Our trip to Verlot Campground, Washington - June 2007...
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Jackie and I took the RV and five of our six cats and headed to Verlot Campground for a weekend of relaxation. Verlot is about 10 miles east of Granite Falls, Washington and is located on the Stillaguamish River. You can make reservations here. This campground was built by the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) in the 1930s and is, as you can see here, a National Forest Campground. There are no electrical, water or sewer hookups in this campground. |
| A nice, wide road leads into the campground. Our loop is to the left. Inside the campground the roads are narrow. |
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This very small campground has about 24 sites (including the camphost site) in two loops. We reserved site 13 and it was, without a doubt, the best site in the campground (other than the camphost site which has full hookups, of course!). |
| Our site is directly on the river (as are about half of the sites in this campground, but it's huge and very private. |
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There's a nice sandy beach... |
| With views up the river... |
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And down the river... |
| Quite a ways back to the firepit, table and RV, from the river, and there's lots of room... |
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It just doesn't get much nicer than this... |
| We backed easily into the site and extended both slides... |
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Note the narrow road. This portion is marked as two way but there is not room for two rigs to pass side by side. Someone would have to give way... |
| Down at the end of our loop were some tent sites that bordered on private property. |
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Still nice river access for the tenters, though... |
| The camphosts are settled in for their stay at this campground... |
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They had just finished washing their rig... |
| Mel and Sue were up in Washington from Texas and, as is almost always the case with campground hosts, were very nice people... |
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Campfire wood is pretty expensive when you buy it locally at the campgrounds... |
| Here's a map of Verlot campground. As I said, this is a very small campground and not very far off of the Mountain Loop highway. Many of the sites would get a lot of road noise from passing traffic... |
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There are quite a few wildflowers in the woods around here.... |
| But all we saw as we took our morning walk on Saturday were these Trillium in bloom... |
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We walked down to the Verlot visitor's center to check it out. There's a nice little museum in here that details some of the history of the area.. |
| Fire danger was low which made sense as it was beginning to rain... |
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This sign spoke of the Civillian Conservation Corps of the 1930's and some of the work they did... |
| While this map shows the scenic Mountain Loop highway, which was washed out by flooding in the fall of 2003, about half way around the loop, and the damage has not been repaired yet. It's a shame because there are a lot of nice hiking and camping areas which will not be accessable until the road has been repaired... |
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There's a slice of log across the road from the visitor's center that from a tree that was 770 years old when it was cut down... |
| Plaques attached to the log detail some the historic events that occured during the log's life and point to the tree rings for the year each occurred. Notice how close to the edge of the log they are located... |
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Here's an ore hauler that was used to get the gold out of the mines in the area. Amazing that it's still full of gold! |
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We walked on down to the Turlo campground. About a mile away from the Verlot campground where we're staying... |
| The entry road to the Turlo campground was damaged by flooding of the Stillaguamish River last winter and has not yet been repaired... |
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Lots of damage here... |
| This campground has only a single loop... |
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There's a few nice campsites in here. Number 11 is one of our favorites... |
| Site 10 is pretty nice, too... |
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We hiked back to Verlot along this trail. Flood damage here, as well... |
| This ground cover was prevalent. Not sure what kind it is but it was flowering... |
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Pretty flowers they were... |
| This footbridge is just outside the Verlot campground and crosses a salmon stream. At least, it would be a salmon stream if the salmon were running at this time of year... |
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And a sign detailing the life cycle of salmon and trout in a stream... |
| After all of the rain on Saturday some of our sandy beach at our campsite is gone. We had a great time here and would probably return if we could again get one of the few nice river front sites that would fit our rig. |
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