Another vlog post from my trip.
I spent two nights at Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, mostly because I wanted an electric hookup to sit out expected bad weather. I got a lot done in the camper on the bad weather day, then did two hikes on my way out of the park. This video fills in the details. Enjoy!
I spend two nights in a pleasant campground, recovering from a weekend of hard work and bad air.
Last year, I spent a weekend in Port Angeles, WA, on the Olympic Peninsula, selling my jewelry — or at least trying to — at a rock show there. I had done very well in January at a rock show in Mesa, AZ, and figured that might just be my niche. It wasn’t. I barely made enough to make the trip all the way out there worthwhile.
While I was at the show, I camped out in a corner of the municipal parking lot. It was surprisingly pleasant — heck, deer came out of the woods right there to nibble on the blackberries that grew beside the spaces — but I knew damn well that I’d be overstaying my welcome if I spent the night after the show there. So I whipped out my public lands campground app, Ultimate CG, and found Dungeness Recreation Area, a county park just down the road in Sequim.
It was raining gently when I arrived just before dark and I found a campsite in one of the loops. It was surprisingly large and private, as were most of the other sites. Very pleasant. And I had the added bonus of finding a few very healthy lobster mushrooms at the back of my site in the woods.
All that was on my mind when I left Eatonville and headed west. It was a 2-1/2 hour drive and I arrived at least a half hour after dark. With those lobster mushrooms in my mind, I tried to remember what site I’d been in. I wound up in the site right next to it.
Here’s a photo I shot in the morning of my truck backed into our campsite. There was lots of privacy with dense vegetation on either side of us.
The campsite was spacious with a picnic table, fire pit (just out of the shot), and enough space to erect multiple tents. Because there was no campsite behind ours, we had the illusion of woods going on forever.
I was dead tired and tightly wound when I backed into the spot, using a lantern as a parking guide. It was darker than I thought possible for a county campground. I absolutely hate driving at night in an unfamiliar area and the last 45 minutes had been stressful for me. I was glad to get in. I had just enough energy left to take the girls for a quick business walk, make us all dinner, and then take one more short walk for good luck. I had the pay envelope, but it didn’t give a rate anywhere on it and I certainly wasn’t going to walk all the way back to the pay station in complete darkness anyway. I’d pay in the morning.
I slept surprisingly well. Well, maybe not so surprising when I think about how tired I was. I made my coffee while the girls were still asleep and managed to finish half of it before they woke up. Then it was time to take them for a walk.
And that was the drawback of staying at a real campground: I couldn’t just open the door and let them out to pee. I had to put them on leashes and take them for a walk.
I got dressed, grabbed the campground registration form I’d filled out the night before, put some money in my pocket, and leashed up the girls. Then we set out toward the pay station.
There were fires burning throughout Washington, Oregon, and California (not shown on this map). The smoke in the west had become “hazardous.”
It was a pleasant walk despite the foglike smoke that had settled over the area. Visibility couldn’t have been more than a half mile, but since we were walking in the damp forest, it didn’t really matter. We cut through the campground on a path I’d remembered from the previous year. The girls sniffed and did their business along the way.
At the pay station, I put $26 in the envelope and noted the 12 noon checkout time. I grabbed a park map and we headed back to the camper. I finished my coffee and made us all breakfast.
The plan that day was to hike out on a path along the ocean known as “the Spit.” There was a lighthouse at the end that I’d never seen. So after breakfast I packed up a small daypack with rain gear — there was rain in the forecast — bottled water, and some snacks. I almost put the binoculars in there but then wondered what I expected to look at with visibility so low and put them away.
We cut out along another path through the woods that took us toward the Spit trailhead. I really love the forest in that park. It was dense and damp but somehow still bright. The forest floor was thick with pine needles and branches and leafy undergrowth. In wetter conditions, it would likely be full of all kinds of mushrooms. It had a sort of atmosphere that seemed to absorb sound, or at least make it quieter.
