admin

Picture taken by Jodi in Enumclaw, WA.

Jodi and I are here at Federation Forest State Park in Washington State. Been here now for a little over a month, just 30 miles away from Mt. Rainier. The Mountain that they say is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest. Hope it stays quiet while we are staying so close to it.. The Elevation is 14,411 and last eruption was 1894….

This giant tree is probably 800 to 1,000 years old, stands about 250 feet tall and about 8 feet in diameter. One of many large Douglas Firs in our park. Just incredible.

We are enjoying our stay here at the park and working to get the park cleaned up from a few things that has happen in the past year; Covid-19, bad winter windstorms. A few months ago, the park had a bad windstorm that has knocked down a lot of trees and some big trees that are hundreds of years old. Most of the park was cleaned up, but we are now cleaning up some of what was left at the picnic areas and shelters that were cluttered with tree limbs and leaves. Its nice and quiet and remote here at this State Park. We are about 19 miles from everything and Enumclaw the small town just outside of the park. It is a nice little town for our shopping, local pubs and restaurants which we now can enjoy since we’re fully vaccinated! Woo Hoo.

Some real easy not so long trails with many trees and lots of moss hanging all over the forest.

We are here not to just keep up with the few mile hiking trails but to also keep the Catherine Montgomery Interpretive Center open. This Interpretive Center (IC) has a lot of information about how the State Park was started. The park was acquired, built and organized in mid-1920’s through the work of Catherine Montgomery and her affiliation with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of Washington State. It was interesting to see that a few women did such a great thing to start a huge old growth forest and make it into one of Washington’s State Parks. Some of the trees in this park are 600 to 1,000 years old… There is even a trail called, “Land of the Giants”. The Park was dedicated and opened in 1949. Catherine Montgomery also donated her estate to have the IC built in 1964. Such a nice Interpretive Center with so much information on this State Park.

Women of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Washington State break ground on the Catherine Montgomery Interpretive Center in the early 1960s. Photo courtesy of Washington State Parks Collections.

The Interpretative Center was built in 1964 by Catherine Montgomery’s Estate, hence the name Catherine Montgomery Interpretative Center pictured below, Photo courtesy of Washington State Parks Collections

These pictures are of some animals and stuff inside of the Interpretative Center, the house posts of a Muckleshoot Native American man and woman was carved by two Muckleshoot Native American members out of a 300 year old tree that was from this State Park, and was carved with real Native American carving tools used back in that time era and painted using plant based dyes.

A great place to picnic right on the White River and hike some easy short trails, right near Mt. Rainier, just down the road from the park.

We are so happy that we can do some enjoyable hosting jobs throughout the states and get to work and play seeing all the beautiful sites of the great USA… Such a life of touring the USA. Having lots of fun!!!….

The numbers are the States we will see in order when we leave Washington State. 1 through 18 are the only states we need to see to complete our 48 states. We can not see Hawaii and most likely we won’t see Alaska. So 48 is pretty good. (Order subject to change)

We are going to be hosting here till the end of July. On our way down to Arizona for our Winter, we will stop at Utah to see a few places that is on many people’s bucket list…. Ogden, UT., where the Transcontinental Railway met up with the Pacific Railway, and Promontory, UT. Also Bryce Canyon and possibly Zion NP. We will then finally visit the great Grand Canyon that we had to cancel two other times in the past. Now we will see it for sure in August. We then head down south Arizona for our Winter, and we are going to take a 6-month break from hosting. It will be in a small town called Benson, AZ. Only a few miles from Tombstone, AZ.

I have been watching the 1957 to 1961 TV series of the Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp for the past year, and I am so overly excited about visiting Tombstone… From Arizona we head back to Spooner Lake State Park, NV for our 3^rd summer of hosting in that State Park. That Park is now getting a new face lift. They are adding a Visitor Center and Gift shop to that park.

Well, as soon as it stops raining so much here in Washington State, Jodi and I will go visit the Mt. Rainier National Park and take some real nice pictures. We knew that it does rain a lot here in Washington, but boy, we didn’t know it rained this much. We have been told after the 4^th of July it stops raining for a few months. Our last month here, great!! So we get one month of nice sunny weather….

