Adventure Log: Mount Zion

16 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

Tags

#adventurelog, Adventure Log, Hood Canal, Mt. Zion, Olympic National Forest, Olympic Peninsula, Olympic Peninsula hikes, rhododendron, rhododendron hikes, solo hiking, Washington Trails Association, wildflower hikes

It was a long week. My mother’s memorial service was Saturday and there were guests in the house for a week. When everyone left, I knew I would have to turn my attention to the abandoned house and garden projects. I needed a break, so I took a friend up on her offer of the family vacation spot on Hood Canal, offered when my mother died six weeks ago.

The weather wasn’t great so I just did what my body told me it needed: three naps in one day. But before I left for home, I went to Mount Zion.

The hike in the Olympic National Forest just north of Quilcene has been on My Backpack list on the Washington Trails Association site for a long time. It’s claim to fame is rhododendrons and I’ve been waiting for them to be in bloom. There hasn’t been a WTA trip report since mid-May, when they were not blooming yet.

It was an overcast day, and I’m a fair weather hiker, but I was halfway there from home, so I decided to go for it. It was the rhodies that was the draw after all, not views.

The trail head is 10.5 upward miles of Forest Service road from Hwy 101. The potholes weren’t too bad; Flutterby took them with ease. I saw no other cars as I climbed into the clouds. I did start seeing rhododendrons along the road though, a good sign. But I was feeling increasingly isolated, and I had forgotten to tell my sister where I was going. “Maybe,” I thought, “I’ll just go to the end of the road, eat my lunch, and head back down.”

But when I arrived, there was a car in the lot! It never occurred to me that the sole party on the trail might be an ax murderer, because I don’t think that way. I just knew I wouldn’t be alone. The long-abandoned pickup truck hanging off the edge of the parking area was a little ominous, I admit.

I suited up: boots (I’d forgotten my boot socks, only had shorties and wasn’t sure how that would work), knee straps, poles, driver’s license in case my comatose body needed to be ID’d, and camel pack and headed across the road to the trail head. It was chilly. I have never taken my jacket on a hike, but I left it on. As it turned out, I never took it off.

Of course the trailhead signage included the cougar warning and what to do in a rare sighting. Tell that to the hiker who was killed by one a few weeks ago, a story I chose not to read. I took my newly acquired can of bear spray out of my pack and put it in my pocket.

There were rhodies right away! And, true to the WTA report, the trail headed “up” right away. It’s a short hike, just 2.3 miles to summit—another half mile if you go beyond to a vista overlooking Puget Sound, the Olympic mountains, Mt. Baker—with a 1300 foot elevation gain. People use it for quick workout, the WTA says. People are nuts.

Did I mention it was chilly and damp? Mist hanging about in the dripping-lichen trees. And quiet; very, very quiet. “Maybe,” I thought,” I’ll just go for a little ways, then turn around.” But the rhodies were oh so pretty next to the trail and through the trees, just short of prime with some still-closed buds. My feet kept walking. “I’ll turn around a half hour in,” I thought.

I came upon a view point over the valley, but low hanging clouds obscured the horizon. Maybe it was the damp—I’m used to sunny hikes—that gave it a creepy vibe. I started thinking about cougars, forgetting the part about how rare it is to see one. And where was that other hiking party? I started thinking about ax murderers.

I checked my watch. The half hour had passed. It really wasn’t as steep a trail as I’d anticipated; I’ve been on far more strenuous. The socks were good, my knees were good (they’ve been bothering me a bit lately). And it really was pretty. Lots of rhododendrons. “Okay, I’ll turn around at the one hour mark,” I promised myself. I’m not a quitter when it comes to hiking. And I was feeling a little less uneasy.

Then I heard them. Voices. I rounded a corner, hoping not to startle them. My bear bell was tinkling, but it’s not very loud.

Two young women. Not ax murderers! We chatted. I asked them if it was much farther to the summit, said I had never been anxious hiking alone, but was a bit today, thinking about turning back. They said I was brave, and agreed that the weather cast a bit of a creep factor. “It’s not much farther at all!” they said. “The rhodies are beautiful. There’s not much view, but the shifting clouds are pretty. Maybe it will clear for you.”