We emerged at the end of the trail at a parking area and crossed it to the trailhead. I looked at the signs to learn more about the hike. Of course, the one I noticed first was the one that said “No Pets.”
Okay, to be fair it was a wildlife refuge. And yes, I do get the fact that park managers don’t want big bumbling dogs — or even small ones, for that matter — chasing wildlife. But I was still disappointed. I was really looking forward to a walk on the beach with my pups.
Fortunately, Dungeness has many trails. Without wasting anymore time there, I headed off on the one that went along the bluffs with my two little dogs in tow.
The orange line marks our hike route. You can see it on GaiaGPS, along with the one crappy photo I took.
We spent the next hour or so meandering on trails throughout the park, passing a handful of mostly masked hikers along the way. (I’m sorry, but although I do believe that masks help prevent the spread of the virus, I don’t believe they’re necessary when hiking outdoors, especially in places where the chances of passing another person are slim. I should add here that all the people I saw wearing masks along the trails were seniors so maybe they felt more at risk? I kept my distance from them.) The only wildlife I saw were squirrels, birds, and a single deer.
At one point, a woman with two medium sized dogs warned me that her dogs weren’t friendly; as if to prove her point, the two dogs strained at their leashes, growling and barking as they tried to get at my pups. To their credit, my girls hurried past them on short leashes. (Poor Lily looked absolutely terrified.) But it makes me wonder why someone wouldn’t better socialize their dogs before taking them out in public where there might be other dogs. Seriously folks: either you’re going to make your dog a part of your life and train it appropriately or you’re not. There’s very little middle ground.
One thing I noticed along the walk was that I was getting tired a lot more quickly than I should have been. The trails were relatively flat and very easy walking, yet I felt exhausted and had a headache within the first mile and a half. My left knee was aching. I definitely did not feel like hitting the road again to places unknown. I felt like taking a nap. And it wasn’t even 11 AM.
So we stopped at the pay station on the way back to camp. I filled out another envelope and stuck another $26 into it. I’d spend the day there at the park, just taking it easy, and head out the next day.
To my credit, I did hike about 2-1/4 miles that morning — basically the same walk I do three times a week with a neighbor at home.
The bench seat on my RV’s dinette is small, but both pups managed to squeeze in a nap sitting next to me sometime during our stay at the park.
After a satisfactory visit to one of the campground’s coin-op showers, I reheated the previous night’s leftovers for lunch and did a little work on my blog outside at the picnic table. I tried leaving my pups off-leash at the campsite, but they invariably got “the zoomies” and chased each other out of the campsite boundaries, winding up at someone else’s site where Rosie went in for pets and Lily played keep-away. Around 2 PM, I went in for a nap with the girls. They’d skipped breakfast — sometimes they’re finicky — but wound up eating most of their food for lunch. We all climbed up on the bed together. I read for a while and then fell asleep.
I had begun wondering whether my spent feeling was due to the bad air or possible COVID exposure during my travels. I’d been with two other people, all of us maskless in a large open indoor area, all weekend. As I’ve been doing occasionally since the virus has begun spreading, I cataloged my symptoms: mild cough, mild sore throat, headache, general feeling of fatigue. I managed to get a good enough Internet connection to check the air quality in my area and saw that it was over 300: Hazardous. Maybe breathing bad air was making me sick? Whodathunkit?
I used aluminum foil to protect the meat from the flames I knew would start up when fat hit the burners. My portable BBQ grill is very temperamental, but keeping it set to low and closing the lid gave me the ovenlike cooking I wanted.
I started dinner at 5 PM. I’d defrosted a rack of lamb and had decided to cook it on my grill instead of coating my camper’s tiny oven with spattered lamb fat. I’d never cooked rack of lamb on the grill before. I also didn’t have a meat thermometer with me. Amazingly, however, I managed to pull it off, ending up with a perfectly cooked rack that I served up with pan-fried garden potatoes and the last of my garden scallions. I had sliced figs on the side. I put half the rack in the fridge for lunch the next day.
