May, 2022
Today I’m off to explore Lake Aberdeen. I’d not heard of Lake Aberdeen before, but online research told me it existed and that it was relatively close by. So off I went in the big white truck.
But less than one quarter mile outside the campground … I hit the brakes!
Right next to the road, off to my left, right down there next to the pavement, was a small Skunk Cabbage in full bloom. Remember Skunk Cabbage from a recent blog post? I stopped and opened the truck window to get these two photos. No bad smells assaulted me, although I felt no great need to get any closer. This was a small plant, so maybe that’s why it didn’t give off the usual “skunk cabbage” smell. The second photo below shows that this plant was a bit past its spring prime, so it wasn’t as glorious as it would have been a few weeks ago.
So that’s what a Skunk Cabbage looks like in full bloom. It is really pretty, even if it does stink a bit. 🙂
And then off I went on my drive to check out Lake Aberdeen.
As you approach Lake Aberdeen on a small country road, you first pass the view below of a handsome fish ladder, which of course makes me think there are fish involved in this lake. 🙂
Turning left there, off of that small country road, took me into a … yep, you guessed it … a fish hatchery.
But gosh darn, it was closed to visitors, too early in the season maybe? The sign didn’t say. So I went back to the small country road and continued on to Lake Aberdeen, and got a view of the hatchery from up there.
In the photo below, you’ll see the fish hatchery on the left … then a large human-made berm of dirt with a road/path on top of it … and then little Lake Aberdeen off to the right.
The bridge in the photo below is a foot bridge. But you can see cars/trucks are parked in the distance there. There’s another road into that area where there is a boat launch ramp for boats with non-internal-combustion engines (no gas or diesel engines). But electric boats, row boats, kayaks, canoes, float tubes or belly boats, etc, all are good on Lake Aberdeen.
Ah, and here’s Lake Aberdeen below. Docks on the left next to the boat ramp … and docks on the right too. The three “bumps” that are out on the ends of the docks on the right are actually human beings, every one of them is fishing. I kind of thought Lake Aberdeen was all about fish, it sure is!
This was really pretty, and certainly a good fishing spot. There’s no camping here and not much picnic area or hiking here either. But there’s a boat ramp on this side of the lake too. And it’s a wonderful place to hang out, bring a picnic lunch, watch the folks, watch the sky, listen to the birds.
I parked the truck and walked around a bit, found a picnic table and just sat and watched and listened and enjoyed. Ahhhh, me. 🙂
And then it was time to head back to the trailer for lunch.
On the drive back into the Friends Landing campground, the road always takes you over this one small metal-railed bridge that takes you over a small section of the Chehalis River estuary such that the water under the bridge is regulated by the river AND by the saltwater tide. Today when I drove over the bridge, the tide was obviously IN, the water was high. Magical.
I wonder what saltwater and what fresh-water critters live in/on this water? Maybe one day, when I’m camping out here again (I surely will be), and the tide is high, I’ll put my inflatable Stearns kayak in this estuary and see what creatures I can meet.