Moving to Liberty Lake, Washington

We are discovering that it can be difficult to find campgrounds in a beautiful part of the country during the busy summer season. It seems that everyone is squeezing in a vacation while the kids are out of school. Several weeks ago we made reservations across Washington and into Montana as we are making our way towards Glacier National Park. That's totally different than the usual "we-don't-know-our-next-stop-until-we-get-there" style of wandering. As we usually move about 100 miles at a time, the only open spot this time was at the Casino just west of Spokane. Without electricity, we found that the inside of the motor home can get hot even here in the northwest. We won't be trying any more boondocking until it cools off a little more.

Our next stop is a six-night reservation at Liberty Lake Community Park. We drove uphill on a narrow winding road to a campground nestled in the pine trees surrounded by mountains around the lake.

On this Sunday afternoon, the little beach around Liberty Lake was stacked with people trying to get cool when the temperatures were a blistering 88 degrees. The people up here are not used to warm weather.

We did some hiking in the mountains that surround the lake. It was great to just roll out of bed and onto the trail. This morning we were out early enough to find a deer close to the trail head.

Less than another mile down the trail, we found another doe enjoying the openness of the trail.

We heard that many people hike the two miles to the Great Cedars section of the trail, and then return back to the campground. The cedars are big, but this doesn't seem like a final destination.

We aren't smart enough to turn around so early. We continued on to the top of the foothills, where we saw a tiny waterfall. This part of Washington hasn't seen any rain for almost a month. For this rainy state, that's a long time. We're constantly reminded on the news that fire danger is high. In fact, there are several wild fires not far away.

We continued to the top, and made the 9-mile loop before we returned to the motor home. It's nice to take a hike without even moving the car.

While we really like our park, we do have one complaint. They have a large sign that describes the flora and fauna of the park. It lists the many different types of trees, and we just happened to notice that one of them was misspelled. Mark has a long-lost botanist in his family, who named everything from cactus to trees during the 1800s. We took this picture with one Engelman sitting beside the misspelled "Englemann." The extra "n" at the end is accurate in the 1800s, before they removed it to be a little less German. But switching around the order of the "el" in the middle of the name is just wrong.

Our spot at Liberty Lake puts us right in the middle of fun things to do. We are just two miles from the Idaho border, and a short drive from Spokane--the second largest city in Washington. We think we are going to like it here!