We went for two more short walks before bedtime. The nap had really helped me. I think that just taking it easy and breathing less of that bad air is what really helped me.
But I had also begun feeling as if I’d fallen into a sort of mental funk. Was I depressed? Maybe.
The situation in this country is really out of control. Between the virus and the wildfires (and their smoke) and the bullshit politics, I really don’t know how anyone can remain upbeat. There’s just too much stupidity, hate, and anger in this country these days.
I’m looking forward to a Biden presidency, but if it’s stolen from him (as it was stolen from Clinton in 2016) by foreign players and Electoral College inequities, I don’t know what I will do. I know I can’t live through four more years of what we have now but I don’t want to abandon the life I’ve built for myself and become an expat. I can’t see a compromise without putting on blinders and ignoring the damage being done to our country, its reputation in the world, and its people.
And even if Biden does win, I have worry that wacko Trump supporters — and I do mean wacko — will try to start a civil war, spurred on by Trump and Fox News. They’ve been fed a steady diet of lies about Biden and the democratic party and they honestly fear for their way of life. How can we hope to undo the damage of those lies? How can we help them see reason? I think it’s impossible.
Every day more negative stories about Trump are emerging — even stories with him on tape admitting that he misled the American people! Yet none of these stories are penetrating the thick skulls of his supporters to help them see reason. They truly are cult members. Cult members with guns who don’t think twice about ending another person’s life.
Anyway, I’ve been avoiding talking politics in my blog because, honestly, I’m sick of it. But I needed to get this off my chest, to explain the general feeling of malaise that has come over me. I think that it’s a combination of these things: COVID, smoke/fires, and politics. I suspect that if COVID and the smoke weren’t part of the big picture in my life, I’d be able to better deal with the politics. But I can’t.
[And if you’re a Trump supporter reading this, FUCK YOU. I have zero tolerance these days for people STUPID and UNPATRIOTIC enough to support the greedy, racist, narcissistic conman in the White House. I hope someday you WAKE THE FUCK UP and realize how much damage he’s done to this country. In the meantime, please leave a big, long comment on this blog post so I can have the pleasure of marking it as spam without even reading it. I want you to waste your time trying unsuccessfully to share your bullshit with my blog readers. You might want to read this if you’re worried about your First Amendment rights.]
Sometime during the afternoon, a light rain started up. I love the sound of rain on the roof of my camper and that cheered me considerably. It was the first rain I’d experienced since June 28 and I was ready for it.
The campground was amazingly quiet; no generators, no barking dogs, no screaming kids. I think that’s what I liked most about the campground — large private sites, sparsely populated on weeknights, with very little camper noise. It gave me the illusion of staying someplace like Buck Creek Camp with the benefit of toilets, showers, and garbage receptacles.
Throughout the night, the rain came and went. Even when it wasn’t raining, I could hear big drops from the trees on top of the camper. It was like music to my ears. I slept well and woke refreshed.
The afternoon before, I’d booked a campsite at one of the coastal campgrounds in Olympic National Park. Although I had my doubts about the campground, I was able to get a site right on the ocean. It was 2-1/2 hours away. After breakfast and two dog walks, I packed up my grill, neatened up the camper, and pulled out for a leisurely drive west.
I would definitely get my walk on the beach that day.
I visit Mt. Rainier in near perfect conditions, then make camp in a weird campground on a weirder airstrip.
It was only about 10 miles from Union Falls Trailhead to Chinook Pass and we made the climb pretty quickly. And, for the first time ever, I stopped at the parking area right before the pass to check it out.
I also stopped along the road before getting to the pass. Here’s a look back down the valley (left) and ahead toward the pass (right).
If you live on the east side of Washington State and do any business or pleasure travel to the Seattle area in the winter, your travel plans are ruled by the passes. North to South, the ones I know that may be open in winter are: Stevens, Blewett, Snoqualmie, Chinook, and White. There are likely other ones; heck, I’m not in Washington in the winter so I have no need to know them all.
