Lake. Campground. Rally. Heat. Bugs. Fun!

Nine months ago we reserved a campsite at Taidnapam Park in central Washington. The park is owned and operated by Tacoma Public Utilities, and this is on account of back in the 1950s they built a big dam on the Cowlitz River to generate electricity for all those people in Tacoma, and after the dam was complete the water backed up to form a lake bigger than most small countries.

I forgot to take a picture of the dam, so I found this one, taken by a fellow named Robert Ashworth and used under Creative Commons 2.0 licensing, which you can read about here.

Riffe Lake. You have to paddle your canoe a long way from that dam before you find the Cowlitz River again, way up at the east end around some corners, amidst Cascade Range foothills, countless trees and an awful lot of turkey vultures.

So here was this lake, and the utilities people decided to make a park so people could enjoy it. Taidnapam is the name of a tribe of native Americans who lived around the upper reaches of the Cowlitz River. I expect the area was even more beautiful back then. No lake, but more river.

Taidnapam has a large campground, and it’s a really appealing one. Large sites, many trees, spotless everything, and ready access to the aforementioned lake. It was popular last weekend — not completely full but pretty close. A lot of fifth wheels roughly the size of Cleveland come there, probably to fish, and to drink brewskies and trade fish stories.

Except this weekend was different, because this weekend there was a Rally of Molded Fiberglass Trailers (and their people).

No, all the fiberglass trailers weren’t radioactive, even if this picture makes them look that way. But they did get warm. Come to think of it, a lot of them are shaped a little like toasters.

Note that the tall conifers in this campground appear to have been limbed a good way up — whether by nature or by human beings (a branch of nature, I suppose), we’re not sure. It’s like being in the woods, but the woods are… airy. All very tidy-looking (taidy?).

We took a “back road” — Washington state route 7 — to get to Taidnapam. It’s scenic, winding, pleasant, and makes Wally carsick. Even Tyler was panting a little. As has been his custom, TinMan handled the hills and curves well.

A “haul road” (something to do with logging, I think) takes you from Washington route 12 to Taidnapam Park, skirting around the lake’s east end. Looking westward, you can see about 15 percent of the lake here. I’ll bet the birding is good around here, too, but I didn’t try it. I was busy.

We had reserved a pull-through site for this trip, because it was one of the first reservations I made, well before Toto was hatched, and I wasn’t sure how adept I would be at backing the trailer. The way the site was laid out, it made sense to pull forward a bit, so we ended up parking TinMan behind Toto. This may have confused both of them.

Taidnapam Park has a two-part campground, consisting of the old part and the new part. Our little rally was held in the new part. It’s quite appealing. Although most of the campsites are good-sized, some (including ours) aren’t very private. At a rally, though, privacy isn’t really the goal. We give Taidnapam five stars for aesthetics, cleanliness, friendly staff and value.

See, you can see another egg-trailer on the right up above. That one belongs to a very nice couple from Port Townsend who have a Casita trailer. They also have built wooden kayaks (me, too), and they used to live on a boat. We learned that we had mutual friends, after a fashion. When these folks cruised down to Mexico in their boat, a few years ago, they knew some friends of ours who also cruised down to Mexico (and kept going). It’s a compact world.

We did some walking around with Tyler and Wally, checking out the sights.

Here you could launch a boat. I figure I could bring my kayak, and its little wheelie cart, and roll it from my campsite to this ramp in no time. Bringing the boat next time!

So. There is more to show you, and a considerable amount of Rally Angst to discuss. Bugs, too. Also heat. But let’s save it for later. I hafta work for a while or my clients are going to yell at me.