Hope all is well with everyone. We do see that the weather in the East and even Mid-West is hot with lots of rain, flooding and tornadoes. The weather is bad just about everywhere. So we do hope everyone is being safe. Also trying to enjoy the lessened Covid restrictions and still being cautious. We hope we are on the down side of all of this Covid stuff. Stay in touch and say high by commenting on our blog. Take care and be careful out there.

Best wishes everyone, The Bobble Head Travelers, Mark and Jodi!!!!

Hello Everyone, hope all are well and staying healthy.. We are now heading to Washington State for our next hosting job. We have left Desert National Wildlife Refuge and will miss it and our beautiful view we had all Winter. We will also miss the people we have met and some staff we have worked with. Wishing them all the best for the upcoming year. Please stay healthy and safe.

All Winter we had one Coot in the pond at the Refuge, and he had the pond all to himself till just a few weeks ago when some American Wigeon ducks were passing through the area. Our Cute Coot was photo bombing my pictures of the Wigeon ducks.. lol

While we were at our RV site at the Refuge, we had a group of trees near us, and we had a lot of little animals; Jack Rabbits, Antelope Squirrels and a Road Runner, and many birds outside our windows.

I tried to take a picture of our local Road Runner and he was so fast that I could not get a clear picture… Beep Beep

We had a great experience hosting at the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. This is a place that everyone should visit when possible. Found outside of Las Vegas: Corn Creek, NV.

There are many places to see outside of Las Vegas. It’s not just about the glitter, lights and casinos of the Vegas Strip. Many other great sites to see all around Las Vegas. Red Rock is a National Park we went to visit.

We are heading North and hitting a few places on our way and plan to take our time so we don’t run into any snow or bad weather on the way. We will take about 40 days to get to Washington State, Federation Forest State Park, in Enumclaw, WA. It is about 30 or so miles from Mount Rainier. We can’t wait to go to that National Park. Looking forward to our new Summer Gig…

Inside of the visitor center at Desert National Wildlife Refuge is a large raised geographic map of the Refuge. Jodi took a picture of the northern boundary of the refuge, and you can see a white spot on the left and our boundary on the right, that is how close we were to Area 51….

We stopped at a small town called Ash Springs near Area 51. We traveled on E.T. Highway (Extraterrestrial Highway). Our first stop was the Alien Research Center which of course, had a lot of alien souvenirs and t-shirts. We got “Paul” our refrigerator magnet. This place is found in Alamo, NV, outside of Ash Springs, NV.

Checked out the Black Mailbox that has made it in some movies out in the middle of no where. One movie you need to see, funny as Sh-t, is Paul. This mail box is for people to communicate to the Aliens. You may leave a letter or something for them. As we were driving we saw off the road, a cow head??? Hmmm, experiments!!??

We drove a little farther on E.T. Highway to get to the infamous Little A’le’Inn. A nice little place to get an Alien Burger with fries and a few drinks. Cool place. Got to hang a Dollar Bill on the ceiling over the Bar. This small Bar Restaurant was very popular during the Storming of Area 51 back in 2019, which did not happen by the way. We did not try to drive the 12 miles from Little A’le’Inn to Area 51. Driving to Area 51 just gets you into lots of trouble when you get too close, and you can’t see anything anyway, just a gate with signs saying stay out. It’s all a dirt road and I don’t want to do miles of that. We did that at Desert National Wildlife Refuge a lot.

Little A’le’Inn found at Rachel, NV. Outside of Area 51.

Just down the road from our RV Park, there was a little area they call Ash Springs Rock Art Site. We drove to it and here we see the Petroglyphs all over some rocks. I like to see this old ancient kind of art. Found at Ash Springs, NV.

We are slowly heading North and we are still hitting places with snow on the ground. Ely, NV had a snow storm a few days ago, and it was 18 degrees in the morning, and mid 50s during the day. We do hope we are not going to run into any snow storms in the next few weeks. We are in Ely, NV now and have about 7 more places to stop at before getting to our hosting job at Federation Forest State Park, Washington.

Hope all is well with everyone and staying safe and healthy…. When we get settled in at Washington, we will update you on our new summer gig… Take care and stay in touch, and see where we will Bobble to next.