We stayed for two nights at Pothole Camp, and from the very first morning (Saturday), the entire…read moretrip was just horrible.
First issue: Someone thought it was a genius idea to hang a wasp/hornet trap right in the middle of two campsites -- ours and our neighbors'. Saturday morning, we woke up to wasps swarming all over our tents. At first, we couldn't figure out why until we spotted the trap in a tree, literally buzzing with activity. My husband went to the ranger station to report it, but no one was there. About an hour later, a ranger finally showed up and moved the trap -- by that point, our kids hadn't even been able to leave their tents.
Once that was dealt with, I started cleaning up all the trash left behind by the previous campers at our site. Later that evening, while we were having dinner, our older daughter was stung by a bee.
Speaking of trash -- let's talk about the lakes. We visited multiple spots around the lakes, and honestly, it felt like flashbacks to dirty California beaches. Everywhere we went: trash, broken glass, diapers, beer cans, baby wipes. Floating in the water. Tangled in plants. Scattered across the shore. My daughter was in the water for maybe 45 seconds before she cut her foot open on a shard of glass, and we had to go back to camp to pull it out. None of us even got to swim. And this wasn't just one spot -- we tried three different lakes and five different locations, hoping for a safe place for the kids. Nothing.
We are never coming back. People can say what they want about western Washington coasts and lakes (the weather, the crowds, whatever), but what we do right is keeping our beaches, parks, and wildlife refuges clean. We respect our nature and our wildlife. We don't like people coming into our homes and leaving trash everywhere, so we don't do that to other places.
This place could be a gem. It could be beautiful and worth returning to every year. But that won't happen. This was our first -- and our last -- time visiting.