From an elevation standard, none of them are very impressive if you’ve lived in high elevations. Chinook, for example, is only 6500 feet; for comparison, I used to own a cabin on some property in Arizona that was at 6700 feet.
From late autumn to early spring, weather and traffic reports always include pass conditions and closure information and no one who crosses the passes in winter travels without studded tires or chains. It’s odd because talk of the passes becomes as common as talk of the weather, even if you have no need to know what pass conditions are.
“That was some storm last night. They closed Snoqualmie and Blewett.”
“Yeah, but I think Stevens might still be open.”
Meanwhile, neither participant in the conversation has any need to cross any of the passes any time soon.
Chinook is the usual choice if you’re traveling from the Yakima area to the Tacoma area and aren’t in a huge hurry. The road that climbs through the pass — Route 410 — is one lane in each direction with the occasional passing lane thrown in to keep things moving uphill. It’s a scenic drive with the top half on the east side being through a relatively winding canyon and the top half on the west side offering stunning views of Mt. Rainier, conditions permitting. And that’s the thing about crossing any of the passes. It could be an awesome sunny day on the east (desert) side but when you cross the pass you could be in the middle of a rainstorm or fog bank. (It was freezing fog that I’d driven through on my west to east trip in October.) I can count the times on one hand that I actually saw Mt. Rainier from the pass. Thursday morning was one of those times.
But now I’m getting ahead of myself.
This sign explained what trails were available to hike and reminded visitors that dogs were not allowed on most of them.
I parked in that parking area right before the pass, got the pups out, and walked to where there was a sign telling me what to expect. I should mention here that the lot was more than half full — as was the one across the road — but no one was around. It wasn’t the typical scenic view — looking down the way we’d come into a smoke-filled valley that day — pullout I always thought it was. It was a real trailhead for none other than the Pacific Crest Trail — the west coast’s version of the famed Appalachian Trail.
Of course, there were other shorter trails originating from the location and it’s a good thing there was. You see, no pets are allowed in Wilderness areas, which the Pacific Crest Trail winds through, and there were lots of No Pets signs to remind me. But a segment of the trail that started in the parking area did allow leashed dogs, so I set off with the girls to explore. The 1-1/4 mile hike we’d already had that morning wasn’t enough.
What I was hoping for was a glimpse over the pass down toward the lake right on the other side, which I’d originally planned to hike around that morning. I was also hoping to see Mt. Rainier. But this hike, although pleasant enough through wildflowers and forest areas, didn’t offer any views. Instead, the trail took me to the foot bridge that crosses over Route 410 at the summit of the pass. We walked over the bridge and up the trail a bit more — enough to see that it was a clear day on the other side and Mt. Rainier was visible. Eager to actually see the mountain, we turned around and headed back. The one trail branching off toward the lake was clearly marked with multiple No Pets signs so it looked like the only way I’d see it is by continuing the drive.
A look back at the pedestrian bridge from the farthest we got on our little walk. That white thing beyond the trees on the right side of the photo is the top of Mt. Rainier.
We hadn’t even walked a mile.
Back in the truck, we crossed under the footbridge I’d just walked over, rounded a bend, and wow! There was Mt. Rainier in its full glory, sagging glaciers shining in the sun against a blue sky. Right below the road was little roundish Tipsoo Lake, surrounded by green grass, flowers, and evergreen trees. I had just driven into a Bob Ross painting.
I pulled over in the topmost part of the strip of parking that lines the road there and got out to get serious about photography. That meant leaving the pups in the truck — windows cracked wide, of course — and going into the camper to fetch my Nikon. (No tripod; I seldom get that serious in bright light conditions.) I also grabbed my binoculars and strung their strap around my neck. Then I walked back up the hill, looking back now and then for the best view of the peak.
Now this is where casual photography and serious photography part. The vast majority of photography I do these days is casual. I whip out my cell phone, try to compose a decent shot using one of the optical zoom options (1x or 2x on my iPhone Xs these days), and snap. The best camera is the one you have with you. I believe that wholeheartedly. While the iPhone doesn’t have a great camera, it’s usually good enough.
