Great luck on a great spot

I got a tip from a friend who had gotten the tip from another friend. Lyre River Campground, run by the Washington Department of Natural Resources. First-come-first-served. And since I had acquired a DNR Discover Pass a while back, the campground — with pit toilets, a dumpster, water, and camp host — was free.

It was a weekend, so I knew there was little chance of a site being available in the small campground, but it was nearby and I wanted to at least check it out for future reference, and to see if it lived up to the recommendations.

Well, just as I was starting to cruise through the campground a Sprinter adventure van vacated a riverside site. The nomad deity had smiled upon me.

There’s a short loop trail along the river and through the forest. And there’s a 1.5 mile trail up over the ridge and down to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. So I went walking.

The campground was quiet, and even though it rained during the night it didn’t get muddy. The one drawback, and the reason I didn’t stay longer, was lack of cell signal. But that’s good for me once in a while. It forced me to work on a novel I’ve been trying to put together for several years. I got a couple of chapters done, added some tasty bits to an older chapter, and worked out a plot complication I had been struggling with. I don’t know if this is what they mean when they say being in nature is good for you, but the lack of distractions certainly helped.