieces up to my own standards which, admittedly, are sometimes a bit too high to achieve.

The Jewelry Connection

Kingman turquoise with bronze wrapped in sterling silver and copper. I made and sold this pendant last Friday.

In January, I took up wire-wrapping gemstones to make pendants and earrings (so far). I developed a real knack for this and quickly developed my own style. I’ve sold a few dozen pieces so far and haven’t gotten bored with it yet. I think it’s because of the variety of stones and the new techniques I can experiment with. And having people praise me for my work — and actually pay me to own a piece — is a real motivator.

I occasionally set up a vendor table at Pybus Public Market on Fridays or Saturdays. (Last Friday I sold five pieces, including one that I’d just made less than an hour before.) One of the other vendors does art glass work. She uses the kind of glass she buys specifically for fusing and turns out some wonderful bowls and plates and other items. I asked her if she ever makes cabochons — after all, why not wrap a “stone” made of glass? She said she could but even after prodding her a few times, she hasn’t delivered any. I told her about my kiln and how it was nearly brand new and hardly used. She said she might have a friend interested in buying it.

I’ve been shedding a lot of the things I’ve owned for years that I lugged to Washington when I moved. I had too many things taking up space in my garage that I knew, deep down inside, I’d never use. The microwave from my old house was the first to go. An old Sony television, still in its box, went next. Both of those went for free. But I also sold my old desk, curtain rods, luggage, and all kinds of household items I packed from September 2012 to May 2013 while I was waiting for the court date for my divorce. (Honestly, if my wasband hadn’t delayed the court date, I would have had less time to pack and would have left a ton of stuff behind.) My telescope and a set of cast iron cookware were the most recent things to go and they each brought in a surprising amount of money. Maybe it was time to sell the “new” kiln.

Or maybe not. There was still one other thing I wanted to try: bottle slumping.

Bottle Slumping 101

I’ve been to a lot of arts and crafts shows. My good friend Janet is an artist and I’ve visited her at many of the shows where she sells her work. One of the craft items that occasionally appears at these shows is wine bottles that have been flattened in a kiln to make a plate. The technique is referred to as bottle slumping.

While my original kiln is too tiny to slump anything bigger than a shot glass, my new kiln can handle a standard sized wine bottle if I place it diagonally across the floor of the kiln. Yes, that means I can only do one at a time, but it was still worth a try. The way I saw it, if I didn’t use the damn kiln, I should sell it. I needed a reason to keep it. Making something desirable out of garbage was my goal. I still had literally hundreds of wine bottles to work with. (I had actually started disposing them in my recycle bin at the rate of 3 cases every two weeks but with 12 cases gone, I’d barely made a dent in what I had accumulated. When you have a lot of storage space, you find a way to fill it.)

I did research online. Using a kiln isn’t as easy as just turning it on and waiting for it to finish. You have to find and program in an appropriate firing schedule. Schedules vary based on what you’re trying to achieve, what kiln you’re using, and what kind of glass you put in it. So right from the get-go, I knew I’d be doing a lot of experiments.

I should also mention here that there are two ways to slump bottles: with and without a mold. I didn’t have a bottle slumping mold so, by necessity, I’d have to slump without one. That got me worried about glass sticking to the bottom of my kiln. I had Thin Fire paper — it’s a thin sheet of paper that turns to a white powder in the firing process and prevents melted glass from sticking to whatever is under it — but I didn’t know how much the glass would melt and whether it would get into the corners of my kiln. Still, I was ready to give it a go.

First Try

In case you’re wondering, here’s the first schedule I tried:

Seg	Ramp	Temp	Hold
1	500°	1100°	10 min
2	250°	1300°	0 min
3	300°	1425°	10 min

Let cool naturally.

So the other day, I programmed in a simple three-segment schedule, leveled the kiln — I use it in my car garage, which is gently sloped toward the door — put a bottle in there, closed the lid, and started it up.

The other thing many folks don’t realize about using a kiln is that it isn’t fast. The schedule I used would ramp up the temperature from my garage temperature to 1420°F over a matter of hours. Cooling would take even longer. I had dinner guests that night and the kiln was still too hot to open before they arrived at 5 PM. Although it might have been ready before I went to bed at 10 PM, I’d forgotten about it. But I remembered in the morning and went down to check it.

And I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

The bottle had melted nearly flat right in place, without seeping into the corners of the kiln. I say “nearly” flat because the bottle’s bottom, which is thicker than the rest of the bottle, had sort of collapsed and folded to make a lump. Although the neck of the bottle had collapsed, there were two air pockets inside. And when I washed the kiln paper power off the bottle, some water got inside along the neck.

The side that had rested on the floor of the kiln would be the top of the plate. It was flat with the texture of the bottom of the kiln, which I rather liked. When I set it on the countertop that way, however, the bulge at the bottom of the bottle lifted that end up, resulting in a plate that wasn’t level.

Here’s my first try. You can clearly see the big air pockets inside the bottle.

So I had three problems to resolve in my next test: get the air pockets out, close up the neck better, and come up with a way to level the resulting plate.

Second Try

I tackled the first two problems first and managed to resolve one of them. I decided that the reason there were air pockets and that the neck allowed water to get in was that I hadn’t melted the glass enough. I’d try again, but this time raise the highest temperature to 1450.

I reprogrammed the kiln, set another clean bottle in there, and got it started.

