Things Have Sure Changed

We stopped in Mt. Vernon Sunday morning and attended the church we attended 40 years ago. The name was different and the location was different but there were two couples there that we knew. It wasn’t just the church. While we were in church, someone stole the jerry can of gas out of the back of the truck. How times have changed!

We headed east out of Burlington on Highway 20 moving from farms to forest. First stop was to be the ranger station in Sedro Woolley, but it had moved. Actually, they said it had moved twice since I’d last been there.

This used to be known as Baker Lake Resort when it was a commercial operation and some maps still show it that way. Nearly all of the original buildings are now gone and it has been converted to a NFS campground named Swift Creek. There are 49 sites ($18 – half for senior passes) with just a small handful of rigs in the reserved sites. We were initially the only one in the first-come-first-served section. Our site could handle a rig twice as long.

We’re out at the end of the developed area with the mouth of Swift Creek on one side and forest on the other. No visible neighbors. No hook-ups but there is water available in various spots around the campground. We were going to stay at Park Creek ($12/$6) on the other side of the Baker Lake Road, but decided to settle here for the view. Park Creek is currently empty.

We’re centrally located here at Baker Lake to try to revisit some childhood memory spots. We’ll be looking for Rainbow Falls, Baker Hot Springs, and the Morovitz Ranch. It is made more challenging with maps of various vintages and roads that have moved or have been abandoned to the forest for many years. Even the highly detailed Forest Service map is 15 years old and shows campgrounds in different locations than they currently exist.