But when I want to get serious about composition, I reach for my Nikon with its 28-70mm zoom (glass) lens. That gives me a huge amount of flexibility in composition, as well as full control over aperture and shutter speed. If you know a little about photography, you know that’s good. If you don’t, well stick to your point-and-shoot; it’ll do a fine job for you.
I’m willing to bet that 95% of the people who stand where I was parked point their camera at Mt. Rainier and push the shutter release. Done! Excellent shot of the mountain on a beautiful day.
But the real story wasn’t just the huge snow-capped mountain looming in the near distance. It was everything else around it: the trees, the lake, the flowers. The rocky peaks nearby. In my mind, the photo had to include some or all of those things. And that meant moving my ass (with my camera) to a better vantage point.
So I walked back up the side of the road, looking over my shoulder now and then to judge the view, and occasionally snapping a photo with my iPhone. Until I found the spot.
One of the shots I snapped with my iPhone as I walked. I’m liking this one more and more as look at it.
In my opinion, photography starts with two things: light and composition.
I could not control the light. I was there on a sunny day at about 10:30 AM. No matter how you slice it, that’s not going to be “good light.” It’s going to be harsh, white light. Coming earlier — maybe around 7 or 8 AM — would have gotten me better light, but it likely would have put much of the scene in dark shadows. At least I had light on the whole scene.
I did, however, have some control over composition. The image I was imagining had something interesting or colorful in the foreground with the mountain out there in the background. Almost as if I were taking a photo of that foreground thing and this magnificent mountain just happened to be back there.
And that’s what I was thinking when I saw the bunch of yellow flowers — forgive me for not knowing what they are — swarming with bumblebees, with the mountain, trees, and lake beyond them. That’s where I parked my butt, on the gravely dirt alongside the road, whipped around my Nikon, and got to work.
I don’t have the Nikon images available to share — I’m not in the practice of hooking up my camera to my laptop for blog posts — but this should give you an idea of what I was after. I’ll know if I succeeded when I open the Nikon images in Lightroom or even Preview to see what they look like.
I stayed for about 20 minutes — a time so short that a real photographer would laugh. But let’s face it: neither the light nor the scenery would change anytime soon. While I was there, I used my binoculars to study the glaciers on the mountain. There were lots of long cracks in the snowpack and I could imagine avalanches happening on a regular basis. I could just about see the blue of the glacial ice in some places.
I sat for a while longer just listening to the bees in the flowers in front of me. After a while I began spotting them. They were all bumblebees of a kind much smaller than I get around my butterfly bush back home. There were dozens of them, buzzing loudly as they flew around, gathering pollen for the winter.
Then I was ready to go. I returned to T2 to put my camera and binoculars away and got back into the truck where my pups were waiting patiently for me. I started up the engine and we continued on our way.
I pulled into the main parking area for Tipsoo Lake, which was just down the road, still thinking about that hike around the lake with my pups. But I already suspected that would not be possible. The lake was within the Mount Rainier National Park and U.S. national parks are among the most dog-unfriendly places in the country. Stated simply by a ranger later in the day, you can’t take your dog off pavement. That means parking lots and campground roads only. No trails. No backcountry hikes.
This is a real turn-off for me and one of the reasons I visit national parks a lot less than I used to.
I sort of understand why they are so strict about dogs. It probably has a lot to do with people not cleaning up after their dogs. There’s not much less appealing than walking down a trail in the forest, enjoying the shade of tall trees and the sound of birds and then stepping into a pile of dog crap someone left on the trail. Or seeing someone’s bag of dog crap alongside the trail, as if putting it in a pink bag with a knot on top was as good as cleaning it up and taking it away. People are pigs and they ruin it for everyone else. I definitely have a blog post coming about that.
So after parking and rolling down the front windows of the truck halfway for my pups, I went to look for signs. Sure enough, there were No Pets signs all over the place. And honestly, the hike didn’t look pleasant enough to do by myself.