I do need to mention here that when I say “clean bottle” I mean completely clean and dry glass bottle, inside and out. I had to remove the labels by soaking in hot water for more than an hour, scrape away adhesive residue, and then use 90% rubbing alcohol to get the last little bits of glue off. Then I used hot water and a lot of agitation to rinse the inside of the bottle at least four times. Then I had to stand the bottle up on its neck in a place where the water would drain out and the bottle would eventually dry. This prep work is, quite frankly, a pain in the ass. But I do them two or three at a time so there’s always another bottle ready to slump.

I went about my day, running errands and doing chores around the house.

The schedule took another few hours to run and hours to cool. Finally, by mid afternoon the kiln was down to 200°. I opened it up but wasn’t foolish enough to touch the bottle, which would also be 200°. I did get a good look at it, though and it looked better. One of the air pockets was gone and the neck was nicely closed up, but there was still an air pocket right below the neck.

This is my second try. The neck had closed up nicely, but there’s still a good sized air bubble right below the neck. You’re looking at the flat side of the bottle.

When the kiln temperature got down to 90°F, I touched the bottle and found it cool enough to remove. It was better than the first one, but not quite “perfect” yet.

Third Try

Here’s the third try bottle inside the kiln. Note the tiny piece of shelf leg positioned under the neck. It’s unfortunate that I can only do one bottle at a time; once I get the schedule perfected, it would be nice to do two at a time.

In the meantime, I’d called the art glass lady from Pybus to get some advice. What I really wanted to know is whether I had to keep using the kiln paper or whether I could just use kiln wash at the bottom of my kiln. I would quickly run out of kiln paper if I used a fresh sheet for each firing and it isn’t something I can buy locally. She told me she uses the same stuff I was using and recommended it. She offered to sell me some, but I didn’t want to bother her with that. I also told her what I was doing and mentioned the air bubbles. She suggested ramping up at a slower rate and holding it longer at the 1300° temperature.

So I grabbed another bottle — which happened to be a slightly different style — and stuck it in the kiln. At this point, I’d also decided to try propping up the neck of the bottle so that when it slumped, it would make a raised edge that would (hopefully) balance out the folded ridge of the bottle bottom. The trick was finding something to prop it up on. You can’t use just anything when you’re heating it to 1450°F. I poked around my broken glass fusing supplies, which were all neatly organized in a rolling cart in my shop, and stumbled upon the shelf legs for my tiny desktop kiln. I wrapped one of them in kiln paper, laid it on its side, and stuck it under the bottle’s neck, about 3 inches from the top. Then I reprogrammed the kiln controller again following the glass lady’s advice, closed it up, and got it started.

Finishing a Product

While the kiln did its thing, I played around with my first experiment. I wanted to make a branded cheese plate that local wineries might use or sell. I had some old wine labels from a friend’s winery and stuck it on the bottle. I then mixed up a batch of food-safe clear coat that I’d purchased earlier in the day, leveled the bottle-plate on a work surface, and poured the mixture over the label and flat side of the bottle. I soon realized that I’d mixed up too much and spent some time dealing with drips as the mixture self-leveled, resulting in a thin coat over the top of the plate.

It was tough to resist the urge to touch it, but I managed. According to the package instructions, I’ll need to wait at least 48 hours before I attempt to test the surface for durability. Remember, if this is a cheese plate, it should be able to stand up to the work of a cheese knife on it.

This is my first try bottle with my first try label and coating. This is good enough for me to use, but not good enough for sale. Still, I’m on the right track.

Third Try Results

This morning, after making my coffee — I have my priorities straight — I went down to fetch the third try. I felt a moment of panic when I thought that little piece of kiln shelf leg was stuck but it came loose without much effort. The result was a squared out bump in the neck of the bottle which forms a sort of leg when the bottle is set with the flat side up.

Trouble is, it’s too high. Now the plate tilts down the other way. That’s easy enough to fix; all I need to do is trim the shelf leg — which I think I can do — to make it flatter for the next try.

Here’s my third try. There are fewer air bubbles inside the bottle and there’s now a leg to hold up the neck end. Trouble is, the leg is too tall and I really want a bottle with no bubbles.

As for the air pockets in the bottle, they are greatly reduced. But I’m not convinced the firing schedule fixed that. This bottle had a different shape with a more gently angled transition from bottle body to neck. Perhaps that’s why air wasn’t trapped inside the bottle when it melted? The only way to know for sure is to use the same schedule with a bottle shaped like one of the ones I originally used.

Fourth Try

In case you’re wondering, here’s the schedule I’m trying now:

Seg	Ramp	Temp	Hold
1	500°	500°	12 min
2	500°	750°	12 min
3	600°	1100°	10 min
4	200°	1300°	20 min
5	250°	1475°	10 min
6	9999°	1100°	60 min
7	500°	970°	30 min
8	120°	750°	20 min

Let cool naturally.

My fourth try is in the kiln right now. I took the same shape bottle (since that’s what was prepped), cut the shelf leg so it would be shorter, and positioned everything in the kiln. And then, rather than modifying the simple schedule I’d been using, I reprogrammed it entirely using the longer, more detailed schedule for bottle slumping that I’d found. My theory is that the slower ramp up and longer hold times will give the air in the bottles a better chance to escape, thus eliminating the pockets of air.

My kiln has a programmable controller which can store up to 6 user schedules.

Timing and Power Use

Keep in mind that each of these trials takes about 10 hours to complete. With only enough space for one bottle, I can only do two bottles a day — and that would require me to put the next one in each time I remove one. That’s not a huge deal for me; I’m here and once the schedule is set up just right, it is as easy as positioning a bottle and pushing a button on the kiln.

