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I’m an avid world traveler, photographer, software developer, and digital storyteller.

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116
Lake Isabella State Park
116

Lake Isabella State Park

south of Shelton, Washington
visited 22 January 2023
Back to parks list

Lake Isabella State Park is quietly nestled in the woods south of Shelton. It’s about half wide-open spaces and half forest. Supposedly, it’s an “undeveloped” park, but there are a good set of hiking trails through the park.

I started with the meadow just to the north of the main parking lot.

Bright green moss and pale lichen cover the dark, wet bark of a fallen log crossing the frame diagonally, with bare winter trees, ferns, and a leaf-littered forest floor in the background.
An abandoned metal-sided barn with a sloping single-pitch roof stands in an overgrown field, its dark open doorway surrounded by faded graffiti and tangled blackberry vines in the foreground. Evergreen and bare deciduous trees line the background under an overcast gray sky.
A dirt trail winds through a damp evergreen forest with tall conifers on the left draped in pale hanging moss and lichen, dense ferns and brush along the right, and diffuse overcast light showing between the trees ahead.
A narrow dirt footpath winds through a dense stand of tall, slender conifer trees with moss-covered trunks and bare lower branches, flanked by green undergrowth and ferns under an overcast winter sky.
A moss-draped tree branch stretches across the frame in a wet, misty forest, with a single water droplet hanging from a strand of moss. A narrow dirt trail winds through the ferns and evergreen undergrowth in the softly blurred background.
An open field of tan, matted winter grass framed by tall evergreen conifers on both sides, with a forested ridge and low mountain in the distance under a heavily overcast gray sky.
A narrow dirt trail winds through a mossy forest of moss-covered alder and conifer trees, with a fallen log lying across the path and a floor of bright green moss, ferns, and rust-colored leaf litter under an overcast winter sky.

And then I explored the woods to the south of the lot.

A damp evergreen forest with tall, slender conifer trunks, some draped in green moss and hanging lichen, rising above a low understory of ferns and leafy groundcover under a pale overcast sky.
A narrow dirt trail winds through a wintry Pacific Northwest forest of tall, bare-branched deciduous trees and evergreen conifers, with low green ferns and Oregon grape crowding both sides of the path under an overcast sky.
A narrow dirt trail winds through a dense, damp evergreen forest, flanked by ferns, moss, and low green undergrowth beneath tall, thin trees with sparse, moss-covered branches under an overcast winter sky.

All told, it took me roughly an hour to explore most of the trails in the park. And it was surprisingly busy, given that there is really no publicity and no official listing (as of this writing, anyway) for this park on the Washington State Parks site.

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