There were two Mennonite (or something similar) women by the signs studying the map. They wore typical floral print dresses that looked at odds with their hiking shoes. One of the women wore the little bonnet some of them do. They were trying to figure out how to get on one of the trails that wound around a nearby peak. It was a 3.4 mile loop. They were debating which way to go and eventually asked me. The map was pretty clear and I pointed out how I would go. They then left me, met up with a few more women in their group, and proceeded to walk the opposite direction. Huh?
I went back to the truck, started up, and continued driving down the hill.
At the junction of Route 123, I got a surprise: a sign stating that Route 410 (the road I was on) was closed up ahead due to fire. I didn’t even know there was a fire on that side of the mountains.
My plan had been to camp out in the national forest near a place I thought might have chanterelle mushrooms. It was getting on to that season — although admittedly early and definitely dry — and a mushroom hunt was part of why I’d come that way. On seeing the sign, I had two questions:
As I did the previous day, I decided to ignore the sign and I kept going.
There was a plain old Road Closed sign at the turn for Sunrise, one of the park’s main access points. That looked pretty conclusive. I checked my watch. It was only around 11:00 AM. I made the turn into the park.
A while later, I was chatting with a ranger at the gate about the road closure (real and at Greenwater, after my mushroom hunting grounds), pet rules (see above), and what I could find at Sunrise (great views of the mountain).
There was a good chance I’d been there in the past; in the late 1980s, my future wasband and I had taken a road trip from Seattle to San Francisco and we’d visited both Rainier and St. Helens from the east side. Of course, I couldn’t remember details from that long ago. (Why do you think I blog? So I can remember details.)
I did know that if the road was closed ahead, fuel might be a concern. My truck’s computer said I had enough to go 184 miles, but my truck’s computer isn’t terribly reliable. I’ve gotten that thing down to 21 miles left on a long trip in the middle of nowhere and the related stress is something I’d prefer to avoid. I always try to fill up before it reaches 100 in remote areas. If I did the 19 miles (each way) to Sunrise and then went to my intended mushroom hunting spot would I have enough fuel to backtrack to Route 123 and Packwood, the nearest fuel? I did some math in my head, considered the number of times I’d passed the turn for Sunrise and not gone in, and thought about how early and dry it was for mushrooms. I headed up toward Sunrise.
It was a pleasant drive on a winding road that would have been a lot more pleasant behind the wheel of my little Honda S2000 than a fully loaded, top-heavy diesel truck. But I made the best of it. I passed a few places where I might have stopped for a little hike — if I were allowed to take my two best friends. There were few people on the road and I didn’t even have to pull over to let anyone pass on the climb back up to 6,400 feet. Soon I was pulling into a parking space in a huge, mostly empty parking lot, with the door of the camper pointing right out toward the mountain.
I took the girls out for a quick walk (on pavement, of course), then climbed into the camper with them for lunch. I reheated leftovers from the night before and sat in the doorway looking toward the mountain to eat them. Behind me, the girls climbed up onto the bed and worked on some chew bones they had there. From my seat, I could see a lot of ugly hand-scrawled signs on orange board that said No Pets anywhere you might logically want to take a dog for a pee. It was a real shame that they ruined the view that way.
Mt. Rainier out the back of my camper at lunchtime. Whose bright idea was it to scrawl PETS NOT ALLOWED on a big orange board in the view?
After lunch, I locked the pups up in the camper and walked over to the lodge. It was closed. A masked ranger sat at a table under a shade with a piece of Plexiglas in front of her. She had a map and info. I put my mask on, stepped up, and asked her questions. I made the mistake of reaching under the Plexiglas to tap something on the map with a fingernail.
“Don’t touch it!” she said.
Whoa.
I asked again if the road was really closed. She assured me that it was. She told me that the distance from Sunrise to fuel outside the park on a different road that went through the park was 64 miles. “All downhill?” I asked, knowing my truck gets way better mileage downhill than uphill.