As for power usage, my kiln’s controller has the ability to calculate costs for me once I program in my kilowatt hour rate — which I just did. But I already know that the cost will be lower than what most people might think. Chelan County, where I live, supposedly has the second lowest electric rates in the country thanks to hydro and wind power: currently 2.7¢/kilowatt hour. (Compare that to 13.27¢/kilowatt hour where I lived in Arizona and 15.39¢/kilowatt hour where I lived in New Jersey.) The electric bill for my all electric house was only $25 last month. I’m thinking each firing might cost 25¢ to 50¢.

Goals

My final goal is to get a relatively level plate that can be used to serve cheese either as is directly from the kiln or with the application of a local winery label with a food safe clear coat to make it washable. I’d then sell those to local wineries for their use or make a product that they can sell to visitors. I can think of a few wineries that would be all over it once I got the kinks worked out.

Next time I’m at Pybus, I’ll bring a sample with me to see what kind of interest I get. Wish me luck.

2018 Entiat River Mushroom Hunt, Day 2: 4 Miles of Hiking and a Dozen Morels

Posted on May 22, 2018 by Maria Langer

In which I do a lot of hiking, see unexpected wildlife, and do my best mushrooming while driving.

I slept great, waking at about 5:30 AM.

I made my coffee and sat down to finish up a blog post I’d started the previous week about an FAA inspection of my new old helicopter. Of course, I couldn’t post it. I had no cell signal at all and didn’t expect to get one for the rest of my time in the area. I was totally off the grid for the next four days.

I made breakfast: buckboard bacon, onions, wild asparagus, tomatoes, spinach, and eggs. While I ate, I began planning my day.

The First Hunt

A look into the rest of the campground and beyond from near our campsite.

Since we were camped in a narrow part of the valley, it took a long time for the sun to hit the camper and the solar panels on its roof. Once the sun was on us — maybe at around 8:30 AM — it was time for a hike. I figured we’d head across the campground and into an area where more of the burned trees were still standing. I didn’t expect morels to grow in full sun so this would be a good place to start.

Although I initially packed a fanny pack with a bottle of water, small paper shopping bag (for mushrooms), my bright orange pocket knife, a Lara bar, and Penny’s treats, I decided that the hike would probably be short and I could just take was was absolutely necessary: my phone, which was preloaded with a map of the area in GaiaGPS so I wouldn’t get lost; my knife, and the paper bag. Yes, I left water behind. I didn’t expect to walk very far and it was still quite cool out.

I was wearing a long-sleeved knit shirt with a flannel shirt over that. I almost brought along a sweatshirt but (fortunately, as it turned out) decided to leave it behind.

West of the campground was a forest of tall burned trees.

We headed west away from the camper, past the outhouses and stacked logs and picnic tables. Soon we were in the forest of burned trees. It was truly amazing how much damage the fire had done. All of the old underbrush was completely gone and young trees and other plants poked out of the sometimes very thick ash. All around us, the larger trees that had been burned but not toppled stood like silent sentinels. On a different day, it might have been creepy, but that morning was perfectly clear with lots of warm, bright sunlight. Soon, in fact, I had taken off the flannel shirt and was starting to feel warm in the long sleeved shirt beneath it.

Among the new plants coming up on the forest floor were a multitude of mushrooms.

There were mushrooms everywhere. I have never seen so many in a bright and sunny place. I had no idea what they were, but I took photos. (I actually like photographing mushrooms.) I noticed three distinct varieties of what my friend Sue would call LBMs — little brown mushrooms. I thought for a while about gathering some of them to show when I met up with the group on Friday. They do a big mushroom ID thing on Saturday evening. But there were so many that I figured I could always collect them the next day.

Seriously: I like taking pictures of mushrooms.

Did I see any morels? No. As I wandered through the woods, climbing up into an area that seemed to have more vegetation, I didn’t see a single morel. I started wondering why and came up with four possibilities:

It was too early for them. It had been cold the night before — probably in the 40s. Someone somewhere had told me that morels need at least three nights in a row with temperatures in the 50s to come up. Was that true? Damned if I know. But I doubted it had been that warm at night at my current elevation of about 3100 feet.
Someone else had beaten me to them. After the previous year, I knew this was a real possibility. There’s big money in morel mushrooms and a lot of people hunt for sale rather than consumption. They’re more serious and dedicated than I am. But other than a few footprints I later found on a trail, there was no sign that anyone else had been in the area recently. And the forest is huge; surely they couldn’t look everywhere.
My mushroom eyes hadn’t switched on. Searching for mushrooms is a matter of turning on a very specific pattern recognition in your brain. I was obviously seeing mushrooms that looked like mushrooms. But morels didn’t really look like mushrooms. Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently conditioned to find them?
As this melted can hints, the fire got very hot.
Morels didn’t grow there. Maybe it was too burned up? Maybe the fire had killed off the mycelia that the morels spring from. It certainly had been a hot fire — that was obvious later when I found a partially melted beer can near a trail. (And seriously: WTF? You can carry in a can full of beer but you can’t carry the damn can out when it’s empty?)

It didn’t matter what the reason was — at least not that day. The point is, I wasn’t seeing any morels.

I came upon a well-worn trail that needed some work to clear away fallen trees.

