Woodard Bay Conservation Area — Attraction in Olympia

The Chehalis trail starts here, though it was not my original destination. The Chehalis trail is a paved walking and bike path that runs through the heart of Lacey. Where the trail connects/begins there is a reasonably large paved parking lot. There were 3 or 4 spots for RV's or vehicles with a trailer, and maybe a dozen regular spots. There was a single portable toilet when we arrived, but I did not check its state.

Off of the same parking lot there is a dirt/gravel walking path called Overlook Trail, which is what I explored most recently. The path runs through dense, lush forest and the area is heavy with ferns and moss. As the forest is very wet and near water mosquitos could potentially be an issue at certain times of year, but on my excursion I had no issues. I walked on a Saturday morning after a night of rain, and the sunlight streaming through the wet forest was a majestic sight. As beautiful as some of my pictures turned out they still didn't do it justice. The Overlook Trail is roughly a mile round-trip, and had no pooled water. The path is level and smooth, well trimmed, and clear of debris, enough to easily take a stroller or wheel chair. The path is marked with sunkennwood borders. It should be considered a very easy trail. There are several benches along the way, as well as 2 more at an overlook at the trail's end. The Overlook is perched over a waterway, one which I assume is affected by tides as there was very little water there when we arrived.

Just down the road from the previously mentioned parking lot, the road crosses a waterway and there is another parking area. According to some trail maps there are an additional 2 trails there, including a crossroad, so you can make a loop. I have not seen these trails but would presume them to be similarly well-marked...

Woodard Bay Natural Resources Conservation Area is a natural reserve in Olympia, Washington protected under the Washington Natural Areas Program. Once an important processing facility for the loggingindustry, it has been designated as the Weyerhaeuser South Bay Log Dump Rural Historic Landscape. Today the area is a renowned sanctuary for a variety of birds, harbor seals, river otters, bald eagles, and a colony of bats, as well as serving as an important great blue heron rookery. A recent conservation program in the area between the State of Washington and the Nature Conservancy is the first of its kind in the country. American Indians use of the area dates back over 5,000 years when the present coast line stabilised. Euroamerican settlement began in the 1850s with Puget Sound's logging era. The bay was named after Harvey and Solome Woodard, pioneers who arrived in 1853. In the 1920s the site was bought by the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, which brought up to 1 million board feet of timber here annually by rail from all over Thurstonand Lewis counties until it closed the site in 1984. A former logging railroad crosses Woodard Bay on a wooden trestle and a narrow peninsula. It runs out onto a pier in Henderson Inlet across the mouth of Chapman Bay. Here logs were dumped in the water, gathered into rafts and floated to mills...

Nesting season for Cormorants. Web-footed birds, perched on a fir branch, way up and out of sight. Picture this; middle of a slow afternoon on a Tuesday. No one but you in the parking lot as you get out of the car and think, Wow! when did sea lions arive in Woodard bay? You look around just to embarrass yourself for taking such a though seriously. Only to replace it with possible second outrageous idea. Walruses!?! Yep...and they're fighting! So now you gotta investigate. After making sure no one was there, someone that could explain why tree Walruses were there and yet nothing, NOTHING was ever written about it in the Olympian, you start off down the nicely paved road behind the gate and past the kayak launch to see what the whatever it was was.

Anyways its nesting season for Comorants folks. Yep that's what they dubbed the evergreen lounging Tree Walruses when they arrived a few years ago. Keeping them a secret through a series of hoxed videos and phony photos no one dared allow any serious discussionin on the topic. reputations to uphold and all. There was that one thing in the paper durring the parade of species that never qui7 te...