48stateroadtrip.com

It’s like I can’t come up with decent headlines whenever my truck is having its transmission worked on. Tomorrow’s another day. My apologies in the meantime.

After pre-selecting a campground on a map at which to meet my parents the next day, I then entered T-Mobile-induced radio silence, knowing that we’d meet at that campground at 6:30 PM the next day. Turns out the campground didn’t exist any more, so we ended up just running into each other at a gas station in Packwood. It’s a good thing there aren’t many places to get lost when you’re on mountain highways.

Then we went fishing. Some guy at some store in Packwood suggested a place called Chambers Lake based on its being full of fish *and* not having any too-weird restrictions on it (most of the lakes in the area wouldn’t allow treble hooks or bait — as if it’s possible to get artificial lures without treble hooks). Unfortunately, the direct, 17-mile road from Packwood to Chambers Lake was closed for “construction”, so to reach it we had to drive 20 miles to Randle, and then 40 miles through the woods. Not that it was presented to us in those terms, but whatever.

My dad, casting.

Me, doing same.

There weren’t a lot of fish in the lake as it turns out. My dad caught one and had another strike and then we saw an osprey come down and catch one, which was also interesting for watching him have to circle around several times before he could get off the ground far enough to fly away with the added weight of late lunch.

Was cool, though, to get some use out of the fishing gear and some knowledge transfer about casting and rat’s nest management. Plus the lake was pretty, small, and uncrowded.

bkd