Their “not much farther” and my “not much farther” are different. But I arrived. I did not use the outhouse. I walked most of the way out the point, beyond the summit. The rhodies at the top were short of prime, another week maybe, but beautiful in the mist.

There was going to be no view though, so I finally turned back. I’ll have to come again in the sun for the view. But this time, there were rhododendrons.

The parking lot was empty when I got back to Flutterby. And I met no one on the road going down. I was very glad not to have to worry about my car breaking down. When I got to the highway I started breathing again. I think I’ll stick to sunny day hiking.

Image

Wordless Wednesday

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

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#adventurelog, #wordlesswednesday, Adventure Log, Legoe Bay, Lummi Island, Pacific Northwest, Puget Sound, San Juan Islands, sunset, wordless wednesday

Posted by Gretchen Staebler | Filed under wordless wednesday, writingdownthestory in Photograph, writingdownthestory in Photography

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Adventure Log: Hamilton Mountain

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 11 Comments

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Bonneville Dam, Columbia Gorge, Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area, Columbia River, Hamilton Mountain, Hardy Creek Trail, Pool of the Winds, Rodney Falls, Washington Trails Association, Writing Down the Story

Where the heck is Hamilton Mountain, you may be asking. Even if you live in Washington, you are probably wondering. It’s high above the Columbia River Gorge, that’s where. It was my first hike in the area. Though not my usual wildflower meadow, far from the madding crowd fare, it is pretty darn spectacular.

I spent way too much time on the Washington Trails Association website (WTA.org) over the weekend trying to find an adventure that wasn’t still under snow pack or too far away. I can’t bring myself to drive north on I-5 for a day trip to the Central Cascades. Those treks need to be planned with an overnight with the Littles. And I do need to schedule another camping trip for more exploration of the North Cascades. Anyhoo, trails I haven’t been on that I think my almost 67-year-old body can manage are getting scarce down in the South Cascades, and it’s too early for those I want to return to. I’ve got one in the Olympics waiting in the wings for when the rhododendrons are in bloom there. Maybe next week.

I just haven’t been interested in the Gorge, but I was down to the wire Sunday night: I needed a destination. What the heck, I decided to go for it.

I headed out in the fog after a 5:30 latte stop. I love the early pre-sun fog that is often present for a few miles north and south of Centralia. On Tuesday the beautiful and mysterious mist drifted above the ground while the sun sneaked up through it; the diffused light taking my breath away.

I was feeling pretty virtuous about my early departure, aiming to do this hike that has a 2000 foot elevation gain in under 4 miles before the heat reached the predicted 80 something degrees. I overlooked the fact that the 5:30 departure would put me in Vancouver at 7:15 in heavy traffic. I was on the trail a bit after 8, though, so all good.

The trail begins at Beacon Rock State Park and ascends quickly through a conifer forest.

The WTA’s first suggestion is to skip Hardy Falls—have to climb back up from the spur and vegetation mostly hides it anyway—and go on to the upper and middle Rodney Falls and Pool of the Winds. The middle falls are magnificent with their own switchback path down the precipice! But I missed the upper falls and the pool on the way up, not quite understanding the trail configuration, so you will have to wait for that.

At the intersection of the loop, the WTA suggests doing it counter clockwise, going up the Hamilton Mt. trail (“more difficult”) and returning on the Hardy Creek trail (“difficult”). Great. The up is shorter and steeper, but the longer Hardy Creek stretch is easier on the knees coming down. I am a direction follower when it comes to suggestions from the WTA. Turns out there are also many views of the mighty Columbia, the frothing Bonneville Dam (and all the buildings and roads associated with a major power plant and Interstate 85 on the other side of the river), and the tip of Mt. Hood on the Hamilton side to distract you from the switchbacking climb. Smart, that WTA.

It was odd to be high in the wilderness and in view of so much civilization. That’s probably why the Gorge has never risen to the top of my list of places to hike.

One scary rock outcropping almost sent me home; but I shoved my poles up onto the trail above and held onto rocks, watching and testing every spot I put my feet, trying to keep breathing. As usual, I forgot to take a photo, so busy taming my panic. At the top of the mountain, when Rainier joined the choir and (I think) St. Helens was hiding behind a cloud, a couple about my age from Lake Tahoe commented on the beauty of the trail, “but there was that one scary part,” the woman said. It’s not just me. I suppose those millennials who passed me running, both up and down—who clearly have a death wish—just jumped up it.