I started heading back, swinging more north to put me on a different path for the return trip. And then I suddenly came upon a trail. I looked at GaiaGPS on my phone and, sure enough, the map I’d loaded in showed a trail. I traced its line on the map and decided it might be worth hiking up to where it crossed a stream. After all, mushrooms were really an excuse to get out hiking. I’d only gone about a mile and I really needed to do more. So I turned and followed the trail up the hill, hearing the sound of rushing water getting louder and louder as I went.

The trail needed work, too. This area of Washington, which is basically the foothills of the North Cascades, has tough winters. Under normal conditions, trees fall in heavy winds or with snow loads. But with so many dead trees weakened by fire damage, there were even more fallen trees than usual. They blocked the trail in more than a few places, requiring Penny and me to go over or around them.

The hike was all uphill, although not really very steep. The trail had gentle switchbacks that made it easier. Eventually, we wound up alongside a wildly rushing cascade of water that cut through the forest. The sound of the moving water drowned out any other forest sound.

The trail took me to Shetipo Creek, which was roaring down the side of the mountain.

Until the fire, this tank and accompanying pipe system had brought water down to the campground from Shetipo Creek.

There was a concrete tank with wooden planks for a lid and pipes on either end. At one time, this system had taken water out of the creek and funneled it down through pipes, probably to the campground. I touched a hand to the outgoing pipe and could feel neither vibration or cold water running thorough it. I followed the incoming pipe upstream to where it went into the water. I wondered when it had been built and whether it was ever used. (The next day, I spoke to a ranger about it. He told me it had been in use until the fire when much of the pipe, which was plastic laying on the surface, had melted.)

I consulted the map and saw that I’d left the mapped trail some time ago. Odd; I hadn’t seen a fork in the trail. In any case, we couldn’t continue on a trail so we headed back. I felt done.

It was an easy hike back to the camper. I always did hike best downhill. It was around 10 in the morning and had gotten very warm. I worked up a good sweat and could go for a drink of water. I think that motivated me to get back quickly.

The first morel I found this year was right beside a well-worn trail.

I was near the very bottom of the trail, not far from where it ends at a parking area near the entrance to the campground, when I looked down and saw it: a morel mushroom. It was a lighter color than I’d been expecting and it was relatively small. Since I’ve never found just one morel in a place, I searched all around it. But it was there by itself.

Of course, I cut it and stuck it in my bag.

Here’s the finished track in GaiaGPS for my Cottonwood Campground area hike. You can see where I diverged from the trail. The waypoint markers represent places I took photos within the app; the numbers are the number of photos there. If I remember, I’ll upload the track and photos to the GaiaGPS website when I get home and link to it here.

Then I spent another 20 minutes poking around that area, looking for more. I came up empty.

The irony of this: although I had hiked 1.8 miles, the mushroom I found was within 100 yards of my camper.

Another Campground, Another Hike

We went back to the camper, had something to drink, and had a snack. That mean half a liverwurst sandwich for me and some chicken and kibbles for Penny. By then, I’d decided that I’d be better off continuing the hunt at lower elevations. There were a few more campgrounds along the road on the way back to Silver Falls. I’d find a spot in one of them and try another hike.

So I stowed all the loose belongings in the camper, loaded Penny up in the truck, and headed out.

I stopped on the bridge as I was leaving the campground to take this photo. The fire didn’t stop at the river.

It didn’t seem to take long to get to the next campground downriver from Cottonwood: Three Creek. It was a tiny campground, also damaged by fire, and I couldn’t figure out how many sites it had. I backed the camper into the one that was most intact, mostly to get it out of the way in case someone else happened to come in. That was unlikely. I hadn’t seen a single vehicle or person all day.

I didn’t feel very hopeful about this spot, so I didn’t gear up. By this time, I’d changed into a tank top and had the flannel shirt on over it as a sort of lightweight jacket. I put my knife in my pants pocket and my phone in my shirt pocket. But I didn’t bother tracking my hike. I don’t think we even did a half mile. We skirted around the campground, crossed the road, wandered around the forest there until we found a small creek, followed the creek back to the road, crossed the road again, and made our way back to the campground. Along the way, I found an archery arrow. Lots of mushrooms but no morels. The elevation was probably around 2900 feet. Still too cold? Or too burned?

The reclusive little brown mushroom and its offspring wait at the mouth of its cave for mushroom hunters with cameras to pass by.

Drive-By Mushrooming

We got back into the truck and continued on our way. I drove slowly, not in any hurry. For much of the drive, the gravel road was narrow with a steep embankment of two to 20 feet in height on the left side of the road. As I drove, I scanned this little hillside with the crazy idea that I might see some mushrooms.

Not so crazy, it seems. I saw what looked like a morel. I might not have the best eyesight, but my vision is finely tuned for pattern recognition sometimes.

You see the two morel mushrooms in this photo, right? Try spotting them from a moving truck.

I found a wider place in the road and pulled over as far as I dared. I pushed the button that would fold in my side mirrors just in case someone came by and needed to pass. I shut the engine and, leaving Penny in the truck, got out with my knife and that paper bag. I walked back down the road to where I thought I’d seen the mushroom growing out of the hillside. Before I reached that spot, however, I saw another one. And another one. And another one.

They were all (barely) within reach. I cut them off, one after another. I got to the spot I’d seen the first one from the truck and found three more. They were all the dark brown morels I’d been expecting to find and they were all large.

Of course, a truck drove by just as I was prepping to cut one high on the hillside. I’m sure the driver knew what I was up to. I waved lamely. He waved back. Then he was out of sight around a curve in the road.

