I had some work in southwest Washington the past few couple of days. Very wet and cold. There is not much rain shadow effect in that area and hence the rain was a bit heavy and it was windy with temperatures in the 40s. Despite the cold and wet I did stop by one of the southwest Washington prairies prairies-and-puget-ice-lobe.
Blue camas
Strawberries
The southwest Washington prairies have shrunk over the past 200 years, but were at one time utilized heavily by First Nations peoples for camas harvest, strawberries and a variety of other edible plants as well as grazing land for deer and elk indian-population-camas-and-prairie. I stopped at Mima Prairie last fall geologic-pilgrimage-mima-mounds and visited Rocky Prairie this last winter. While passing by the prairie pictured above I stopped to check out the spring flowers despite my semi pickled condition from filed work in the rain. It would be nice to enjoy this prairie in spring sunshine, but no luck this time. Or better yet experience the strawberries as Charles Wilkes did during his passing through the area in the 1841.
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