I carried my mother with me, imagining her asking me what flowers were blooming. Lots, as it turns out. I don’t know all their names, but I tried to name them for her as we walked: paintbrush, chocolate lily, asters, twin flower, spring beauty, Solomon seal (real, not false), coreopsis, columbine, thimble berry, bleeding heart. And several I don’t know the names of, but I want to.

And shadow-casting water striders in Hardy Creek where I sat on a rock and ate my late lunch.

The highlight of the hike was a return to the falls on the descent when I decided at the last second, however tired and ready to be done I was, to climb up and see what the unsigned spur above the falls went to.

It was jaw-dropping, as the mist from the thundering drop of upper Rodney Falls, even slowed by a log in the funnel through the rock, sprayed my hot face as it hit the all-but-secret pool. I wondered how many hikers miss it altogether.

(My camera—and limited skills—couldn’t capture it; here’s a video, though even it doesn’t do justice.)

The heat caught up to me the last mile or so. The people just starting out at 2:00 were a little bit nuts, in my opinion.

The thing about traveling south, there is a fresh fruit smoothie reward at Burgerville in Camus. And the last treat of the day? Ibuprofen.

Adventure Log: Carkeek Park, Seattle

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Blog, writingdownthestory in Photography

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #daughteronduty, Adventure Log, Carkeek Park, Daughter on Duty, grandchildren, Mother's Day, seattle, Stellajoe Staebler

“Stellajoe!” my father used to say, “How would you like to live in a place like this on a day like this?”

It’s become my mantra. I would like to live in a place like this, especially when the sky is blue, the trees are bursting into green and pink and red, the rhodies are stuffed with pompoms of bloom, water is sparkling, the mountains are still brilliant in their white garb of winter. Pacific Northwesterners are the luckiest people on the planet. (I know, people elsewhere think they are the luckiest, which is a happy thing.)

I spent last weekend in Seattle. Friday the Littles’ daycare was closed and I had them both, all day, by myself. They were, um, energetic.

It wasn’t cold, Elliot just likes his new jacket. And I couldn’t find his sweatshirt.

The bakery.

Gigi needed a break.

Grabbed those bananas himself when my back was turned.

Elliot, budding creative chef, made a pb/jelly/green bean/carrot sandwich for snack (after not eating the pbj sandwich at lunch).

Beautiful, but he declared it “yucky.” Said the green beans were old.

Making a Mother’s Day card while the moms went to a spin class.

Saturday was Adrian’s second birthday.

Another stunning creation by Mama Wynne. It was, by Adrian’s choice, a Dog Party.

Best ever gift from Aunt Becca and Gigi.

Sunday was my first motherless Mother’s Day. I had planned this weekend long before I knew last Mother’s Day was to be her last. I was a little anxious, and a little defiant when I put it on the calendar. What if there are no more years after this one to celebrate my mother, and I’m selfishly off wanting to be the mother for a change instead of the daughter? What if she’s having a bad day and I have to cancel my plans at the last minute?

Last year, one year before she left us.

To have been freed last month of these dilemmas will, I think, continue to cause me wonder for a long time. I can go off on an adventure without planning ahead, without the possibility that I will have to cancel, without having to watch the clock to return in time to visit her or relieve Rebecca of responsibility. I’m not wishing for those days back; don’t make me into some paragon of regret that they are over. (You’ve read my blog, right?)

But to spend days like this in a place like this, I can’t but think of her, and of my father, with gratitude for their quest to move to the corner of the country, to love it, to instill that love in me and my family. I suspect I will hold them with me everywhere I go.

We went to Carkeek Park. I had never been. It is, incredibly, ten minutes from my daughter and daughter-in-love’s home. And it was a sparkling day.

Teaming with life,

(sea cucumbers)

(anemone)

and love.

I’ve been digging through my mother’s scattered collection of favorite poems, quotes, and her own prolific writing looking for ones my sisters and I will use in special tribute at her memorial service next month. I found notes she wrote about me describing what was blooming two or three springs ago, she wishing she could be out in the glory, that she could see it through eyes that had become pale and cloudy. I hope she is in it now, and in her own glory.