I continued hunting along the embankment but came up empty. So I headed back along the road toward the truck. I found a game trail that climbed up the embankment and followed that, continuing my search on higher ground. Nothing. I came back down, now past the truck, and headed back.

I found three more. I cut the first two and was about to cut the third when I remembered a promise I’d made to myself: I wouldn’t take every mushroom I found. I’d leave behind small ones that were hidden behind brush and difficult for others to find. This way, I’d help prevent the morels from being over harvested so they could continue to grow. This last mushroom was a perfect candidate, so I left it right where it was.

I got back to the truck and stowed the bag of mushrooms inside the camper’s back door where it was likely to be cooler than the truck’s dashboard and safer than the passenger side footwell.

Of course, I kept looking as I drove. But other than finding one huge one from the truck much later in the day, I had no further success.

I was passed by not one but three Forest Service trucks going the same way I was. In each case, I pulled over to let them pass. They probably thought I was driving so slow because of the camper and the unpaved road.

At North Fork

I passed Spruce Grove Campground for two reasons: first, the tight right turn would have required multiple maneuvers to make, and second, the sign said “Trailers not Recommended.” Although I wasn’t pulling a trailer, I did have a long, high profile vehicle that required more than the average amount of space to turn around. I had no idea what the condition of the forested campground would be and didn’t feel like dealing with a challenge. So I kept going.

The next campground was North Fork. There was a barricade with a Road Closed sign that had been moved out of the way. I read that to mean that it was open so I pulled in.

There was a lot of debris all over the campground. Burned and fallen trees, mostly. The mess left from winter. Again, I had trouble identifying more than a few campsites. I backed into one along the river which, unfortunately, was not level. It would do, however. If I decided to spend the night, I could always put the back wheels up on blocks.

Our “campsite” at North Fork Campground.

I made lunch: sardines with minced onions on a bed of mixed greens with balsamic vinaigrette dressing. I drank water. I gave Penny some sardine juice — they had been packed with olive oil — over her kibbles and she ate them up. Then I cleaned off the morels I’d found so far, put them in a plastic container, draped a wet paper towel over them, and stuck them in the fridge.

Here are the morel mushrooms I’d collected that morning, before I cleaned them. The one cut in half is the first one I found. Morels are hollow inside.

The elevation there was about 2650 according to the map I’d loaded in GaiaGPS. There was a place called Entiat Falls just 1700 feet downriver. I thought it might make a good hiking destination with a mushroom hunt along the way. I packed the fanny pack with the paper bag, a pair of binoculars, a snack bar, and a bottle of water. Then I grabbed Penny’s leash and we headed out.

I soon discovered that there was no trail from the campground to the falls. A rushing stream — North Fork — crossed the road at a bridge and the only way for us to cross it to continue downstream was to get on the road. On the other side, we went back into the woods, but the going was tough with lots of marshy areas. It didn’t take long before I got tired of trying to find my way and headed back to the road.

Of course, by that time, we were abeam Entiat Falls. There was a parking space there with an obvious way down to the falls. “Falls” is being generous — all it really is is a place where the river plunges over some really big boulders. It was rushing like mad with a thundering sound and lots of spray.

Entiat Falls wasn’t much of a waterfall, but the water sure was moving fast and loud.

I wasn’t done walking yet so we continued down the road. Because we were on the road and not in the woods, I put Penny on her leash. We walked along the oncoming traffic side so I could scan the embankment for more mushrooms. The road was paved there and rather pleasant, with no traffic at all. I could hear birds and the rushing water off to my right and not much else. The temperature was warm, but I was comfortable.

I checked GaiaGPS to see how far I’d gone. 8/10 mile. I decided to go a full mile before turning around and kept walking, scanning the ground at the side of the road, with Penny leading the way on the leash.

I don’t know what alerted me to the movement ahead. Maybe it was Penny. Maybe it was just something I caught in my peripheral vision. My brain said deer — after all, I’d seen at least a dozen of them in the previous 24 hours — before my eyes locked on to what it was.

It wasn’t a deer. It was a bear.

A big, black bear on all fours ambling across the road about 100 yards ahead of us.

Shit.

I turned around and walked as fast as I could back the way we’d come, dragging Penny along with me. To her credit, she didn’t bark. I kept turning around to make sure the bear wasn’t following us, remembering everything I knew — and didn’t know — about bears. Was I supposed to make noise or be quiet? Was I supposed to run like hell or not turn my back on it? Did bears eat people? Small dogs? Or did they eat trees like pandas and koalas? Surely I’d lose a race with a bear. I was so damn out of shape.

And that out-of-shape feeling was confirmed the farther I speed-walked away. Soon I was sweating, panting, nearly out of breath. And I knew exactly how far away the truck was: nearly a mile! If this bear came after me — or if it had friends in the woods up ahead of us — there was no way I’d be able to beat it tback to the truck.

But there was no chase. The bear, which must have seen us, was simply not interested in us. There were no other bears in the area — at least none willing to put in an appearance. After speed-walking for about a half mile, I finally slowed down to catch my breath. I still wanted to get to the truck and camper as quickly as possible, but I wasn’t interested in having a heart attack along the way.

We reached the bridge and, just before crossing it, I looked down and found a morel mushroom. Go figure, eh?

I looked around a bit, but didn’t find any others. No worries. The only thing I wanted to do was get into the camper, close the door, and have a nice, cold drink.

Five minutes later, that’s where I was.

