Yakima camping, day 3 afternoon

May, 2019

You may remember from my last blog post that I was taking a drive away from the town of Yakima, out into the country, past hop fields and other farms. I saw Pronghorn and other wildlife (mostly rabbits and birds) and I saw a lot of open country and big blue sky. I was on my way to the very small town of Bickleton.

Eventually, around noon, I arrived in Bickleton … here it is!

That’s it … that’s Bickleton. Ok, there are buildings on the other side of the street, to the right of the photo, and there are homes on a few side roads. And waaaaaaay in the distance in the photo above you can see a white building and, next to it, a yellow building … that’s the local school.

Here’s a website about Bickleton, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bickleton,_Washington. The 2010 census lists 88 people as full-time residents of Bickleton, which includes the very small town AND about 13 square miles around it.

This establishment (above) is the oldest, still active, tavern in the State of Washington, built in 1887. But it was closed when I was here. Would have been fun to go in there.

But I found another lunch place, the Bickleton Market Street Cafe, that had a small lunch counter and a small grocery/deli corner and a few shelves with hardware and seed and a couple of shelves of library books and a few racks of clothing. When I walked in, there were eight or nine people seated around a very large table … all of them jabbering away at once. They were obviously locals and they all knew each other. Not a one of them looked at me at first, they were so busy talking with each other. So I stood quietly by and eventually someone took notice, and took pity on me. They enthusiastically invited me to sit with them. They knew right off that I wasn’t from around there. They were just the friendliest folk! So I sat for a few minutes and chatted with them … said where I was from and that I was camped up in Yakima. And each of them started to tell me where they lived, down which road, and how far. Oh my I was getting more info than I really needed, eh? But it was fun.

And then eventually, one woman stood up who had an apron on and asked if I wanted some lunch. She said, “our menu is small, but the food is delicious!” Thinking back on it, I probably should have asked her to cook me up whatever her specialty was, but I wanted to get back out on the road. So I opted to purchase a few things from the deli/grocery … an apple and some cheese and crackers. And then every one of those folks left, each of them saying goodbye to me.

I told the woman with the apron that I was here in hopes of seeing a few of the famous Bickleton Bluebirds. She said, “oh you’re a might early for them, they won’t be here until probably early June, but you might get lucky!” I paid for my little bits of lunch food and I thanked her and then I jumped in my truck and headed out of town.

Getting “out of town” in Bickleton takes about 20 seconds. About five minutes from town, I saw this building in the photo above. An old school? church? The internet says it’s the “old Dot school”, and the internet says that “Dot” was a small community near Bickleton. You can imagine life back then, can’t you?

And then I saw these monsters (below) in the other direction. Wow, what a contrast.

As far as the eye can see … wind turbines.

Again, every mile or so there was a house and either a working farm or what looked like it used to be a working farm. But I wasn’t interested in them. I was interested in the little blue-roofed birdhouses that perched on top of fence posts EVERYWHERE!

There were hundreds of them alongside 4 to 5 miles of country road and on the fences that divided the huge fields. Most of this “bluebird loop” road was nicely graded gravel/dirt, though a little bit of it was paved.

But, just like the woman in the store said, not a Bluebird in sight. 🙁

But here, look at this pretty bird! (click on the photos to enlarge them)

I don’t know what she is … do you?

And then I found lots of these folks (below). Zipping and zooming everywhere. I waited quite a while for this one to settle down long enough to snap a photo of him. He was a long way away, but he held perfectly still for just the right amount of time. I thanked him.

What kind of a bird is he?

Here’s the land he and his friends were flying over …

It had rained here for a few days in a row before I arrived in the area, so the foliage was lush and green. But even so, I still yearned for trees and finally found ONE tree (below).

Notice the cattle to the left of the tree. I couldn’t see a fence anywhere here except along the road.

Even with all that room to roam, they stuck together.

I was noticing that fence posts were either metal or they were really old wood. Since there are so few trees for millions of acres in these parts, that wasn’t surprising. Whenever a farmer did put in a new fence post, it was usually treated lumber, and it was always used as a corner post. Since these folks didn’t have a lot of wood to brace the corner post, the photo above shows their clever way of bracing the post … with rocks and boulders. This method was commonly used here.

I was sorry not to see any Bluebirds, but I had seen many other interesting things and talked with the nicest people. It was mid-afternoon and time for me to head back north and get back “home” to my little trailer at my campsite in Yakima. After the drive around the “bluebird loop” of several miles, I headed back through Bickleton (another 20 seconds) and headed north on the winding road towards Mabton.

Thinking about dinner, lollygagging around one bend in the road, wondering if the Pronghorn would still be up ahead (they weren’t) … whoa!! what was that?! … a BRIGHT BLUE BLUEBIRD just zoomed across the road right in front of my truck. Wow! How cool was that?! 🙂 The photo below is obviously not mine, but it does show the sweet blue color of these Mountain Bluebirds. What a thrill. That made my day and I smiled all the way back to my campsite.