She used the map to point out the downhill and uphill portions. It was a nearly even mix. I thanked her and left, noticing yet another Road Closure sign that assured me that the road would be closed for several days.
I went into the gift shop, bought an ice cream sandwich and a night sky reference guide, and went back to the camper. I had no desire to hike anywhere without my dogs. I took them for another pee walk, took another photo of the mountain, and headed out.
I stopped at Sunrise point on the way down the hill. It’s a small parking area nestled in the crook of a switchback. Some rangers were maintaining/repairing the cut stone wall that separated the parking area from the road. We chatted for a few minutes about the CCC, which built the infrastructure for most of the older national parks. (I later learned that this particular road project predated the CCC by a few years and was completed by private contractors for the government.) I checked out the view and an interpretive sign, then climbed back into my truck, where the girls were waiting, and continued down the hill.
Sunrise Point, looking back toward the mountain. You can see T2 parked among the cars there.
At the bottom, I consulted my truck’s computer. 149 miles until empty, it told me. The gauge said 1/4 tank. GaiaGPS, where I’d put the waypoint for my mushroom hunting grounds, told me it was 15 air miles away. It couldn’t calculate road miles without an Internet connection, which I hadn’t had for nearly 24 hours. It was only around 2 PM and I had no desire to search for a campsite in an unfamiliar area. So I made the left turn, passing the Road Closed sign, and headed toward Greenwater on Route 410.
There was also road construction along the road. I stopped at a flagger. She walked over and we chatted for a while as I waited for the pilot car. She’d just been stung by a bee. The only thing I had for her were some “antiseptic” wipes I’d bought to leave in the truck. I gave her a bunch of them. They were good and wet and I hoped they’d help take the sting out for her.
Then the pilot car came and I followed it past a road crew that was oiling and putting a layer of asphalt on the road. It was one lane for about 3 miles. As I drove, I eyed the forest on either side of me, sizing it up for the chance of finding chanterelles. It was the right kind of forest in many places. We passed out of the National Park and into the National Forest. By that point, I’d already decided to check out a closer camping area for an overnight stop and mushroom hunt: Buck Creek. I saw the sign and turned left.
I’d never camped at Buck Creek, but I had attended two Puget Sound Mycological Society forays at the nearby Black Diamond Camp. That area was rich with mushrooms on the first year I went (when it was wet) and pretty much devoid of mushrooms on the second year I went (when it was bone dry). I figured I’d pull in to check out the camp.
Off 410, I crossed a bridge over the White River. The Skookum Flats Trailhead parking area was right on the other side of the bridge and I pulled in for a look. There was no one there. It might make a decent back up spot if Buck Creek didn’t work for me.
Back on the gravel road, I made the next left, following the signs for Buck Creek Camp. Although my Ultimate CG app had said camping was free there, a sign pointed down the road for a self-pay station. I continued down the road, passing a great campsite where I could back in on level ground under a canopy of evergreen trees with a picnic table. I continued on, wondering if it could get better than that. Unfortunately, the road was a mess and I soon got tired of bouncing along through potholes that must have resembled ponds after a rain. I turned around, went back to that first site, and backed in.
Our campsite at Buck Creek was densely wooded and would have been very private even if we weren’t the only campers there.
We all got out and went for a walk in the forest behind the camper. It was exactly the kind of forest I’d expect to see chanterelle mushrooms, but ten minutes of looking everywhere came up empty. Too early? To dry? Both? We went back to the camper.
Buck Creek camp is right on the Ranger Creek Airport. In fact, one of the sites is right under the extended centerline for the runway. I was at the far end of that, beyond the runway end, but I could see the windsock and a building off in the distance. Although it was hot in the sun, I went with my pups toward that building, keeping in the shade as much as possible, looking for that self-pay station. The temperature varied with the amount of sun a spot got; where it was very warm it smelled like Christmas, if you know what I mean.
I soon realized a few things.
I was very surprised to see that the airport runway was paved.