Siesta

I drank a lot of orange juice mixed with water. I used two plastic cups to make ice in the freezer; I had no ice trays with me. Then I crawled up onto the bed to relax and cool down.

Within 10 minutes, I was dead asleep with Penny on the bed beside me.

I slept lightly for the next three hours. I almost got up once but my body told me I wasn’t ready yet so I went back to sleep.

Finally, I dragged myself awake. I looked outside and saw the storm clouds I’d been expecting that day. While it’s true that I couldn’t go online to check the weather, I had checked it before leaving home. Rain was definitely expected and there was the dark storm cloud that would bring it.

I realized that the trees around me were kind of fragile and that a storm with strong winds could topple one or more, possibly onto my camper or across the road. The narrow part of the road between North Fork campground and Silver Falls had looked prone to flooding. I suddenly realized, with my half-awake brain, that I didn’t want to get stuck out that narrow bit of road. It was time to move on to find another place to spend the night and ride out whatever storm might be coming.

So I stowed the loose belongings again, climbed into the truck with Penny, and headed out.

Needless to say, I was looking for bears along the road about a mile from where I’d been parked. No joy. But a little farther down the road, my drive-by mushrooming skills paid off again: I found a humongous morel. I hopped out of the truck, ran across the road, and cut it off for my collection. That made an even dozen.

National Forest Camping

One of the things I like best about National Forests is that unless otherwise posted, you can camp just about anywhere you can park. I had a few ideas for spots just upriver from Silver Falls that I’d seen the previous year and that’s where I headed.

Along the way, where the road got very narrow with embankments on either side, I saw a handful of deer. No more bears.

I drove past the gate that had been closed the previous year and made a right turn. There was a campsite down along the river there, but it was already occupied. I crossed the bridge. The campsite on the other side of the river was occupied, too. I followed the paved road around to the south, noting one empty spot that would do in a pinch. But what I was looking for was a left turn on a narrow gravel road that wound down into the forest, closer to the river.

The spot I remembered was already taken, but there was another spot I didn’t remember about 100 yards before it. It was certainly large enough for me to get the truck and camper in. I almost turned into it, but then I realized that would have my back door facing my neighbors. So, instead, I backed in so my camper door would face the woods and a tiny creek that meandered past.

I got out to check the level inside the back door of the camper, then got back into the truck to reposition. I did this twice. Finally, it was level enough for comfort. I rolled up the truck windows, shut it off, and got out with Penny and my laptop, which had been charging in the truck all day.

The trees around us looked healthy and not likely to topple in a wind storm. I took out my little grill and set it up on the ground outside the back door. I screwed on the propane can and fired it up. Soon I was grilling up a nice piece of salmon and the last of the wild asparagus I’d gotten from a woman who I’d helped with a bee problem the week before.

Salmon dinner on the grill.

Thunder rumbled overhead, but the rain didn’t start until after I’d brought in my dinner. I put some of it aside to include in an omelet later in the weekend and ate the rest. It was good, although I think I would have enjoyed the salmon more if I’d cooked it a bit longer.

By the time I was done eating, it was raining hard. It would continue to rain hard all evening and into the night.

I spent some time working on a blog post about the previous day’s trip up to Cottonwood campground. By 9 PM, I was exhausted — which really surprised me, given the length of my nap earlier in the day. I was dead asleep by 9:30 PM while the rain pattered on the roof overhead.

2018 Entiat River Mushroom Hunt, Day 1: Getting Started

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Maria Langer

I go off the grid for four days to hunt for morel mushrooms.

One of the best things about being single is all the time I have to do my own thing. Since my divorce started back in 2012 (and eventually ended years later), I’ve picked up a number of new hobbies, some of which are seasonal. Mushroom hunting is one of these hobbies.

Mushrooming Since 2015

I started learning about foraging for mushrooms at a weekend-long class at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center in October 2015. Not long after that, in May 2016, I went on my first morel mushroom hunt with my friend Sue. I actually went out several times, both alone and with Sue, to a variety of places. We did okay — good enough to have morels with a handful of meals.

If you’ve never had fresh morels, you have no idea what you’re missing. They are amazingly delicious. My favorite way to eat them? Dust with flour, salt, and pepper, and sauté gently in butter. Holy cow. I also made a morel mushroom pizza which wasn’t bad; I’d certainly do it again if I brought home enough mushrooms to want variety in how I eat them.

The same year, I joined the Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS), mostly so I could go on their Ben Woo Foray just outside Mount Rainier National Park. 2017 was a very wet year and I saw, in 10 minutes, more mushrooms on the grounds of where the event was being held than I had all summer long on the relatively dry east side of the Cascades where I live. I learned about other edibles — which is honestly all I care to collect — and brought home enough to eat and freeze and enjoy. Heck, I was still eating chanterelles that winter when I took my camper down to Arizona.

The PSMS has other outings and a handful of them are on my side of the mountains in the spring. Last year, I joined the group for a weekend camping trip at Silver Falls Campground about 30 miles up the Entiat River. I came in my truck camper on Friday afternoon and was one of the first to arrive in the group campground. Soon others were pulling in after a very long drive from the Seattle area. It was not a successful weekend, at least as far as mushroom hunting is concerned. I think we were about a week too early. I came back the following week and tried again on my own. The woods were full of mushroom hunters and we were all looking for the same thing: morels.

