April 26,2017
Deb and I had our annual spring camping trip in late April. We left Portland under gray wet skies and headed towards Yakima, Washington. We hadn’t actually decided where we were going until a few days earlier. The wretched winter and ongoing bad weather meant that we made a last-minute decision based almost entirely on weather.
It was a really pretty drive between Maryhill and Toppenish on Highway 97. We passed by Toppenish Wildlife Refuge and decided to stop and take a look.
We walked out to the viewing pavilion pictured above where we could see out over the refuge.
Then we followed a path for a little ways. We saw lots of birds. It was a peaceful spot except for the traffic noise from Highway 97.
We’d had the idea of going to the bridge as our turnaround point. That’s not going to work! The road to the bridge was underwater.
After our little ramble we drove to Yakima Sportsman State Park, a big park and campground right in the town of Yakima. We picked a spot, set up camp, and relaxed for awhile.
There is a network of trails in the park which we decided to explore. We started out the dike that ran near our campsite.
Then we popped across a bridge and onto an island where we rambled around for awhile.
The bulk of the Yakima River is on the opposite shore of the island. It was running full and fast!
On the banks of the river was this tree that a beaver had been diligently working on. Pretty cool!
We headed over to the little Wetlands Trail and saw a whole lot of red-winged blackbirds:
Back at our campsite we made dinner. Once the sun went down it got real cold real quick. The campground firewood was locked up and there was no camp host from which to purchase firewood, so we crawled into our sleeping bags to read before going to sleep.
