Camping in Capitol State Forest

A couple of weeks ago our family decided to spend a weekend camping together in the Capitol State Forest near Olympia, the capitol of Washington State.  It is multi-use Washington State Department of Natural Resources land open to the public since 1955.  It's a working forest with active timber harvests throughout the year.  There is hiking, camping and hunting.  The northern half of the forest is also open to motorized off-road vehicles, while the southern half is open to horseback riding.  800,000 people visit the forest each year. 

While not everybody could make the trip, there's something about getting family together to spend some time in the woods and sit around the campfire.  There are no televisions, no radios, no computers, no cell phones, no electricity.  It's a time to just be family and talk. 

There is a lot of logging in the forest, but those plats are re-planted.  The campsite we picked was nestled in the tall trees next to a little stream.  But, the stream must be pretty powerful during the winter-- look at the size of the root ball on that fallen tree by the stream. 

This is a picture of a crayfish found in the stream.  We put it in a potato chip bag long enough to take its picture, then we put it back in the stream.  One of its claws was just growing back.  The stream had some minnows, but no fish of catching size.

One of the things I wanted to do was make a pot of strew over an open fire, sort of a joint effort.  Check out the cutting board made of a cedar plank.  When my kids were little we'd go camping and use sticks to eat beans out of cans heated over the fire.  That was intended to be a lesson in resourcefulness.  Compared to that, this stew was top cuisine.  That's daughter Sheila cutting the potatoes



There's something comforting about putting logs on a campfire and staring at the flames and embers.  It must go back tens of thousands of years.  It can be soothing.  Some of the wood was damp.  Somebody once said "Whoever believes 'where there is smoke, there is fire' has never tried starting a campfire."  We bought a few dry logs back towards town and that made all the difference.














That's son Scott setting up the chess board.  Can you beat that arrangement?  Even the moths wanted to get into the game.

The Capitol State Forest is pretty big.  To the east out across the valley you could see the Cascade Mountains.  To the north you could see the Olympic Mountains on the peninsula.  (Click on the lower map above for detail).

While we may not camp every weekend, and not every year, to go camping once in a great while is good for the family and good for the soul.  It also creates memories.  That's granddaughter Dani using a spoon instead of a stick. 

The "Potholes" Lakes

This is a picture of Blythe Lake in Eastern Washington as the sun is coming up.

I had a free day in the middle of the week, so I decided to go fishing in the “Potholes” in Eastern Washington. The eastern part of the state is high desert—very stark, uncluttered and peaceful. In the summer it’s warm and sunny.  At midnight I put the canoe on top of the car and drove 200 miles to Blythe Lake, arriving shortly before sunrise.

When I first got there it was still dark and the bull frogs all around the lake were croaking. It sounded like they were trying to get their cellos in tune-- very deep tones. But then a few started something that reminded me of the Australian Didgeridoo. And when I walked around the car I would hear splashing when the frogs and turtles jumped into the water. Different sounds than in the city.

About 15,000 years ago, towards the end of the last ice age, the Cordilleran Ice Sheet covered the northern parts of Washington, Idaho and Western Montana. The front edge of the ice sheet was about 2,000 feet high. That’s about three times the height of the Seattle Space Needle.

In what’s now Montana, there was a lot of water trapped behind ice dams, which were part of the ice sheet. That water is now referred to as Glacial Lake Missoula and may have been about half the size of Lake Michigan. Every 40 years or so during a 2000-year period, the ice dams would burst and all that water would rush across Eastern Washington at about 80 miles per hour. The water would scour the earth, pushing sediment and rocks out of the way and down into Oregon and beyond. The erosion was fierce. Enormous canyons and channels were formed in the volcanic rock almost instantly.

Dry Falls is an example of the vast erosion caused by the Missoula Floods (sometimes called the Spokane Floods). When water was flowing over Dry Falls, it was about twice as much as Niagara Falls. You can get all this information on the web.

Blythe Lake is near Moses Lake. The Moses Lake area has many lakes, commonly known as "potholes," which were initially carved out by  the floodwaters from Glacial Lake Missoula. Moses Lake feeds the Potholes Reservoir, which is part of the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, a dam and irrigation project which raised the water table high enough to allow the potholes to become lakes. Blythe Lake is just south of the reservoir.  It's one of the little dots at the top left of this photo:

I don’t know if Blythe Lake is “officially” one of the potholes, but most people refer to all the lakes in the area as “The Potholes.” So, I went fishing in “The Potholes” (although there is an actual lake with that name). You know what I mean.

Anyway, I got there before sunrise and put the canoe in and paddled around the lake. I tried dragging a spinner behind as I paddled; I anchored and tried worms, both deep and shallow, and Power Bait, both deep and shallow. Never a bite or sight of a trout. This little guy got hooked on a worm, but I threw him back (along with the pliers shown in the picture).

While I didn’t catch any trout, it was six hours on the water well spent. The surroundings were beautiful. You could hear the air going through the feathers of the birds as they flew by. You could hear your own breathing. I was the only person at the lake—all day. That’s my car shown in the photo. It was great. After six hours on the lake, I drove back home.

The canoe worked well. The wind was really up coming home, and it was blowing sideways on the canoe. But, the canoe held up. That’s a picture of the back rest I made for it—you can lean against it or sit on top. I also learned that I can stretch out and fall asleep on the bottom of the canoe. That could work in a pinch.

