Thousand Trails RV Resort, La Connor, Washington

Two days ago I arrived at this beautiful campground.

The park was probably built during the 1970′s and is located on land leased from the Swinomish Indian Tribe for 99 years. This area of Washington has always been one of my very favorite locations in all of the United States. The scenery is absolutely beautiful, the air is fresh and clean, it seldom gets too hot or cold, there are virtually no bugs or mosquitos and the people are very friendly. In 2001 and 2002 I worked here for the summer selling park memberships. I’ve been coming here for years and know the area very well. It’s my very favorite place to go to during the Summer…that’s why I keep returning.

Here’s a Google Earth view of the campground which is located on one-half mile of Puget Sound waterfront…

The approach to the park on Reservation Road is very pretty driving through a tunnel of trees…

Approaching the ranger station…

I ended up in one of my favorite sites tucked in among the trees near the water on a small loop road…

It took a bit of maneuvering to get the wide-body motorhome between the trees…

Here’s the view from the passenger side of the motorhome…

Looking to the left behind the trees is the family center from where I’m able to receive the Thousand Trails Wi-Fi Internet signal and save on my Verizon Air Card usage…

To the right are shuffleboard, horseshoe and volleyball courts and Puget Sound…

Here you can just see the motorhome in the trees from across the grass of the family center…

A little closer view…

I even have a little companion…a baby bunny rabbit. Here’s (s)he’s about 25 feet away. I took this shot through the motorhome kitchen window on a tripod at full-zoom of my camera…

In forthcoming Blog entries, I’ll show you lots more photos of this beautiful place.

To read all about this 319 camp-site, 111 acre park which Thousand Trails calls a Preserve, click this link…
https://www.thousandtrails.com/getaways/washington/laconner.asp

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2011
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http://lulu.com/panamaorbust

SLIGHTLY BATTY

I currently maintain a tub of water for bats, but I was totally unprepared for a gift of a bat house even though I’ve been accused of being slightly batty.
You will never know how delighted I was to receive a bat house given that bats are the best thing that ever happened to a mosquito, in my opinion.
I’ve had several encounters with bats. One got caught in an old fashioned fly strip, those sticky spirals one hangs in the barn to keep down the flies. Its wings were not removable without doing the bat fatal damage and, in the end, I had to kill it. It taught me that the bat would most likely have eaten twice the number of flies in my barn and I never put up another fly strip.
As kids we used to throw rocks wrapped in white cloth up in the air and watch the bats dive bomb them. One time, I scored by clunking a bat on the head and it came down with the rock. We kids stood in awe and opened its wings and got a good look at it. It trembled for a bit before it was able to fly away.
But the most exciting encounter was in Austin, Texas. A bridge there attracts millions of Mexican red bats under its corrugated structure. At dusk, tourists like myself sit comfortably about the banks and watch as the bats take flight in enormous waves from under the bridge to launch themselves on the insect population up and down the river. For me, what is memorable about that experience, is my husband’s reaction. He grumbled for days claiming: “I can’t believe I’m going to Austin so you can see a bunch of !^#*) bats.” When we returned home, all he talked about was those bats. It was quite a sensation.