July-August, 2019
This was my final morning at Paradise Point State Park. I would be heading home today. As mentioned, the campground was very noisy because of adjacent freeway traffic, but I sure had a good time here nonetheless. I will be back to this area. On one morning while I was here, I scouted out other campgrounds in the area that were a bit further away from the freeway so my nights would be quiet during future visits here.
But today I would be leaving and heading home.
However, before hitching up the trailer to the truck, I took one final morning drive in the truck without the trailer. It is just so pretty in this part of the State of Washington.
I drove by some pasture land with bunches of horses. I love horses. But something seemed odd about that dark horse on the left in the photo below. It had too many parts!
Yikes! A two-headed horse!! How many manes and tails and heads and legs can one horse have?!
Ok, ha! I bet you figured this out before I did. If you count the number of legs, you’ll find out there are actually two horses here, just facing opposite directions and serendipitously positioned to confuse the viewer (me). They sure were nice looking horses.
Those horses (above) all belonged to the house below … and to an organization called “Spirit Horse“. I checked it out online when I got home and I was impressed. The place would certainly be worth a visit on my next trip to the area. And, yes, it’s another place that would love volunteer help. I wish they were closer to where I live.
And then I continued on … more driving, more meandering, more ignoring the map and ignoring my electronic digital map devices … more just driving around and taking the road that seemed the right one to take.
Nice wide open farm land above.
The red “barn” looked interesting so I stopped the truck and took more photos.
That’s a lot of fire wood. And an interesting shape to the sides of the barn.
And then on I went down another delightful road.
The house above intrigued me because it was so attractive. It was just a regular, boring double-wide manufactured home. There are millions of them, everywhere it seems, and most of them are pretty boring to look at. But the deck that was added to this one made all the difference. The place felt like “home”. The deck and the plants were so attractive.
And then later on down the road I found more barns.
And more horses …
Little Towhee (you remember Little Towhee, right?) … well, Little Towhee saw this horse (below) out the window of the truck and screeched at me to stop. “Cheep! cheep! cheep!” So of course I stopped, and of course my truck window was open and she flew right out the window and perched on that fence and started chippering away to that horse.
I thought the horse might skitter away, but the horse loved it. Horses can see through that head covering … the hood is there just to keep flies out of their eyes. This horse picked up its head and walked right over to Little Towhee. I didn’t get a photo of it, but the horse nuzzled Little Towhee and snorted and snuffled. Little Towhee loved it and flapped her wings and cheeped and chittered. Little Towhee makes friends so easily. 🙂
We said good-bye to our horse friend, clambered back up into the truck, and headed on down the road, up the road, around the bend, along the river, through the meadows and the trees.
We didn’t stay out long because we knew we needed to go back to the campground and hitch up the trailer and head home, but we did see one last barn on this outing … it was my favorite barn of this trip.
And then we did go back to the campground and hitch up for the drive home.
The drive home was uneventful. It took about four hours, mostly on that noisy freeway. It was nice to get home and sleep in a QUIET house.
Except that Little Towhee kept twittering at me after we got home. Once I finally managed to stop and listen to what she wanted, she said she wanted to thank me for taking her to that wildlife refuge. She loved it there. She saw so many of her bird cousins, she was so happy. What I didn’t know at the time we were there, but that she then told me at home, was that she ACTUALLY SAW AND TALKED WITH another Spotted Towhee!!
She said she couldn’t tell me at the time because she was so happy and just couldn’t get the human English words out of her beak. Here’s a photo (above) of that other Spotted Towhee at the wildlife refuge. Ok, it’s a photo off the internet, but it is a photo of a Spotted Towhee taken at that very same wildlife refuge. And when Little Towhee saw this photo (above) on my computer screen at home, she swears it is the very same Spotted Towhee that she talked with. And I believe her. Who wouldn’t? 🙂
After this early August camping trip to Paradise Point State Park, near Ridgefield, WA, I didn’t go camping at all again in 2019, because I was busy searching for, and making offers on, and buying a house … and moving! But in 2020, I made up for the lack of camping trips in 2019 with seven camping trips in 2020! Stay tuned, and come on along.