August, 2025
This was my third camping trip to Friends Landing in the years that I’ve owned my big white truck and my trailer (Towhee the Trailer). When I began my camping adventures nine years ago, I didn’t think I would return to campgrounds for a second visit. But I’m finding that I do have a few favorite places and that I am indeed returning to them. Friends Landing is definitely one of them, and it’s so close to home, only an hour away. How perfect is that? 🙂
As usual, on the last day here, I headed out for a walk around Lake Quigg. The path around the lake is solid and flat (paved blacktop or a wooden board walk) all the way around the lake. I rarely meet humans on this walk-about, though when I do they are gentle and happy and kind people. We all seem to be in the best of spirits around this lake.
Interestingly (to me anyway), I’ve always walked around the lake in a clockwise direction. And I rarely meet anyone else on my walk. But today, I walked counter-clockwise and met several people walking the opposite direction (clockwise). Do we humans tend to walk around something like this lake in a clockwise direction? In the southern hemisphere do people tend to walk counter-clockwise? Hmmmm.
Here’s the aerial image above from Google Earth. The RED dot in the campground is where I was camped. The white line is the route I took on the very nice path around the lake. As mentioned, I headed counter-clockwise, east first, to the right first. On the east end of the lake, you can see where the path heads out to the lake and then T’s right at water’s edge. There’s a nice sturdy viewing platform there. In fact, here’s a photo below taken from that platform as I’m looking back at the fishing float and that troublesome rock-filled boat “ramp” (and yes don’t miss the monster stump that is still out there).
Then, while still on that platform, I turned to the right and looked “up lake” towards the larger part of Lake Quigg.
I zoomed in a bit with the camera (below). Over on the left, way way across the water, you can just barely see the bridge at the far west end of the lake … remember THAT monster stump that was under that bridge?
What a pretty day. So on I went around the lake … can you hear the birds? They are delightful. Ok, I know you can’t hear them because there is no “audio” here, but please imagine lots of birds happily chittering and chirping. 🙂
There are two places along the north side of the lake where you can get right next to the lake; this is one of them (below). The campground is across there, in among the trees on the right.
Is the tree above a Serviceberry? I think it is, but I’m not sure. And is the fruit edible?
I had just about reached the west end of the lake when I came to another spot where I could look out across the lake (below). That’s an oft-used fishing float across the lake from where I was standing … no rocky boat “ramp” here like there was at that other fishing float, this one was just the float where you can sit and fish.
And again, simply turning to the right, the photo below shows the western end of the lake. The bridge is on the right, but it’s behind that large tree that’s on the right side of the photo.
And then I reached the bridge at the west end. That monster stump had moved on along and was most of the way on its way out to the Chehalis River. So I felt comfortable turning my back on it and taking the photo below. There’s that fishing float on the right … in the distance is the campground. I’m almost all the way around the lake.
Below is a zoom-in of the campground. Porta-potty on the right (I don’t use them), large white motorhome on the left. In the middle is Towhee the Trailer and the big white truck partly behind a tree. You can see that I had a view of the lake from a couple of the windows in the trailer.
And then I walked the rest of the way around the lake and was happy to be “home” again in my comfortable little trailer.
Later on during this August evening, around 9pm or so, I snapped the photo below. It looks like my truck’s headlights are on! Nope, it’s the light of the western sun shining across the lake, shining directly into those headlights and making the headlights look like they are on. There hadn’t been a colorful sunset that evening, but still it was a sweet evening and a very nice way to end the week here. Sleep tight you two, big white truck and Towhee the Trailer, tomorrow morning we head home.