Up the Entiat

The Entiat River valley is a perfect spot for them. There were huge forest fires in 2015 that devastated much of the valley beyond Silver Falls and did some serious damage to the Silver Falls area. The trail to the falls and even the campground were closed for more than a year. Since morels prefer conifer forests after a fire, it made sense to look there. But there was too much competition in 2017 and I came away disappointed on both trips with barely enough mushrooms for a side dish.

This year, I decided to try again — but with a bit of a head start. I figured I’d head up the Entiat two days early but continue past Silver Falls, all the way up to Cottonwood campground eight miles farther at the end of the road. The road had been closed about a mile past Silver Falls the previous year but a call to the ranger station assured me that it was open. And although Cottonwood campground was technically closed due to fire damage, it wasn’t gated. I was told I could use it as long as I hauled out my own trash.

I had a slight idea of the fire damage the ranger told me about. I’d flown up the canyon a few times the previous year. One of my favorite helicopter joy rides, often with friends, is to follow the Columbia River to the mouth of the Entiat River, then head upstream and follow that to a fork in the canyon. If I make the right turn, I can pop over a ridge not far from Holden Village and Lake Chelan. From there, I follow the lake up to Stehekin. In the spring, there are too many waterfalls along the way to count.

Anyway, I’d seen what looked like a campground from the air in a piece of forest with nothing but blackened towers of burned trees. That was either Cottonwood or one of the ones along the way. Lots of fire damage. Would that mean lots of mushrooms?

There was only way to find out.

A Late Start

There were a bunch of things I needed to do at home before I could head out. First and foremost was an article I was supposed to write for Vertical magazine that I had put off too many times. My deadline had been Friday and here it was on Wednesday and I still hadn’t written a word.

The trouble is, I do my best writing in the morning. Actually, I do my best everything in the morning. But the morning is also when it’s cool out so that’s the best time to work on my garden and do other outdoor things. I’d been promising myself that I’d work on the article in the afternoon, when it was too hot outside to work. But I never did. Now I realized that if I didn’t write the article, there was no way I’d be able to get it to my editor for another week. And since I’d already missed one drop-dead deadline on this piece, missing another would not be a good idea.

So I climbed up into my loft-based office, fired up my computer, and got to work. Three hours later, I had a 1600-word interview all ready for review by my subject. I emailed it to him.

Then I had to move the “outhouse” I use with my glamping tent. (I really need to blog about that setup and my most excellent portable toilet.) I’d moved it down close to the tent for guests about two weeks ago. Now it was time to dump it and reposition it in a more permanent place for the season. I didn’t like where I had it. And the damn thing had already blown over once in heavy wind — thankfully, it had been empty — and I needed my neighbor’s backhoe to get it back on its wheels. I didn’t want that to happen again when it was full. (Ick.)

Moving it took about an hour, mostly because I had trouble getting it hooked up to my ATV’s front hitch. Then a very slow drive up the path from the tent, around the driveway edge, and in place near the big aspen tree by my garden. I needed to borrow the sewer hose from my camper to make a hose long enough to reach the sewer connection in my driveway. Finally, I secured it on jacks so it wouldn’t topple over again.

By that time, it was time for lunch. I had leftover lamb shank.

Next, I had to prep the camper. That meant pulling out a lot of the things I’d left in there after my winter travels that I wouldn’t need for my upcoming trip. When I went to make the bed, it was pretty obvious that the cats had been in there — the bed was covered with cat hair. So I had to get out the shop vac and suck all that hair out. I vacuumed the rest of the rig, too. Then I made the bed, organized the kitchen and bathroom and dining area, and started to pack up the things I would need for the trip, like food and my jewelry-making stuff and my drone.

Then I needed to raise the camper on its legs, back the truck under it, lower the camper onto the truck, and secure the camper to the truck using the tie-down straps. That took about 20 minutes; I’m getting good at it.

The clock was ticking loudly. I knew that if I left home after 6 PM, there was a good chance I’d get to Cottonwood campground after dark, which was definitely not what I wanted. By the time I was ready to take a shower and pack up my clothes, it was 3:30. And that’s when I realized that I hadn’t reviewed the comments my interview subject had emailed back to me.

So I climbed back up to the loft, opened the file he’d emailed back to me, opened my Word document file, and went through the few edits he’d sent. I proofread the article and emailed it to my editor with apologies for being late.

It was 4:30 PM when I finally got into the shower. I needed a serious scrubbing — I’d been sweating all day — and had to wash my hair. So a long shower.

Then getting together my clothes and more food items. And checking off items on my list, some of which needed fetching from various places all over my home and garage and tent. And chicken coop — I needed to bring eggs.

It was 5:30 PM when I finally locked up the house and rolled out of my driveway.

I needed to make one stop: the local Fred Meyer supermarket. I wanted to get a few grocery items: sushi to munch on in the truck, a roasted chicken, and some salad. And I needed fuel for the truck. I was pleased to get a 50¢ gallon discount when filling the truck’s huge tank, even though I still had a quarter tank of fuel.

If stopping for propane would have been easy, I would’ve done it. But the RV dealer on the way out of town was closed and it would have been a time-consuming ordeal at a convenience store. I was pretty sure I had enough propane on board for the trip so I skipped it.

I rolled out of Wenatchee at 6:33 PM.

The Drive Up

It was not a long drive — not in miles, anyway. The campground was 38 miles up Entiat River Road. The turn for that was maybe 10 miles from Wenatchee’s north end bridge. So figure about 48 miles from where I crossed the river from the East Wenatchee side.