Meanwhile, the weeds are growing. And I’m not out there pulling them. Last winter’s blow down (and that from the year before) still hasn’t been picked up. The hawthorn and the apple trees didn’t get pruned again and are now infringing on the view. The out-of-control vinca is climbing into the lilac. Blackberry vines are growing through the rhododendron. I still haven’t planted flowers, squash, and beans in my garden. I miss winter.

The Joy of Life

How sweet is Life, how beautiful!

Go, happy life, and say to Death –
“I gave this woman sufficient joy
To last her for a thousand years.”

Stellajoe Staebler
June 2008

A place like this, on a day like this. Happy Mother’s Day, Mama. I love you.

Adventure Log: Lake Quinault & Kalaloch

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, beach art, drift logs, Kalaloch, Kalaloch Creek, Kalaloch Lodge, Lake Quinault, nature's art, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Pacific Ocean

My adventure this week turned out to be a pilgrimage to honor my parents, though I didn’t know that when I chose it. I was in a quandary about where to go as I have a stinkin’ cold, my first in more than a year. I couldn’t afford to be sick when I had to be with my mother nearly every day. Now that responsibility is over and whammo, out of nowhere. Anyway, the idea of the lawn in an Adirondack chair in the sun at the lodge had high appeal. Maybe a walk in the rain forest. Or not.

My mother and I stayed at Lake Quinault a couple of times when I came home for visits after my father died. She sprang for meals in the dining room at a table by the window, me watching the light change over the lake and the hummingbirds at the feeders hanging from the eaves, she with her back to the light.

It was cloudy when I got up. What? I checked the forecast again. Sun coming soon at home, but not until 11 at the lake. No worries. I love sitting in the lodge; I went several times a few winters ago, driving two hours to write until time to drive back home and make dinner for my mother. I adjusted my vision to a fire in the huge fireplace. I wanted to work on my part of my mother’s eulogy anyway.

When I arrived at nine the fireplace was out of commission for chimney cleaning. Great. I anticipated noise and soot. But it was fine.

I finished my eulogy draft at noon and there was still no sign of sun. I decided to go to Kalaloch (pronounced Clay-lock), 30 minutes up the road. It was my parents’ favorite beach. We went to other beaches when I was a child. Ruby, the next one up, is my favorite; Rialto, a little farther north takes longer to get to because of having to skirt around the Quinault Tribe reservation; camping at Moro. But in their golden years they stayed in the cabins at Kalaloch; and my mother and friends went there for their private Purple Arts Festival for several years.

I ate my lunch in the car because it was overcast and looked too cold to sit on a drift log. As I sat looking out over the river to the Pacific Ocean, I read my 2500 word eulogy aloud to time it. Fifteen minutes. Going to have to cut. Don’t want to.

Kalaloch Creek

Turned out it wasn’t cold at all, when I finally went down off the bluff and into nature’s art gallery.

Paying homage.

The beach was strewn with millions of razor clam shells (I think) with brittle translucent sails attached, as if set to lift them up in the next storm and transport them elsewhere. I have never seen such a sight. In death, they were the most beautiful thing.

I walked a ways down the beach, first on the logs as I did as a child—going forever without touching ground—then on the sand past the ancient storm-tossed root sculptures, marveling at the trees that cling to to the cliffs in spite of erosion. (Once again, I forgot to look for the so-called “tree of life” across the creek in the other direction. Next time.)

Stegosaurus. Now that you know, you can’t not see it.

The trees remind me of my mother holding onto life: “I will not fall, I will not fall.”

I don’t know when I last found a sand dollar. It seemed like an omen to something good.

I made a cairn to honor my mother and father. They each, in their own ways, found a delicate balance between life and death in their last years on earth.

Flutterby’s first trip to Mama Ocean.

When I returned to Lake Quinault, the sun was out. I wanted never to leave. I’m plotting a camping trip soon. It feels strange to have this freedom to do whatever and go wherever I want without making arrangements for my mother’s well being. I think it may take a while to embrace it.

