Grape Lake - Lakebagging

Grape Lake

There are a lot of woods on highway three between Smelton and Belfair.   I've looked them over on google earth a few times, hoping for an interesting destination.  Finally after all these years I noticed a lake near the Grapeview Loop road.

I decided to take a look at that lake today.  I found a tiny spot to pull out and then did a 5 point turn to get my tiny car pointed back towards the highway.

It did not take me long at all to find the lake and find a faint trail that led to the shoreline.  I followed some other faint trails along the shore and before I knew it, I had run out of trail.  I decided to brush crash back out the the road without backtracking.  This turned out to be a mistake.

My wet and dirty
clothes at the end of
this hike.

The road was a lot further away than I expected it to be.  The brush kept getting thicker and thicker.  I was scrambling in blue huckleberry bushes that were taller than I and they were all wet.  I caught myself wondering if my husband was looking down at me floundering around in the brush and worrying about me.  He hated that I hiked alone and sometimes left the trail. 

Well, if he was watching over me maybe he was protecting me too I decided.  Since there was cell phone service here, I used my phone and google maps to see where I was.  I was a long way from the road.  I wondered if I should just turn back.  I was getting wetter and wetter and if I got hurt there would be no way that anyone would ever find my body out here.

I realized this would be a great place to hide a body. Was I going to trip over skeletal remains?  I kept thinking of the episode of  Darkwoods Justice where a local mushroom picker found human remains while she was crawling on her hands and knees in the brush. She took the sheriff back to the spot but the remains were never found again.

Would I stumble onto a homeless camp this close to the highway?  Should I have brought a weapon to defend myself? Should I have my dog with me?  Oh yes, I was not having fun.  The brush was getting taller, thicker wetter.  My clothes were soaked.  What if I my phone fell out of my pocket, what a disaster that would be!   The brush kept grabbing my pack, my new pack that has never been brush crashing.  Would my new pack hold up to this abuse?

Then the unthinkable happened. I reached for my phone and it was not in my pocket! Crap, the brush was so high and so thick and my phone case is black.  Most of my gear has at least one bit of orange duct tape on it for visibility in just this situation.  My phone is not one of my normal pieces of gear and does not have orange on it, just black.

So I started to try to backtrack through the horrible bushy mess that I did not want to be in.  I found my phone in less than one minute.  Whew..  I hate losing stuff off trail in the brush where it can be very difficult to trace my steps.

Eventually I made it back out to a road.  Once I regained my bearings and was satisfied that I knew where I was, I decided to try to walk around the Lake on logging roads.  I guessed it would be about two miles, to walk around this good sized lake, but it was a little less than that.

I wanted to have hot coffee on the lake shore, but I was worried about my car being parked next to the highway and I was very wet and cold, so I drove home instead.  I think I will go back and explore this area at least one more time.  I will also carry pepper spray when I do.   I did not feel safe in the woods so close to civilization.  There could could be all kinds of people out there and I'm a solo female.

It was not a good day for photography, it was gray and a little bit misty, so I decided to convert all my photos to black and white.

I intend to do a lot of hiking in the next few weeks as a way to deal with the overwhelming anxiety and emotions I am having due to my spouses death and all of the difficulties I am having with teenager.

I'm going to call this place Grape Lake since it is near Grapeview Loop Road,  but I did notice that Hiawatha Creek flows out of it, so it could be Hiawatha Lake.