By the time we reached the building, we were abeam the end of the runway, which I realized (with some surprise) was paved. The whole thing was surrounded by a low metal guardrail I have to assume was put in place to keep people from driving on it. (Too many people are idiots.) We crossed the runway and walked back on the other side, which was cooler with more shade and a few more campsites. I briefly considered moving my rig but decided that I liked it where we were, closer to the creek.
I spent the afternoon sitting at the picnic table with my laptop, working on the previous day’s blog post, adding photos as I worked. None of it could be posted yet, of course. I still had no Internet connection. I figured I’d upload what I’d finished the next day when I stopped at Packwood to refuel. The forest around me was very pleasant, although there were a few pesky flies for a while. I honestly don’t know much about evergreen trees, but these were the kind with the tiny needles and straight, tall trunks. All the way up were short, broken dead branches that had likely grown and thrived for a while before priority was given to the ones higher up. They swayed in the breeze, making occasional cracking sounds as the dead branches hit each other and sometimes broke off.
Sometime later in the day there was a bit of excitement when a plane flew low and I thought it was going to land. Then it moved away — into a downwind, I soon realized — and came in to land toward us. I took some video but it didn’t really come out very well because the plane was so far away. It stopped near the building, turned around, and back-taxied the way it had come from. At the far end of the runway, it turned around and took off again. It was a small yellow plane — that’s all I was able to see since it was already pretty high up by the time it reached us. I suspect it may have been a Cub.
Here’s that small plane departing from the runway.
I gave the girls new chew bones and they spent some time working on them. I noticed that Lily liked to sit atop a mound of rocks and dirt near the truck; I think she found that higher vantage point more secure. Once in a while, they’d wander off but return immediately when I called them. They were really shaping up to be good adventure dogs.
I had dinner outside on the picnic table: a piece of smoked salmon on a salad with some sliced up beets from my garden.
It got a bit too cool to sit outside not long before sunset and we all went inside. I continued working on my blog post. The girls went up to bed where they looked out the windows and occasionally barked at imagined monsters in the forest. I’ve become convinced that Rosie, who is more prone to bark, has poor eyesight and barks at shadows. Those shadows got longer and longer until they disappeared. I climbed up into bed and read for a while before dozing off.
The first car’s headlights cut through the night around 8:30. I had just dozed off. The girls started barking and I was immediately awake to quiet them down. The car passed by the front of my site, heading toward the bathroom building we’d visited that afternoon.
I picked up my iPad to continue reading.
I was asleep again when the second car passed. More barking. More waking. More shushing.
The same thing happened three more times over the next two hours. By the last car, the girls didn’t even bark. I had no idea where the cars had gone — when I looked out into the darkness later on, I could see only darkness.
I finally fell back to sleep around 11 PM.
In the morning, after coffee and breakfast, I decided to take a walk back down to the bathroom building. Maybe we’d see where all those cars had gone.
We did. They were all parked in the campsites immediately across from the bathroom building. I kept the girls with me so as not to bother the other campers at 7:30 AM — only a few youngish guys were up and walking around. Another was in the bathroom marked Women; I could see him because (if you recall) the doors didn’t latch closed.
I managed to arrange a rock outside the door of the other toilet to give me some privacy. When the guy emerged from his toilet, the girls greeted him. I finished up quickly to keep them from being a nuisance. By that time, Rosie was getting petted by the guys by the cars while Lily was playing keep away.
They were from the Seattle area and, because of the road closure, had been forced to go the long way around to the campground. That had added two and a half hours to their drive, which is why they arrived so late. Of course, this just confirmed that the road was probably still closed and that I’d be on the same long drive soon enough.
I went back to camp and prepped for the day’s drive. I had to be in Maple Valley by noon to meet some old friends for lunch. I’d already decided that the route through Packwood, where I could definitely get fuel, was wiser that the possibly shorter (in distance but not time) route through the park. Because I had no Internet access, I had no way of knowing how long the distance was or how long the drive would take.
It was 8 AM sharp when we pulled out of camp.