Adventure Blog: Packwood Lake

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 4 Comments

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, death of a parent, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, hiking in the PNW, Nissan Rogue, Packwood Lake, skunk cabbage, solo hiking, spring beauty

It’s an unpretentious name for a lake in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, Gifford Pinchot National Forest that’s been on my hike list for a while. After all, it’s just a public water source; undeserving, apparently, of a name like The Enchantments or something.

After six miles of forest service road above the tiny mountain town of Packwood, Flutterby and I arrive just before 9am to an empty parking lot with Mt. Rainier looming across the valley against cloudless blue.

It’s an easy 5 mile hike in to the lake, just 600 feet of barely noticeable elevation change, and I don’t really need my trekking poles, but I use them anyway. Really, I do need them. My joints are aging, they distribute the abuse; nevertheless, I am hurting by the time I get back to Flutterby. Ten miles is a long hike for so early in the season. And there is hiking on snow, and several blown down trees to scramble over.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m a slow hiker, I’m okay with that. I hike alone, who cares what my pace is. I don’t. Two, two and a half miles an hour gets me where I want to go. Of course I brake for photo-ops. I remember my mother’s frequent stops on family hikes for picture taking and plant identification. Drove me and my sisters crazy. And now I’m as obsessed as she was. Thank goodness for digital cameras. And solo hiking.

Snow melt has been recent along this trail, as noted by the flattened but not defeated ferns. (Is everything a metaphor for my mother’s old age and death?) The snow under the trees, and in patches on the trail the last maybe mile, competes for season’s rights with the lush green moss and budding shrubs, where death meets rebirth. The creeks are full as they tumble down from the top of the mountain, trickling across the trail where I rock hop across.

I look down at my feet to dozens of heart-shaped rocks. My mother collected them, so I look for one to take home and add to hers. But once picked up and examined, they merely look like rocks, so I leave them lie.

I arrive above the lake, sparkling and clear, Herself reflected right in front of me. I stop breathing for a minute.

When my breath returns, I continue up the trail that skirts the lake for a while, stopping when a serious blow down over a wide creek helps me decide I’m done. I go off-trail over to the lake where I sit on a log and eat my lunch mesmerized by the mountain. The blue sky. The clear lake. The green green. “Stellajoe,” my father would say to my mother, “how would you like to live in a place like this on a day like this?” I would! I do!

I sit on the log for an hour with my notebook and pen, writing a beginning of my part of my mother’s eulogy. I cry again for her loss and for my gain to have been her daughter; in gratitude that my parents migrated to this land where I can always find them in places of beauty.

The only people I encounter all day are a party of four that passes me on the way back, and their dog named Grace; and a party of two I meet an hour later, and their dog named Grace. Grace has walked with me for the past two weeks since my mother entered her final bit of the journey, when grace walked her home. I carried her with me today.

Adventure Log: Shunpiking in Lewis County

10 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Centralia-Alpha Road, DeGoede Bulb Farm, Lewis County, Mineral School, Mineral WA, Mt. Rainier, Paradise, Salzer Valley, shunpiking, skunk cabbage, what is retirement

It’s raining and blustery this morning. Again. Although 10-day forecasts are notoriously unreliable in these parts, each time I check it there is one sunny day in 10. As I am both a fair-weather adventurer and a fair-weather gardener, at least this time of year when I am also content still to be cocooned with indoor projects, it’s a problem.

Last Monday Flutterby—my new monarch orange Nissan Rogue—and I headed north and west for a hike on the Olympic Peninsula, the first of what I hope will be a weekly adventure from now into autumn. (Read that one here if you missed it). I huddled inside the next three days as the spring monsoons drummed on the roof and spattered against the windows and the valley below the house turned to lake.

Friday we got a bonus sun day, warm even. I should have been fixing my garden gate, planting the beets and potatoes, cleaning up the property from the winter storms. But after an aggravating visit to my mother, full of demands and accusations and her own grumpiness, I was in a rainy mood and blew off the beautiful day. I stayed inside finally energized to do projects I should have been doing over the winter. (What a lot of shoulds in this paragraph.)

Yesterday I got a reprieve, another unexpected sunny day. And a Monday, adventure day! But there is all the work to be done outside. What to do? I check Weather Underground. The next predicted sunny day is a week from Thursday. I compromise: both/and.

