A foray into Lake Sylvia State Park

With a car, Lake Sylvia State Park in Montesano, Wash., is basically the backyard of my apartment in Hoquiam, Wash.: it would take about a half hour to drive from my front door to the lake. By bus, it's an hourslong journey: about 40 minutes on the bus, plus another half hour or so to walk two miles from the bus station, uphill, to the park.

In the 12 years that I've lived in Hoquiam, this week marks the second time I've made it out to the park. It's part of my photographic agenda for this summer: to expand my horizons and visit more of the beauty that surrounds me in the Olypic Peninsula.

According to the Washington State Parks Foundation website:

Lake Sylvia State Park is a quiet, 233-acre camping park with 15,000 feet of freshwater shoreline. The park is an old logging camp in a wooded area halfway between Olympia and the Pacific shore.

To that description I would add that the lake is set in the wooded (mostly evergreen) foothills extending from the Cascade Mountain range down to the Pacific Ocean: that two-mile walk from the bus station in Montesano is all uphill!

I didn't explore the entire 233 acres of the park this week; I didn't even explore the entire lakeshore. I took a simple ramble around the 1.5 mile trail along the lake, through the Chapic Collins Memorial Forest -- as far as I could explore in the two hours I had before rushing back into town for the bus.

It was a brilliantly sunny day, and as far as my photography goes, I made a nearly fatal error. I had the ISO on the camera set to automatic, which meant a lot of the sunny parts of the photos I took were completely washed out, unsalvegeable even with RAW processing.

These 10 are the best of the photos I was able to save. I recognized the error as I walked, but many of my photos of the lake didn't make it.

One advantage of the lake that I enjoyed is that the size, as compared to the Grays Harbor bay where I usually go for my photographic rambles, keeps the wildlife relatively close. I had many opportunities to photograph the waterfowl, even with the 18-55mm wide angle lens. And as far as landscape photography goes, every 15 feet along the trail offers a plethora of views and natural features.

One thing I wasn't too keen on is that even early in season, the park was fairly busy with campers and walkers. I much prefer my early morning shoots in Hoquiam, when there's very few people around.

But the wildlife opportunities and the 233 acres to explore mean I'll probably be going back. Maybe just find a less active time of day than midafternoon, as it was this week.

Thanks for checking these out!

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