Rasar – last day and my neighbor the chicken

August, 2018

On my last full day at Rasar State Park campground, I took the truck back to Baker Lake for a second look.  This time I was headed up the east side of Baker Lake.  The map didn’t show much of a real road, but I would go as far as I could or as far as I felt safe to go with the truck.  As it turned out, I didn’t get very far because there was a gate across the rough and rugged gravel/dirt road.  Darn.

But I got as far as the Lower Baker Dam that was built across the Baker River, the dam that forms Lake Shannon, just south of and below Baker Lake (the dam is just off the bottom of the map above).

The photo below was taken from a wide spot on the dirt road where I could safely pull to the side and not block other vehicles … though I saw no other vehicles.

I think the photo above is a bit deceiving.  Everything looks fairly small in the photo, doesn’t it?  Well, everything was BIG.

That “small” pool of churning water was seriously violently churning water when looked at more closely.

Above … there was this curious concrete structure that had obviously spanned the river some time in the past but that had deteriorated and partly fallen into the river.  If you look closely, there is now wiring to some sort of electrical device and there are metal reinforcements on parts of the structure that are still standing.

What initially looked like a small hoist/crane, was a pretty darned big one with two hoists in it … one was 210 ton capacity and the other 25 tons.

 

I continued driving up the dirt road and got as far as the top of the dam, then was stopped by the gate that I mentioned above.  But a side road took me down close to the top of the dam, right at the foot of Lake Shannon.

There were no signs for public access or tours or such, but there were no signs directing people to stay away either, so I parked and wandered around a bit.

In the photo above, up on the lake behind the dam, this floating two-story structure close to the dam had a number of buildings on it, had several small boats on the far side of it, and had several folks walking around on it.  Nobody was around to tell me what it was.  I wondered if I could get a burger and fries out there. 🙂  Probably not, huh.

This string of floats would prevent people in boats from getting too close to the dam.  There were a number of places to launch small boats on the lake.

Above … a different type of floating barrier that was closer to the dam.  If you want more information about the dam, the official website is HERE and a wikipedia article is HERE.

From one particularly nice vantage point, I discovered this view of Mount Baker.  What a wonderful mountain.

After that exploratory drive and walk-about, I headed back towards the campground, but took one last quick drive through Lyman in order to get one more look at where my momma was born and where she lived for the first few years of her life.

About a block upriver (east) from the house where she was born was this view (below) of the Skagit River and the hills surrounding it.

I can imagine that she played right here with neighbor kids, and had this very same view.

And then I drove back to the campground to tidy up on my last day here.

But what about the chicken, Ann? The title of this blog post promised us a chicken story!

Ah yes, the chicken!  You folks are paying attention!  The title of this post does mention “my neighbor the chicken.”  And it is no joke either!  Some time during my very first day camped here, I thought I heard the cluck-cluck-cluck of a chicken but I figured it must be someone’s radio or a computer game and I ignored it.  But a little while later on that first day, the bushes parted and out came this real live chicken … from the forest!  I think it’s a Rhode Island White.  Surely it must be lost.  There were farms a mile or more away, but nothing close by at all.

The chicken appeared to live here since it hung around for the full 5-6 days that I was camped here.  When I asked the Camp Host about the chicken, he told me that yes indeed that chicken had been here for several years and it hung around three campsites … mine and the next two that were closest to mine.

It was a friendly chicken.  Every morning at about 6:30am, it would cluck-cluck-cluck its way out of the shrubbery and into my campsite and wake me by pecking on the metal step of my trailer … ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!!  After one morning of that, I retracted the step before retiring for the night, but the chicken would get under the trailer and find that step and STILL peck at it.  I suspect other campers may have fed it and so it had learned how humans (and food) would exit a trailer; it learned where the food supply was.

The neighbor campers received visits by the chicken as well.  It was kind of cute the first day or so, but we all soon began talking about the possibility of a delicious chicken dinner.  But the chicken was not harmed and we enjoyed a relatively peaceful coexistence (except for that 6:30am ding-ding-ding alarm clock!).

And so that’s my chicken story.  🙂

On this evening, the last one here before heading home, I tidied up the trailer inside and then hitched up the truck to the trailer for an easy morning departure.

Little Towhee was right there with me, making sure I connected everything properly.  (And no, Little Towhee paid NO attention to the chicken saying the chicken was just too unruly and not really very well groomed.)

 

With the rig all hitched up and ready to roll, I had one last quiet evening and night in this luxuriantly forested campground.  I’ll head home tomorrow with great memories and then plan my next adventure.  Thanks to all of you for coming along with me!  🙂