Screen shot of 10-day rain forecast may not show on your phone.

I run out to the Manor first thing and find Mama alone in the dining room still dawdling over her scrambled eggs while a staff person vacuums around her. We walk a lap of the hall then return to her room to listen to bad knock-knock jokes from Alexa. “Alexa, tell me a funny joke!” “I don’t understand that,” Alexa retorts. As pissy as Mama was on Friday, she is sweet today and when I take my leave we are both in a good mood.

I spend three hours working outside, then shower and eat lunch. At 1:30 Flutterby and I head out across the lake in the valley. I look at this valley everyday, from the vantage point of the hawks and eagles, but rarely am I down in it. We cross the water and head into the hills, traveling south across the Alpha-Centralia Road, an I-5 alternative to get to US Hwy 12 that goes to the mountains. (See it winding up the hill in the photo above?) My destination is Mossyrock to see if the DeGoede bulb farm is in riotous tulip color yet. I’m quite sure it’s not, but it’s a pretty drive, which is the point of this shunpike adventure.

As we roll along, south and east, I decide to go somewhere else first, in the delicious freedom of being master of my destination. I have driven by the road to Mineral, (population 202 in the last census) countless times on my way to Mt. Rainier, but I’ve never driven into the town. It is home to the Mineral School, an arts residency program in the former elementary school. It is also home to what was the smallest post office in the country (retired now), according to a friend who delivers mail in the Seattle area.

I stay on WA 508 to Morton. We travel through bucolic farmland and wind through deciduous and hardwood forests, not yet showing much in the way of spring green despite all the rain. I round a curve and run into Herself, having forgotten she would be here.

I wait 20 minutes for a work crew to clear the road of a dead fallen maple trunk, finally getting one massive end lifted in the jaws of the bulldozer and chainsawing it into manageable chunks. In all that time only a handful of cars were lined up on both sides. This is rural Washington.

I’m enchanted by a watery grove of birches filled with the bright golden bloom of skunk cabbage. I pull off the road and revel for a few minutes.

In Mineral, I stop at Mineral Lake and feast my eyes on Mother Mountain. Now I’m sorry I didn’t blow off the driveway cleanup and head up to Paradise early—another hour away—which according to the webcam yesterday looks to have a couple feet of new snow. I haven’t been up there in the snow since the then boyfriend, later husband, and I took his Mid-west parents up for a fourth of July picnic, eaten in the parking lot because everything else was still under the white stuff. That was more than 40 years ago. Next time. I make a date with Flutterby.

We turn back toward home and skip over to Hwy 12 in Morton, heading back toward Mossyrock. There are no tulips yet, just vast fields of promise. That visit to Paradise will be timed to the bloom, perhaps at the end of the month. I’ll keep an eye on the 10-day, check the webcams, watch the farm’s Facebook page, make a plan; and then wait for what really happens. I guess this is what retirement is: not without work and responsibilities, but with opportunity to blow it off and live into spontaneity. Life is short, eat dessert first.

Adventure Log: Steam Donkey Trail, Olympic Peninsula

02 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 2 Comments

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Dosewallips River, Dosewallips State Park, Maple Valley Trail, Olympic Peninsula, Rocky Creek Falls, Steam Donkey Trail

Flutterby and I went on our first adventure together today! (Well, not counting taking my mom for an Easter Sunday drive. She loved the heated seats!)

There was snow on the deck when I left, but the sky was going blue. I did not start Flutterby from inside the house to warm her up before I climbed aboard. It was chilly out though—34º according the Flutter’s thermometer. Picked up my road latte at 8:20 and we were off up I-5.

Left the interstate at Tumwater and headed toward 101 N. and the sparkling Hood Canal toward the snowy Olympics and the town of Brinnon to Dosewallips State Park. Temperature up to 42º.

I hung my new Discover Pass from Flutter’s mirror and donned my knee straps, since the meniscus tear in my right knee has been bothering a bit after garden work. I skipped the ankle brace—didn’t have it, anyway, as it turned out. Took my trekking poles, but didn’t use them.

I’ve finally found some new hiking pants that fit my criteria; i.e. crop length, not grey, zippered pockets. I didn’t realize until I got them home that they matched the socks a generous friend gifted me with. And not until I put on my shoes today (that need to be replaced), did I discover they also match the pants. Matchy-matchy.

