Cowlitz River in June

We spent a week at our campsite on the Cowlitz River down by Mt. St. Helens. We actually had some pretty nice weather, but the guys only caught 1 fish.

 This raccoon lives in the river bank right in front of our site. He has been pretty brave even coming out during the day.

 Then there is the mole issue. They are all over and can really make a mess out of the yard. Fortunately for us we have not had an new mole hills yet this year. This picture was taken at a neighbors site. Ron has been a good trapper and both his traps were full when he checked them.

Cowlitz in April

We headed to the Cowlitz for a week so the boys could get some GOOD (?) fishing in and we also had a work party on Saturday. The weather was not very good. We had rain and more rain with occasional  breaks. They did get a few fish, but the river was so high that it made fishing very difficult.

 This was an amazing site that we had not seen at the river before. On each side of the river there are big fields. The geese would fly from one side to the other several times a day. You knew when they were getting ready to fly as the squawking began. There were literally thousands of geese! Looking up river and down river the sky was full of them. Some were in V formation and some were not. It certainly was a site to see and hear.

 Here are some pictures of the work party.

 Norm and Rosemary were down for the week, so joined in with the work. Thank you so much for all your help.


While I was weeding the flower beds around the bathrooms/laundry room I found this little green frog. He was very happy to pose for me. This picture is NOT life size. This little guy was really only about an inch long.

Of course the sun came out and it was a beautiful the day we had to leave. It often happens that way. We are retired so should be able to stay if we want, but everyone had commitments back home. Besides, we always think it is better that we hate to leave, as that means we can't wait to come back again. Yup, well be back next month.

Cowlitz Leaves

It's time to head to the river for the Fall clean up. We had heard that one of the campground members had done some cleanup around our lot, but look what we found! Notice the nice leaf line? Leaves on our lot, NO leaves on Skeet and Jan's. I shouldn't mention names, but come on Gary! Sooooo...

 we got busy and cleaned up our lot. Since we are not used to raking leaves my sister Julie gave us the idea to rake them onto a tarp and then take the tarp to the compost pile. It was much better than a  wheel borrow at a time. Thanks Julie for your idea.

 FINISHED!!!

Skeet mowed the lawn and we are all nice and tidy for the winter.

 Skeet and Jan. Notice Skeet's beard. He doesn't usually have one, but decided to let it grown while he was on a fishing trip. We had our own in house Santa!

Cowlitz Shores

Here we are on the shores of the Cowlitz River visiting with Keith and Sheral. They had hoped we would become their neighbors in this campground, and now we are. What a story this is. If you have been following our blog you will remember reading that Keith is a fisherman and when we met them in Arizona he and Ron talked for hours about their adventures on the Cowlitz River. We spent a few days with them after our summer trip to the Cowlitz and visited this campground. As it turned out there were 2 lots for sale right next to them.
Here are the 2 lots. I think Ron really liked the lots, the location, the neighbors and the river right from the start. However, the owner really wanted to sell both lots together and we didn't think we needed them both.

This is where our friends Skeet and Jan come in. They live in Puyallup, which is an easy drive to the Cowlitz, and Skeet likes to fish. He is getting very close to retirement and we thought they might be interested in a lot. So, we called them and they came right down. It didn't take them long to decide they were in. As a matter of fact they are hoping to buy the lot right next to theirs that will also be available shortly.

This is the view of the river from our lot. The panorama makes it look like the river has a bend right here, but it doesn't. Here's another shot looking up river. You can see that it looks more straight with the bend just up ahead.

Now the work begins. There are lots of big and little projects to do. Ron has already sprayed the grass and on our next trip down we will get the motor home pad ready so we can have a level gravel spot to park. We need to paint the shed, build a new fire pit and put new gravel on what will be the patio area. I can help with some of that, but you know a lot of this is guy stuff. Ron needs to move some of the utilities so they are in a better location for our hookups. Of course he will also do some fishing and relaxing. This isn't supposed to be a place to go and work. We only wish we had known about this years ago, as we have been coming to the Cowlitz since the girls were little and maybe even before they were born. If we hadn't had our chance meeting with Keith and Sheral in Arizona we still would not know about it.

Keith and Sheral

Keith and Sheral are the friends we met in Arizona. We couldn't have parked next to better people. They are truly amazing! Right away Ron noticed Keith reading a "Salmon, Trout, Steelheader" magazine. From then on it was non-stop talk about fishing. Since they both fish the Cowlits River they had plenty to talk about, which brings us to this adventure. Keith and Sheral have 3 lots on the Cowlitz River. We have been trying to get down to see them since we got back from Arizona in March. Boy, have they ever got a busy schedule. This first picture was taken from their lot, which is right on the river. It's relaxing to just watch the river run by and quite fun to see the fishing boats.

This is Keith and Sheral's lot. They leave their fifth wheel here all summer as they come down to the river quite often.

This is their 3rd lot, which is right across from them, and the one we camped on. Keith put the gravel in this summer, so we would have a nice spot to pull in. I told you these were wonderful people.

Of course Ron and Keith did a little fishing. That's the whole reason for being here, right? They got 3 one day and 0 the next. If you have been reading the posts about this fishing trip you will remember me saying that the fishing has not been great this time. In this picture the boys are running up river and just about to pull into the bank where Keith will tie up the boat.

There is a lot of wildlife along the river. This eagle must live near by as we saw him several times. There was another eagle also and they were not happy about being so close to each other. They definitely are beautiful and huge! We had doves in camp, which was new for us. They were cooing all the time. Keith and Sheral said they don't usually see them either, so maybe they are just traveling through.
It was great to see our friends Sheral and Keith, but once again had to say "Good-Bye", at least for right now. We hope to see them again this fall for another fishing trip and then again in Arizona.

Hand and Foot

We are visiting our friends Keith and Sheral who we met last winter in Arizona. We decided to play a friendly game of Hand and Foot. For those of you that know the game you know the idea is to make books with your cards. You need three dirty books and two clean ones and then you can go out. Notice that Keith and Ron are pretty happy at this point and Sheral is giving a thumbs down on this game. If you look closely at the picture, maybe enlarge it by clicking on it, you will see that Keith and Ron have gone out and Sheral and I have not put down ANY cards. That means we had to subtract the points for ALL the cards in our hand as well as ALL the cards in our foot from our total score. We had never seen a game like this. Since this was the last hand we just figured the boys had won. Oh, by the way, I had 3 red threes in my foot. That's minus 900 points. Yikes!

Happy Birthday

Fishing always gets a little crazy on the weekends. Ron said there were about 75 boat trailers at the launch this morning. However, it's his birthday today and he was pretty pleased that he did catch a "Birthday Fish" even with all the competition. Rosemary made Ron a lemon meringue pie for his birthday. It was yummy! She makes such GOOD pies.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RON!

Randy's Visit

Randy, in the middle, loves to fish. He has joined us on a few fishing trips now. He came and spent the day fishing with Ron and Norm today. Unfortunately the fishing wasn't any better today than it has been the last few days. They did have a great time and caught one fish, so Randy was able to take fresh fish home for dinner.

First Fish

The boys are having a great time fishing, or maybe I should say going for boat rides. They are only catching a fish a day and that is very unusual for them. However, they are not seeing other people catching fish either, so maybe there just aren't many fish in the river right now. Here is Norm with the first catch. It's a very nice steelhead.