Little Mashel

We’re conveniently located between two national parks, and neither of them want us there. This is unusual for us. We’ve been to 49 states with the boys and have camped in most of them. And I’ve been to all but a few National Parks in the lower 48 and have always been welcome. But now I’m not, due to something about Mary.

If they knew her, they would feel differently, but the National Park's no-dog policy doesn’t allow for interviews to state your case. Ann started searching for other places to get into nature near Tacoma and found Little Mashel Falls near Eatonville. It was only about 35 miles away, but it took about an hour because we were on the far side of Tacoma from it. The hike was only a few miles, but we liked the idea of the falls as a destination.

I thought the falls were being awfully modest with the word “Little”, as the big one in the series of three was about 90 feet or so. But the little comes from the source, the Little Mashel River. We hiked to the middle falls initially, which was very nice, and then to the lower falls, which were even better. There was a pretty good crowd when we first got there, but it was from a couple of groups. Once they left, we were alone.

A college-age woman from one of the groups got in the water and was lounging about, floating around. She was in for several minutes. You would have thought it was 80-degree water. I went up and touched the water with one finger, and it was like ice. I don’t know how she did it.

After the hike, we went on up to Ashford and stopped at a store. There were a lot of people out to get in
the last of the warm weather and sunshine. I considered going on to Mt. Rainier, which was only a few miles away, but Google Maps was calling it another 45 minutes, and we would have had to leave Mary in the car, so we just headed back home. 

On the drive back, we took Highway 7, which is lined on both sides with trees that are fully twice as tall as they have any right to be. This was definitely somewhere we would be coming back to.