Washington Trails Association trip reports had confusing information about where to start the hike, so I just picked one: Maple Valley Trail. A mile or so in, I crossed the fire road to Steam Donkey, so named for the machine that dragged logs to the railroad—that also ran through the area—in the early 1900s.

The trillium were blooming at the lower elevation, but other than a few buds, not much else in the way of spring. I chased a flicker with my camera as it flew from tree to tree, but wasn’t able to capture it.

Nurse stump, dressed for the ball.

It was a perfect hike for the first of the season. Not too long, about 3-1/2 miles or so. A lovely pond, many bridges across streams. Much of it looked not unlike the woods behind my house, but it was good to be out in the air and the mountains. I’m hoping to beat my epic hiking record set last year, with both new and favorite trails. I started a month earlier, so I’m on my way.

Back at the campground, I ate my lunch at a picnic table then drove on up the highway to the Dosewallips Recreation Area and Rocky Creek Falls, behind the Rocky Creek hydroelectric plant, just a few hundred yards from the road. Breathtaking. Saw two gangs of elk along the road.

Dosewallips River

Rocky Creek

Rocky Creek Falls

Ended the day in Hoodsport with Lemon Lavender ice-cream as the cloud cover (the beginning of the next 10 days of it) began rolling in. Perfection. I love where I live.

Adventure Log: Nisqually Delta

14 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Great Blue Heron, Great Horned Owl, Nisqually Delta, Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, Olympia Washington

I have taken my sweet time honoring my promise to myself to log more winter adventures, but I took the first step today. It was a nearby destination; just up I-5 to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. I hadn’t even quite finished my 16-ounce latte when I arrived. I left home before dawn, hoping for a sunrise; but there was no color this morning (nor sun, until I got home), but it didn’t matter.

The Delta is comprised of nine unique habitats: the Nisqually Flats, shrub, coniferous forest, freshwater marsh, salt marsh, open saltwater, rivers and creeks, mixed grasslands, and riparian woodland. Dikes and boardwalks provide limited access to the eight square miles of the Refuge.

I beat the crowds for a ringside view of bathing and breakfast for some of the 200 species of birds that visit the Refuge over the course of the year.

Did I see a thousand geese? If you count the cacophonous announcing of unseen presence, I surely did. Too bad you can’t take an audio photo.

I wish I knew the names of all the ducks, perhaps a new mission is to learn them. Here’s a start.

Merganser

Upside Down Duck

American Widgeon

Charlie’s Angels

The sweet sandpipers and the brilliant white gulls. How do they stay so clean?

The Great Blue Heron. Really, is there a more cool bird? Certainly none better dressed. Or more photogenic.

How the Great Blue got its name.

And a special treat, seen through my zoom lens and only because of the birdwatchers who have super human spotting abilities: a Great Horned Owl.

I didn’t get the sunrise today; and the ebbing tide—halfway between high and low when I got there—revealed more mud, less water, than I had hoped for. I’ve never been there at high tide. But the Refuge is only a latte away; I can visit again and again. Once a month sounds about right. I’ll be watching the tide table and the forecast.

Adventure Log: Willapa Bay

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 21 Comments

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Cape Disappointment, Discovery Trails, driving on the beach, Long Beach, North Head Lighthouse, Oysterville, Raymond on the Willapa, road trips, sloughs, Tokeland Washington, Washington Hwy 6, Washington rivers, Willapa Bay, Willapa Hills, Willapa River

After the weekend monsoon, it’s been a glorious week. I decide to play hooky from yoga on Thursday (though that also means no Daughter on Duty blog post and no Trader Joe’s for wine—which will be a crisis tomorrow) and take a road trip with CuRVy. I’ve been wanting to return to Willapa Bay, and on this beautiful autumn day it’s a no-brainer.

It was a sparkling diamond-studded hoar frost morning that day I went to Tokeland, on the north side of the bay, in 2013, and I was enchanted. I returned one other time with the summer crowds (less memorable) to visit Long Beach and Cape Disappointment on the south side of the bay (so named for a British fur trader’s failure to cross the Columbia in 1792, a few years before the arrival of Lewis and Clark).