It was surprisingly windy along the river. Although it had been a nice day with partly cloudy skies, storms were in the forecast and, from my home’s position on the hillside, I’d seen sheets of rain falling in various directions. But once I was on the road, I no longer felt in a hurry. I set my cruise control for 55 in a 60 mph zone to make it easy to drive my high profile load. The only other vehicle on the road going my way was a police car, which passed me.

There was no traffic at all in either direction on Entiat River Road. Sure, there are homes up there, but I guess everyone was home. The road runs alongside the river, which was running high and fast from snow melt up in the mountains. The next two rivers up the Columbia — the Stehekin, which empties into Lake Chelan, and the Okannogan — were at flood stage. The Entiat was close but none of the bridges across it were closed and there was no flooding on the road.

The farther upriver I got, the narrower and twistier the road became. It was actually a great motorcycling road — I’d taken my bike up to Silver Falls several times for a hike. But behind the wheel of a high CG vehicle, it wasn’t much fun.

Most of the valley was in shadows when I made my turn. I’d periodically get a flash of late afternoon sun in my face, but after a while even that stopped. My average speed dropped from about 50 when I made the turn down to 30 when I entered the national forest.

I was very surprised to see a gate closing off Silver Falls campground. The sign at the beginning of the road had listed all the campgrounds from Silver Falls on as closed but I was going by what the ranger told me. I hoped there was no gate at Cottonwood. But even if there was, I’d deal with it. One of the great things about traveling with a truck camper (or a camper van or a small motorhome) is that it’s easy to park and when you do, you’re camping. So if there was a closed gate at my destination, I’d simply find a place to park off the road out there and settle in for the night.

About a mile past Silver Falls I reached the gate at the road that had been closed the previous year. It was open, as I expected, and I kept going. By this point, I was into the fire damaged area. The sun, although still shining on the tops of the mountains around me, was not shining anywhere in the valley. Still, I could easy see the fallen trees and burned stumps. In some places, where were still tall live trees but in others, there weren’t. At one point, a sign warned of a narrow road for a half mile and the road went down to one lane with tall embankments on both sides. Fast running creeks came out of the hills on my right and formed channels of water on the other side of the embankments; clearly they had been built there to stop flooding and erosion on the road.

And that got me thinking about the kind of damage forest fires do. It isn’t just burned up trees and undergrowth. It’s the subsequent erosion caused by rain and snowmelt on terrain that is no longer able to contain or slow down the running water. It’s the debris that clogs streams and causes them to reroute in directions that road planners never expected. It’s the undercutting of roads and bridges. It’s the layers of ash that choke off oxygen to the soil, making it difficult for plant life to return.

One by one, I passed the other campgrounds along the way. None of them were blocked off, although one had a paper sign over its regular sign that said “Day Use Only.” All of the signs on the right side of the road that had once identified the campground by name were gone. Only the structures that had once held the signs remained.

The pavement ended and I continued on. By this time, I had caught up with an SUV. Although I was only going about 20 to 30 miles per hour, he pulled over to let me pass.

Small creeks crossed the road and I drove right through them. Three of them. None of them were deep, but the road was definitely being eroded. The road climbed some hills and descended on the other side. The landscape was full of the burned remains of once tall conifers.

And then I was at Cottonwood campground. Like the other campgrounds, its sign was gone, but a road sign pointed me to it. I turned left, crossed a bridge over the raging Entiat River, and followed the road around to what was left of the campground.

At Cottonwood Campground

I say “what was left” of the campground because it was a mess. If there had been cottonwoods there, they were all gone. Most of the trees were gone. The campground was basically an open field full of burned tree stumps.

I shot this photo the next day. I have to wonder where the cottonwoods were.

Somehow, the bathroom buildings had been spared. They stood almost evenly spaced alongside the road among neatly stacked piles of lumber and heavy wooden picnic tables.

I drove down to the end of the campground and followed the loop back to the road I’d been on. It was hard to identify where the sites had been. Fire pits were my only indicator in some places. Fallen trees blocked off what might have been driveways or parking areas. It would take a lot of man hours to get this place back to the way it had been — even without the trees. It had already been more than two full years and they had a long way to go.

What a shame.

I found a driveway that led down to two or three spots along the river that were still intact and turned into it. At the end, I had quite a challenge turning around my rig in an area that might have measured 30 feet square with obstacles that included trees, a piece of rebar in the ground that would have made short work of my truck tire, and huge stones. At one point, I thought I was stuck, but since stuck wasn’t an option, I kept trying. After about 20 forward/reverse maneuvers with me getting out of the truck to look for that piece of rebar every time, I finally got it turned around. I backed into one of the spots and stopped when the truck seemed level.

I took this photo of my camper in its overnight spot the next morning before pulling out. This was one of the few undamaged spots in the campground.

It would have been a pleasant spot if it weren’t for all the fire damage around us. The river was only 20 feet away. I had a picnic table and a fire pit, neither of which got any use.

And yes, I was the only person there. I had the whole campground to myself. The only sound was the water rushing by.

By that time, the sun had gone down and it was beginning to get dark. The SUV I’d passed a while before pulled into the campground, drove down to the end, and then drove out. I never saw it again.

Penny and I went for a quick walk around, mostly to stretch our legs and give Penny a chance to do her business. Then, since it was starting to get chilly, we went back into the camper and closed it up for the night. I had some chicken and a salad for dinner; Penny got the chicken fat and skins with some chicken juice over her kibbles.

We were in bed and asleep by 9:30 PM.

More to come…