Willis Enterprises at Work

Walking along the bay in Hoquiam, Wash., this week, on an unseasonably warm yet overcast afternoon and evening, I came across a barge being loaded at Terminal 3 of the Port of Grays Harbor.

I was photographing in a wide marsh/mudlflat area west of Old Cannery Park. The conveyor at Terminal 3 is always a feature of landscape photographs in that area, but I don't think I've ever shared a pic of a barge being loaded up.

Willis Enterprises, located just across Airport Way from Terminal 3, grinds logs into wood chips for the barges. I walked past their complex along the road as I followed the bay from east to west, and I took a few shots of their gigantic front-end loaders at work, feeding the wood chips into the end of the conveyor.

The front-end loaders reminded me of Tonka Trucks, as colorful as they are, but I guess this type of equipment is what inspired the Tonka Trucks, so it's not surprising.

Most of my photos from the day were focused on the terrain of the mudflat, and all the driftwood scattered there by the high water we've had this fall and winter. I'm working those photos up for a longer (@cliffagreen) Photography Lovers post, which will probably be ready for publication at the start of next week.

It's pretty incredible how high they heap those wood chips onto the barge, isn't it? A tugboat (you can see the tail end of one in the final photo of this series) will haul the barge upriver into the Aberdeen and Cosmopolis area when it's full. I'm guessing that this will all be pressed into particle board at one of the mills up there.

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