The long, pencil-thin strand of Long Beach Peninsula—at 28 miles claimed to be the longest continuous sand beach in the United States— is Not My Beach, with its barren expanse of sand between ocean and bay providing a super highway for people loath to leave their vehicles. But I don’t go for the beach; I go for the drive through farm land and rolling hills. I go for the dots of small towns Highway 6 winds through: Adna, Meskill, Dryad, PeEll, Walville, Frances, Holcomb, Menlo, Willapa, Raymond, Nemah Junction, Naselle.

I start out—with my road trip latte, of course—under disappointing overcast skies, but with the promise of blue. As I turn west off the interstate, a few miles from home, I soon begin to see the sky clearing in the distance. Just west of Labam, I’m under a cloudless canopy.

Willapa Hills

The beach is my destination only because that’s where the road ends, and I’m in no hurry to get there. As I cross the Chehalis River on Highway 6, I begin the 100 mile journey that crisscrosses waterways from creeks and sloughs (rhyming with through, not with tough, a testament to our confusing language) to rivers; all of them, however small, christened with a name as they make their unhurried meander to a confluence with the mighty Columbia or an escape into the Pacific Ocean. My mother—my favorite naturalist—tells me there are more varieties of birds and waterfowl in this area than in any one other place in the country.

I pull off the road and walk to the bike/foot bridge over the Willapa River, part of the Discovery Trail system. I cross the Willapa River two more times, and the South Fork Willapa. I drive up to a hillside cemetery in the lingering thin veil of fog and gaze across the verdant valley of grazing cows to the sun shining a golden light on the tops of the Willapa Hills.

Discovery Trail

Willapa River

“Willapa” is one of my favorite place names in this state of fabulous names. The inhabitants of the area clearly love it too. The largest town along the river is locally known as “Raymond on the Willapa”; and there are any number of businesses and parks named Willapa this and Willapa that.

The road crosses other rivers too: North Nemah, Mid Nemah, South Nemah, and Naselle; Bone, Niawiakum, and Palix. The sloughs: Skidmore, Potter, Caruthers, Stuart, Tide, Jorgenson, Teal, Greenhead, hop and skip with the creeks: Hope, Rock, Fern, Pinnock, Half Moon, Forks, Trap. It’s a perfect environment for cranberry bogs, and they are here too.

I head to Oysterville first where blue meets blue, at the northern tip of the peninsula, at the urging of a friend, and realize I have been there before.

Oysterville

I drive back south to Long Beach for lunch, then park at the access to the sea. I have no interest in being on the sand with the cars, but the Discovery Trail extends the entire length of this strip of land through the dunes to the rainforest at the southern end. I walk north on the boardwalk then down to the bike path and wander back through the grass on the footpaths. I can hear the pounding surf, but I can’t see the cars unless I top a dune. It’s a weekday, it’s not summer, there aren’t many cars; but still it would annoy me if I let it. I don’t, it’s too beautiful a day, and I feel no need to walk across the tire tracks to touch the glistening water.

Long Beach

It’s mid-afternoon and I am tempted to return east to “Raymond on the Willapa,” then back west on the other side of Willapa Bay to Tokeland, a tiny fishing village (and casino, but that’s not my interest any more than the ocean is); I love the drive with more creeks and sloughs, and the old clapboard hotel. But I decide to go south instead to Cape Disappointment, at the peninsula’s southern end.

I remember, too late, my vow last time I was here and discovered trails through the rain forest and down to the driftwood beach, to make this a hiking destination. Head slap. And now I don’t have time, again. But I stop at the Beard’s Hollow overlook, then, making use of my annual Discovery Pass—that I finally find, not in the glove box with the broken latch, but in the drawer under the seat—I visit the North Head Lighthouse where I watch Coast Guard helicopter training maneuvers, and walk through a bit of the forest to Bell’s Overlook then on to another walk through forest and swamp to the dunes.

Beard’s Hollow

From Bell’s Overlook

North Head Lighthouse

Next time I will remember just to come to the Cape! But now it’s time to head back over the rivers, creeks, and sloughs to my home on the hill. What a day for a daydream. I love where I live.

Willapa Bay