Category: Washington

Ranger Creek – Wednesday July 8, 2015

Ranger Creek Air Strip

Some of the things I like about camping and hiking in the hills ( in my motorhome ).
My comfortable bed and it is not on the ground.  Getting out of bed by placing your feet down onto carpet is no comparison to having to get up off the ground.  Crawling around on your knees to get dressed and out of the tent.  Always a joy to put your shoes on while sticking your feet out the tent door so dirt does not get into the tent.
Not having to hike a half mile just to dig a hole in bunch of rocks to deposit what is left of the previous day’s breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Things I don’t miss:
Cooking on a fire
Cooking on the ground, when using a stove
Walking a quarter to half a mile for a drink of cold water
Washing dishes standing on your head
Washing up in a bowl that is 6 inch across and 2 inches depth

I do miss multiple night hikes. We used to do 8 night hikes once a year. In my young years we would go 50+ miles.  Later we would cover 30 to 35 miles.  This would mean shorter distance each day carrying a pack and more afternoon and evening exploration hikes.  Dinner at five, with dishes done by6:00 and we would have until 9:00 or 9:30 to explore.

I do miss hiking one direction ( not having to walk back however far I hike from the motorhome. )

Today was not much of a hiking day.  Hank and I got an early start however it did not last very long.  Hank was tired, he was walking along side me or mostly trailing behind. After about half a mile we turned around and called it a day.  We are both getting older.

Today’s helicopter:
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Ranger Creek – Tuesday July 7, 2015

Got the satellite TV dish set up this morning.  Last week I had changed our physical location to Crystal Mountain which is only a few miles away and in the same zip code as we are now.  Matter of fact when Google maps originally setting up zip codes 98022 (Enumclaw) was attached to the physical location of Crystal Mountain Ski Resort.  A lot of databases are still this way.  Most medical search databases when you search for doctors within 5 miles of 98022 the results are NONE.  When you change the search to 30 miles all the doctors in Enumclaw show up including the hospital.  Once a mistake is made it is very difficult to get it changed.  Anyway we have local Seattle-Tacoma TV stations coming down from the satellite.

Hank and I got out for a hike this afternoon.  Walked the trail along the river ( White River ) for 4 miles and then came back.  We were in heavy forest the whole time so it was really nice and shady with a dirt trail the whole way.  We saw two other groups out hiking in the nice weather.  I took my InReach GPS however being down inside a large stand of trees it only was able to transmit our location once during the three hours we were on the trail.  When we got back to camp I set the GPS out in the open so it could transmit it’s data, it will be interesting to see where it thinks we were. I also set a waypoint ( #10 ) for a point of reference.  This waypoint is after we had turned left away from the river for 0.6 miles and also our turn around point.
Another beautiful with a high of 85.
Hank was tired when we got home.

We are the only people here tonight, nice and quiet.

Army helicopter came into the landing strip this evening.  He came from the north, landed south to north, set for several minutes, took off north, came around and left going to the south.

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Crystal Mt. – Thursday July 2, 2015

It is time to move on.
The construction activity is getting closer and closer to our motor home.  They are moving dirt into the parking lot within 40 feet of where we are camped and the dust they are creating is becoming a problem.   I thought I’d walk up to the construction shack and find out if they are working a 4 or 5 day work week.  Since no one from this project has actually walked down to this end of the parking lot I thought I’d also point out they were about to start dumping dirt into the stream which comes under and along the road.
The dump truck driver fly’s into the parking lot backs up and dumps, never looking to see where the stuff he is dumping is actually going.  To the right of this picture the dirt goes all the way back to where the stream is along the road way.

It is not a big stream however it does run all year around so blocking it off would create a problem for them.

The guy ( I think Carl ) in the construction shack was not the most personable person I’ve ever talked too.  He said they are going to be working Monday – Friday all summer.  He was not happy when I told him about the small stream and all he really wanted to do was argue about how there wasn’t a stream at that end of the parking lot.   He was even more unpleasant when I showed him were the stream is located.  Oh well, I guess being nice and friendly with other people is not a priority in our current way of communicating, I should of sent him a Facebook IM.

Crystal Mt. – Wednesday July 1, 2015

Our quiet Crystal Mountain campsite:
Has become a construction site:
A construction company from Bellingham just stated a project to reconstruct the 6 mile road into Crystal Mt.  The bid from Pierce County says the majority of the work will be done during the summers of 2015 and 2016.
I think our days of quiet and elk walking through camp are numbered if not over.
Saturday and Sunday night I could hear elk just before sundown however I didn’t hear a thing last night.   We’ll see how it goes, they may not be working on the weekends and we could go to Silver Springs or someplace up road 70 during the week.   The skiers will be happy.

Crystal Mt. Sunday June 28, 2015

Hank and I got out this morning for a hike up the right side of the valley.  My Fitbit says we went 7.35 miles, 15792 steps, the gps on my InReach says we got to 5608 feet up the mountain. We turned back because I cannot tell how tired Hank is when we are hiking.  He goes as fast as he can until he has nothing left.  We were at about 4 miles and my guess was another 1 to 2 miles to the top.  That would add 2 to 4 miles to our outing and I decided 7 to 8 miles on our first day out was enough.  I also have to watch out for his feet. The trails up the right side of the valley are all  roads and I’m always concerned about  the amount of time he has to walk on small crushed rock and larger rocks.
I marked a waypoint where we turned around.

We did the right thing turning around, Hank has been sleeping since we got back.  He’ll lift his head when I go outside to make sure I don’t leave without him.