July, 2021
Today was my first full day day in the Lake Goodwin area, so I took the truck out for a spin and just drove with no destination in mind … just looking around and enjoying the area. Let me share a selection of photos from the day with you. It was a lovely day. 🙂
Left, right, no left … but right would be … no left, no right … ok right … well what about left?
Ok, sigh, we finally turned left. What could be wrong with heading towards a lake and a boat launch, eh?
Here I am parked at the side of the launch “ramp”. There was a car already parked there when I arrived, but there was not another human in sight.
And here’s the boat “ramp” below. You wouldn’t want to back your truck/car very far into that water in order to off-load or re-load your boat from/to the trailer. After just five or six feet out into that water, it was pretty soft mud under that water. But power boats are not allowed on this lake, so it’s likely that everyone launches small boats here … kayaks, rowboats, or small electric boats. The lake sure was pretty on this gorgeous day.
And then I left the lake and headed out on some wider roads towards the west and north of Lake Goodwin. I didn’t go far! There were lots of great things to see.
Above and below, an enormous field of hay, cut and dried and ready for baling.
A little further up that same road, or hmmm maybe off on a side road … I drove through a small housing community and found the view below that looked across the tide flats and then over to Camano Island. That tide was WAY out right then. When the tide is in, all you can see is water and it looks like very deep water. Smart boaters don’t go in here much … it’s really shallow even at high tide.
Tide flats … or mud flats.
Around another bend in the road was this barn. Look at those windows. Somebody spent a good deal of extra time and effort installing them like that. I liked it.
And then I headed back towards my Boondocking home and found this extraordinarily wonderful really back road through the woods.
The drive took 3 or 4 hours, not that I went very far, but I stopped often and took photos or just stopped to enjoy something, to stand and watch the tide start back in, to listen to the birds, to stay a bit and admire that barn, or just enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.
As I was driving back onto the property where I was camped, I noticed these folks below … the two deer and, of course, the Energizer Moose. As soon as I got the truck parked, Little Towhee jumped out and headed over to say hello to her neighbors.
She tried real hard to say the nicest things, but these folks seemed frozen with … what? fear? wonder at seeing Little Towhee? blinded by the sun?
Little Towhee gave up and went over to chat with the Energizer Moose. She was sure that someone as wide-eyed as he was would have lots of things to say.
She hopped and danced and flitted all around him and said all the right things. But Mr. Moose was unresponsive. Ah well, Little Towhee just shook her head and wished them well, and we walked back through the woods to Towhee the Trailer for a nice afternoon nap.
Love the barn!
Isn’t it great?! 🙂
Finally just now read about Little Towhee and how she got her name. What a sweet idea. And what a kind person she is. 🙂
Thanks Sesapa. 🙂
Got a great chuckle out of the left-right-right-left-right discussion at the top of this blog post. Great sense of humor. Great barn too.
Thank you David. Having fun in life is pretty important.
Pretty country! I need to find a wide open vista out in the country so that I can focus on the sky at night. Somewhere near me but far enough away to get out of the light generated by towns. Over water would be nice Hmmmmm…. I love driving around with no particular destination in mind.
And OH!!! I saw a barn with windows like that in Norway….I wonder if there’s a meaning. I will have to go find that photo (I’m SURE I got a photo….)
I love your night sky shots. There isn’t much opportunity for that here in western Washington since there are simply too many big or small cities/towns. In south-central Washington, in the Cascade Mountains, there’s a well-known observatory. It’s on my list for a camping visit soon.
LOL! You are the barn photo queen, that’s for sure. If you don’t have a photo of such a barn then no one does. Lots of Scandinavians settled in the country here, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the windows in “my” barn were patterned after Norwegian barns.
I grew up near Mud Bay just west of Olympia, Washington. Haven’t lived there in many years having moved “back east”. But your photos of the tide flats up by Camano Island brought back the memory of tide/mud flats and the smell of them. Some folks think they stink, but I always loved the smell. I guess it just depends.
I love the smell of tide flats too, Jamie. For part of my childhood, our family lived near the south end of Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island, mud flats for sure. It sorta kinda smelled stinky but I thought it was sweet. Most everyone does who grows up around such a place. And, yep, I’ve driven past Mud Bay a number of times and could tell the tide was out without even looking. 🙂
Love your attitude about rambling down back roads. When I first moved there I used to go out and do the “left or right?” thing, figuring if I got lost I would eventually find a road that led somewhere familiar. Of course that was in the days of the gas wars and gas was only 25 cents a gallon, or 30 at the most.😏 Now spending a whole day wandering about…$$$! And harder to find quiet roads!!
Aargh, now gas is over $4/gallon. But I remember those gas wars. These days, every once in a while I do think about how much my big white truck costs, but then I don’t go out driving around much when I’m home, mostly just when I’m camping. One of the reasons I go camping from Sunday afternoon to Friday morning is that most folks are at work during the day during the week and so maybe the roads are a bit less busy … maybe? I also pull over and let people pass me. Some people are in such a hurry!! I don’t remember ever being in that much of a hurry. Ah well, such is life. 🙂
Got a good chuckle out of that left-right thing too. Martha Lake simply begs me to drop my kayak in there. Those tide flats (mud flats?) look huge, are they really that big, can the tide go out that far? It looks like it goes out for miles.
Oh yes, me too! When I drove down into that boat launch area, I had half a notion to pull my inflatable kayak out of the back of the truck and go for a paddle, but I wanted to keep exploring on land. There wasn’t another boat out on that lake that day, a weekday, so it would have been perfect. Hmm, maybe next time I’ll just change my plans and go with the flow … on the water. 🙂
Yes, tide flats really can go out that far though of course not all of them do. The land (the mud) is almost flat up in that inlet, so for 100 yards of lateral movement of the tide, the vertical movement might be just a foot or two. So, when the tide is all the way in, the depths up in that inlet will cause pretty much any boat to run aground … or run “a-mud”. There are lots of places all over the world like this. Good question Shawn, thanks. 🙂