Hood Canal "Deadliest Catch"

"Deadliest Catch" might be the best show on television. Those guys are amazing. So, last May when I was invited to go shrimping on Hood Canal, it conjured up all sorts of thoughts-- mostly that it would be as close as I'll ever get to being like those crabbers in Alaska (which isn't very close . . . . I know).

Hood Canal and the rest of Puget Sound were created about 13,000 years ago, during the Late Pleistocene by a great ice sheet. The Marmes Man was probably walking around the ice sheet about that time. (Watch for a future post on the Marmes Man and Dry Falls).


Hood Canal was named by the Captain George Vancouver in 1792, when he was making a detailed survey of the Coast of British Columbia. His ships were named the Discovery and Chatham. The United States Board on Geographic Names decided on "Hood Canal" as the official name in 1932.













http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal

We were going to catch the "spotted" or "spot" shrimp or, officially, pandalus platyceros. The spotted shrimp (or prawn) is found from Alaska to Southern California, as well as in the Sea of Japan and Korea Straight. Spot shrimp are the largest species of shrimp in Puget Sound and can reach more than nine inches in length, excluding the antennae. They are reddish-brown and deep-pink in color and are recognized by the white spots on their body. They are most commonly found 300 feet deep and below on sandy and rocky floors.
















Interestingly, spot prawns are "protandric hermaphroditic" meaning that each individual initially matures as a male and then passes through a transition stage to become a female. Spot prawns usually live for about 4 years, starting their lives as males and maturing at one year of age. They function as mature males for 2 years and then transform into females in their final year of life. Females might mate only once. http://www.bcseafoodonline.com/files/spot_prawn.html

The season is only open a couple of days each year. Due to extremely high catch rates in 2010, the Hood Canal quota was attained in four days, so no additional days of fishing were allowed in 2010. There are a lot of technical and scientific papers about spot shrimp on the internet, particularly because they are harvested commercially, too. There are also some websites for sport shrimpers, which I suppose is what we were called that afternoon. Still, we had to have a shellfish license from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and our limit was 80 shrimp per person.

The shrimp pots had a yellow buoy marked with a name and contact information and 250-350 feet of rope. Inside the pot is a mesh bait container. The bait can be made of different things, as shrimp are omnivores and will feed on most fishy things-- fish guts and meat sprayed with fish oil for additional scent, scented pellets, or the favored canned cat food.

For many years the cat food “Puss’n Boots” was a popular and effective choice because it was soaked in fish oil. "If it isn't 'Puss n'Boots' cat food you're not fishing. I usually use cat food, with addition ingredients with fish scraps as hanging bait. You need the odor to draw the shrimp in and the hanging bait to keep them in."-- James Schufreider. http://www.gamefishin.com/wa/features/shirmp.htm

The company has gone out of business. It was made by Coast Fishing Co. of South California, which was bought out by Quaker Oats and later sold to Del Monte. It was later discontinued due to lack of sales. I don't know what "Puss'n Boots" smelled like, as we always fed our dog "Friskies."














We put the shrimp pots over the side of the boat and let them soak-- just like they do in "Deadliest Catch." They were down about 300 feet. Gloves are good for hauling the pots, but we had a winch aboard.

That was it-- shrimping on Hood Canal in the spirit of all the great fishermen.

(Captain Phil Harris 1956-2010)

Seattle to Reno

JJ Campbell was going to ride his motorcycle to Las Vegas and on to Yuma in April, so I decided to take a long weekend and ride part way with him to Reno and then return for work.

We watched the weather and decided to take I-5 South into Oregon. A guy I know, Marty Hayes, had ridden his motorcycle to Phoenix for a trial earlier in the week and had to lay over a full day due to snow. That's his snow-covered bike pictured below. He suggested we stay away from Eastern Washington and Oregon, which was higher and colder. So, even though it was rainy in Seattle, we headed south on I-5 and would later make a decision whether to turn east at Mount Shasta or further south at Donner Pass.




























We stayed the first night in Oregon, and then headed into California the next morning. A California Highway Patrolman told us the road was clear around Shasta, so we headed east. It was in the high 20's and low 30's, with some light rain now and then, but the road was clear and basically dry. No ice on the road, but snow on the shoulders of the road. We thought there might be loose gravel from the road crews, but it was fine.


We dropped down into Susanville and warmed up over some Kentucky Fried Chicken and then hit the road again. We got into Reno late the second afternoon. We stayed a couple of nights at the Silver Legacy. I noticed some empty buildings and felt Reno is being hurt by the economic downturn and Indian Casinos. The lack of people was noticeable since I was last there a couple of years ago, but maybe it was the time of year.
















When it came time to leave, the television reported that there was snow on the highway to Donner Pass, with traffic backed up. I decided to head north through the desert into Eastern Oregon and Washington, hoping to bypass the storm and stay dry, even if colder.

The skies were big and I could see storm clouds coming. There were some light snow flurries in Susanville as I headed north, then a few light showers as I headed northeast, but I pretty much missed all the rain clouds and storms-- rode right between them. The scenery was beautiful. It was pretty cold. I had four layers over my legs, and nine layers over my chest-- (1) long T-shirt, (2) wool shirt, (3) leather vest, (4) light nylon shell, (5) rain pants bib, (6) sweat shirt, (7) jacket liner, (8) leather jacket and (9) rubber rain coat. That, with chemical hand-warmers in the toes of my boots, made the ride pretty comfortable. All that, and the electric seat.

It was a trip I've made several times before, but always in the summer. This might have been a little early in the year. Then, again . . . . it was worth it. (JJ Campbell rode back from Yuma later in the month).