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High 77 here and 87 at the start of the ball game at Safeco.

After a week at home we ventured out to explore Ranger Creek.  Yes this is the same place we have been going to all summer.  Most if not all the state parks are now reservation only from May 15 to September 15 and reservations can be made nine months in advance.  This is great when you want to plan ahead.  Over the last ten years starting in October one of the first things I did at 7:00 a.m. every Friday was to make weekend camping reservations starting for the next May.  We went to a verity of places; lot of Fort Flagler, Silver Springs, Dosewalips, and Penrose almost every weekend.  During the winter, early spring and fall these places are nice however the summers they are a pain.  The worst part is kids and parents how walk through other people’s campsites.  Not just close to the site but through the site as in between the motorhome and picnic table or fire ring because this is a straight line between where they are and where they want to go.  This does not go well with Hank and most of these people look at Hank like he has done something wrong.

We started going to Crystal Mountain a couple of years ago and we usually had the whole lower parking lot to ourselves.  Now at Ranger Creek the closest people during the week range from 50 yards of heavy forested area to a half mile and some days miles to the next person.  On the weekends it is 30 yards between campsites.
This is the closest site next to us.

This is the one just north of that.

There are several busy weekends, mountain bikes, 50 mile run, horse group.  Still a nice place to camp.

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Nice sunny morning 60 inside 53 outside
Cloudy morning

Walked around the area and it is my estimate that 10% of the horse people could not find enough room in their horse trailer to take all of their horse shit home.  The whole area definitely smells like a horse area.  I think we reached 60 horse trailers.

I know from my retail days it is usually 3 to 5 percent of the people who think only of themselves and are basically obnoxious.  Here are pictures showing the size of this event.
The other group of people that focus on themselves are the ones who leave the campsites in a mess.
It is a shame these people can not all use the same campsite.  The problem is these self centered people all believe they have to start with a nice clean campsite.

9:00 p.m. Started to get a few rain drips.  High today 82.

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Nice sunny morning 60 inside 51 outside

During a Friday evening walk I saw 18 horse trailer here for the Saturday event.  At 11:00 today there must have been over 50 horse trailers here.

Zack came up and set up camp across the way from us.

Today’s high 87.
Helicopter picture from early in the week.

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Nice SUNNY morning,  57 inside 47 outside

Warm day, 90 in and out, being in the trees is nice.

The runway looks like is was 15 and then 17 placed over the 15.

It will be interesting to see what is marked this time.  I will have to go back to google earth and see what the history bar has to say.  If I remember correctly the difference between magnetic and true north is 22 degrees here.  I will have to look on a Green Trails map when we get home.

By the way we have not seen a cloud all week.

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Nice sunny morning, 57 inside 49 outside.

Most of the day in camp and it was a warm day.  Nice thing about mountains is it cools off at night!

They brought in two sani-cans today.  So this weekend is officially a “Two Shitter” weekend.

Later in the evening I found out this is the trail rider’s horse weekend.  Since we have been coming to Ranger Creek we have three levels:
Four Shitter – bike riders
Eight Shitter – 50k runners
Two Shitter – horse riders, this weekend should also include an additional trailer.

The garbage left behind in this camp area is not to bad.  Their are individual groups who make a significant mess while they are here, litter, toilet paper and horse shit.  Some campsites are full of glass most don’t.

Somewhere I read the state is going to repaint the runway this summer.  In the middle of the runaway it say’s “RANGER CREEK” and the ends are painted the runway’s compass reading.  The interesting think about the compass degrees is you can tell they were painted once while the governor was a democrat and once when we had a republican.  The north end says 15 and 17, for compass reading of 150 degrees and 170 degrees.  I think the 15 was put down first ( I’ll have to check on this tomorrow ).
A state truck and one state employee got here about 7:30 and then four other people ( more than likely private contractors ).    Maybe two people for the numbers and two people for the letters.

They measured the existing numbers and left at 10:00.  Why two trips to paint a simple job.

By the way the airstrip is at 150 degrees magnetic.

Got to 91 degrees today.

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Nice sunny morning, 53 inside and 46 outside.

Hank and I walked the road south of the airstrip.  This road is a loop which runs south to about Silver Springs Campground.  It was a nice walk and Hank was tired the rest of the day.  I took him for a walk after dinner however it didn’t last very along, he (Hank) wanted to go back to the motorhome.

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Left home just after 10:00, got gas and got here at 11:15.  We are in our same site with one other small tent at the far end of the runway.

While we were home I spent some time playing with my InReach GPS and got it pared to my Facebook traveling page.  It will only stay paired to a Facebook page for 90 days and than you have to re-pair the account to Facebook, kind of irritating. I sent my location to Facebook and when the longitude and latitude was pasted into google earth the location pin was only one or two feet from my actual location.  I was impressed.  I sent our location when we got here today.  I could not figure out how to add a comment to the automatically generated location script before it was sent.
I would like to add something like “Hank and l are out hiking and this is our turnaround point for the day”.  I could send an additional Facebook post however the two posts would not stayed pair in people’s newsfeed stream.  I’ll have to send this suggestion to InReach.

Here is InReach information put into Google Earth, this is the exact location.

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