Camping at Tinkham – Post 25 of our August Seattle trip

I apologize for the August flashbacks this late in September. The combination of a broken computer screen and too much traveling has hindered my ability to keep up with my blog. So we’re going to do Seattle flashbacks for awhile yet.

We did two epic hikes in August. The first one was beautiful but buggy, and we had trouble finding somewhere to camp. This time, we reserved a spot at a campground ahead of time. We found a spot at Tinkham campground, which was right off of I-90. We could clearly hear the freeway. But we didn’t mind – the point was to be near the trails so we could get an early start the next morning.

The campground was very pretty.

As soon as we got there we took a walk on a short trail near the campground.

Even though there was a swamp, there were almost no mosquitoes. At all! It was such a relief from the previous hike! In the Pacific Northwest the mosquitoes are worst early in the season when it is still cool and damp, and then mostly go away later in the season when it is hot and dry. The tricky part is – the season depends on elevation.

At higher elevations the snow melts later, so the mosquitos arrive later and can still be peaking in August, even though at lower elevations they are gone by August. We went on our buggy hike only a week or so before this hike, but we were at a higher elevation, so it was effectively much “earlier” in the season, hence the dense swarms of mosquitoes. Here it was at a lower elevation, so the swarms of mosquitoes would have been there and gone – probably sometime in July instead of August. We were happy to have missed them!

That was a fun little walk. The big hike comes in the morning.

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