So here it is! The final post about Birth Week 2021 and my final post about my whirlwind tour of ten Washington State Parks . . . which as of yesterday actually wound up going up to eleven Washington State Parks. And that's not even counting the county park I went to with Lynn and Zephyr or the city park I went to with Shauna, which means in the space of 10 days I actually visited a grand total of 13 parks. And a fourteenth will be added to that Flickr collection after Saturday next weekend, when I go to Whidbey Island to visit Fort Ebey State Park with Claudia, as postponed from within the Birth Week itself, but still connected to it.

Anyway. Tracy, who would probably qualify as my newest friend—she started at PCC in February last year while I was in Australia, and we started getting to know each other first via lengthy emails in the immediate wake of starting to work from home—came to pick me up at 11 a.m. This made it only the second day of my Birth Week that a friend did the driving; every other day I either drove my rental car, or, as in the case on Friday, I rode shotgun while Shobhit drove his car. Come to think of it, I never did offer Danielle money for gas (though I did pay for the $10 day pass at Deception Pass State Park since both of us forgot to bring a Discover Pass), but after noticing Tracy had barely less than a quarter gallon left in her tank, I did offer to fill it up for her when she pulled into a gas station at one point. She refused the offer, telling me she preferred to be able to guilt her sister about filling her car, as she was borrowing her sister's car for the day. Apparently some other car in their neighborhood was blocking Tracy's, so she just told her sister she was taking hers, and having much more recently gotten it from their parents as a college graduation gift, it's a much newer and much nicer car. (Tracy's older sister, whom I have never met, lives with her, in their apartment living room.)

We then set out for Green River Gorge State Park, a nearly hour-long drive to get to, not far from Enumclaw in the mid-southern portion of King County, really kind of out in the middle of nowhere. I had initially given her the option of choosing a park for us to go to, and at first she came back at me via text with five options. With very little prompting, though, she pretty quickly indicated her greatest interest was in Green River Gorge, so I was totally happy with going there, especially after seeing an aerial photo of the Green River Gorge Bridge, which clearly had spectacular views of the gorge.

We got a little confused in getting there, though, as GPS directions brought us to a dead end with a sign clearly posted by locals who must have dealt a few too many times with lost tourists:

GORGE???
BACK TO
STOP SIGN
TURN RIGHT
GO 3 MILES

And right under that the word GOOGLE with a large X struck through it: as in, GPS is wrong! Someone should write to Google about this. Maybe I will. I should Google how to contact Google about Google Maps mistakes. (Actually I was using the iPhone Maps app, but it was clearly making the same error.)

The thing is, I really thought maybe there was a distinction between the Gorge itself and the Green River Gorge State Park, and perhaps the latter was further up that dead end road—except, when we drove back up that road on our way back later, we found signage saying the roads were private property. So: nope.

In retrospect, I think that bridge, the Green River Gorge itself, and the hiking trails from a so-called "Green River Gorge Resort" (apparently long closed; the building is slightly derelict looking) are collectively regarded as the "State Park," even though there was no official "State Park" entry sign to be found anywhere—we just found a nearby parking lot, where we could get out of the car and walk across the bridge and get some great pictures.

Getting back to that "Green River Gorge Resort" building, though, where a QR code was posted for electronic payment of $5 for access—except there was no cell service out there. The fence was only nominally held shut, literally with stretch of bungee cord from the top of the gate up to the roof of that "resort's" patio. We opted just to go right through and head down to the water, where we found some pretty incredible sights, including a cave right under one of the major waterfalls to the side of the canyon.

In other words, thanks to that brief hike and visit to a waterfall cave—which really wasn't that hazardous; there were just some spots where, say, a hand rail may have been useful—I got some of my best photos and videos of the entire week from this one activity. I got a total 42 shots for the Flickr photo album, which then was later followed by an unscheduled 25-shot photo album of Flaming Geyser State Park, which was where we went to next. I wanted to find an actual park with real picnic tables at which we could eat the picnic lunches we had brought, and we saw on the map that this park was very close by: just eight and a half miles away, in fact; about a 15-minute drive.

And although the "Flaming Geyser" itself as an attraction was a legitimate dud (though the signage did provide for a great photo op after Siri on GPS kept calling it "Flaming Geezer," which cracked us up), the park was still totally worth visiting. The Green River also flows through there, and there are other smaller brooks and streams; and at least one bubbling geyser that smelled much like the farty-smelling geysers at Yellowstone (even if those ones are all far more impressive).

We stopped for our picnic at a table right next to the river first (pictured below), and it was quite pleasant. We had passed that large area with several picnic tables first as we drove into the park looking for the best spot, then backtracked to it. When we passed the first time, it was totally empty; when we returned a couple of trucks had parked there for two small families to get out and play with several remote control trucks all over the grass. We still had plenty of space to go picnic at a secluded table many yards away from them, where I could enjoy my delicious sandwich made at home, plus the chai I brought in my trusty thermos pack, and some very tasty cookies Tracy had apparently purchased in the Deli section of a PCC store.

Hmm, let's see . . . how much time did we spend at each park, anyway? I just realized I can get a pretty good idea of this just from the time stamps on my photos. The range for Green River Gorge is 11:59 a.m. to 1:18 p.m., so, basically an hour and 20 minutes there. Then, Flaming Geyser goes from 1:18 to 2:57. So, about an hour and forty minutes there—bearing in mind a good 50 minutes or so of that was just hanging out at the picnic table by the river as we ate lunch and chatted. Which was quite pleasant in its own right, I must say.

Thus, we headed back home shortly after 3:00, and once I finally had strong enough service to text Shobhit, I let him know our ETA was 3:52. So basically the excursion yesterday covered roughly five hours, spanning two state parks—even though Green River Gorge "State Park" was clearly in many ways left unfinished. Evidently for quite some time, too: according to the sparsely detailed State Parks web page, they've had a "Management Plan" since 1997, but I can find nothing regarding completion of it as a State Park since. I mean, whatever: that bridge alone is a massively worthy attraction, and going down the sometimes sketchy staircases and trails to the river water was fully worth the time and effort.

Once I was back, Shobhit and I went out to run some errands, shopping for a good several hundred dollars' worth of liquor at Total Wine & More (including a new bottle of Seleccion Suprema De Herradura Tequila, the very thing a broker tried to gift me two years ago and we just wound up buying our own bottle which we haven't even finished yet, but Shobhit got this one with an employee discount and a further minor discount by purchasing a gift card first), then stopping by the PCC office to pick up my thick backlogged stack of receiver paperwork I need to start tearing into for the rest of this afternoon now that my lunch break is over.

[posted 12:33 pm]