a blog about Kilt and her kids plus Trouble our JRT mascot.

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Sequim, Washington, United States

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Camping on the Elwah River on the 4th of July

My neighbors let me know they were going to do some fireworks.  They invited me over for the festivities.  I thanked them, but told them my dogs had not heard or seen fireworks ever, so I thought it would be a good time for me to go camping.  
I thought about going to Heart O' the Hills Campground inside the Olympic National Park on the way up to Hurricane Ridge.  It was a bit cloudy, but when it is clear you can see the whole Strait of San Juan De Fuca from there.  I bet a clear July 4th up there is spectacular.
I took a wrong road (Thanks Magellen) and ended up in a different part of the park.  I saw a ranger and stopped to chat with him.  He told me Heart O' the Hills campground would be full by the time I turned around to get there.  He suggested 2 other campgrounds on the Elwah river.  I went to the furthest campground that was had sites directly on the river.  There were 3 sites open and I got a fabulous place to camp.
For 100's of years the Klallam tribe fished and hunted on the Elwah River.  In 1913 the Elwah dam was built blocking the fish runs which was illegal.  Now in 2012 they are finally doing something about it.  The Federal government stepped in and removal of the dam and the restoration process is under way.  Within months of opening up the lower dam in 2012, 5 species of salmon were spawning in the park for the first time in 100 years.  This also brought lots of eagles and bears.  In fact, now they are having a problem with too many bears.



The river by the campground was probably  Class 3 rapids, meaning "NO, Yoko, you can NOT go swimming.  You can NOT be off lead."

Jet was happy as a clam to trot along the pathways and visit other campers.

This looked like upside down Elk antlers made of moss to me :0)

Everybody has their place in my little 19 foot RV/Van.  Champ usually grabs the bed.  Yoko lives under the bed (Cave Girl) and Jet likes the floor.  It rained for a couple of hours while camping, but a very soft rain.  We all came inside.  It was amazing I had internet reception there.  Really hard to believe.  But, I was able to watch a movie on my iPad.  I watched Her Majesty for $2.99 off of Prime Amazon.  It was a very enjoyable movie.


Yoko staring intently at the rushing water.  Yoko ONO….

Just a cute pic of "The kids." Half siblings.

I must have taken about 8 photos of Jet and they all were lovely.  He is an easy subject because he is so expressive and photogenic.  There is not a mean bone in this dog's body.  

This was the road to the campground.  The dogs and I took long walks on this road.

Up close photo of Foxglove.  Such a beautiful flower.




And, my favorite, driving out of the campground down the road.  Lordy.  It does kind of make me think of the movie "Deliverance."



2 comments:

Karen said...

Those pictures could have been taken not far from here:)
The 'too many bears' part would have me worried though. Hard to get past a scary bear experience as a child....

gvmama said...

Lucky for me i was too worried since I was in my Van :0) Though, I did jump up when something rolled around my outside dog crate in the middle of the night.
So nice to see GREEN instead of DIRT…I just can't tell you!