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South Sound to the Capitol

Day 40 · Completed

Kamilche

Mason County, WA

Kamilche and the working waters of the South Sound

This day on the route

Date
The day
Walking
Walked
8.1 miles

Day 40, October 16: 8.1 miles walked, from the first Shelton exit to the trading post at the Little Creek Casino, Kamilche. Working tidelands are not public access points.

Route overview, not turn-by-turn directions.

Painted tidal flats with winding blue channels and rows of shellfish beds, framed by conifers, low hills and a narrow road in the distance.
Illustration inspired by Kamilche, Mason County, WA.

On October 16 Jeana walked 8.1 miles from the north end of Shelton to the Little Creek Casino at Kamilche, detouring around a bridge with no shoulder. Little Skookum Inlet is part of the area’s working-waterfront context.

Rebecca had helped her lay out a plan for the last miles to the Capitol, and Lori offered rides to and from the route each day. Jeana used the morning’s walk to make arrangements for the finish, then came to a bridge on US 101 with no shoulder. A police officer under it suggested a parallel road, which she followed until it became less safe than the highway. She finished just before two, beside the totem pole at the trading post of the Little Creek Casino, which is operated by the Squaxin Island Tribe.

The nearby inlet landscape includes commercial shellfish activity. Washington’s Department of Natural Resources lists aquatic transactions for aquaculture and commercial docks at Little Skookum Inlet. Aquaculture and docks are part of the working inlet landscape near this section of the walk.

The route’s final chapter moves among these smaller South Sound communities before reaching Olympia. Shelton’s public institutions, the inlet’s working shore and Madrona Beach’s place beside Eld Inlet form a distinct last section of the loop.

From the road

A plan for the last miles, a detour around a bridge, and sunset by the lake with Lori and Isabella

Two things had happened the evening before that she hadn’t yet written about. Lori’s daughter Rebecca had helped her look at the miles she still had to walk between Shelton and the Washington State Capitol, and together they laid out a plan: how far to walk each day, and where would be a good place to stop. She was really grateful for the help, because Rebecca knows the area much better than she does.

And Lori had invited her to stay in the little cabin next door to her house for as long as she needed, and offered to arrange rides to her starting point each morning and from her stopping point each evening for the last leg of the journey. She can’t tell you, she says, what a relief it is to know where she will be sleeping at night, that she will be able to get on and off the highway safely, and that she will have a ride on Monday to a radio interview to be aired on 95.3 KGY in Olympia. It almost felt too good to be true. But it is true.

Rebecca picked her up in the morning and took her back to where she had finished the day before, on the north side of Shelton near the Walmart. She used the first part of the walk to make arrangements for the finish of the fifth Steps to Marrow walk at the Washington State Capitol.

She also contacted Drew Mikkelsen at KING 5. About nine years ago he did a story on Jada, when the Jada Bascom Foundation was helping to get Jada’s Law passed: the law under which Washington State includes information about how to join NMDP, the national marrow donor program, with each driver’s license and ID card it mails. It felt congruent, she says, to ask whether he might do a follow-up story on the work the Foundation continues to do today to enroll life-saving stem cell donors.

Rebecca had warned her about a bridge on Highway 101 with no shoulder, and suggested she walk down the on-ramp and back up the off-ramp to get around it. She was just under five miles in when she reached it, and at the bottom of the on-ramp she saw a sign: “No pedestrians, no hitchhiking.” There was a police car under the bridge, so she walked over to ask the officer about it. It was the first sign like it she had seen on the 101, and she thought it might cover only a short stretch of the highway.

He said he was a police officer, not the highway patrol, so he wouldn’t stop her from walking on the highway, but he offered her another way: a road running alongside the highway that didn’t show on her maps app. She followed his directions for perhaps a mile and a quarter, until that road became less safe than the highway itself, with no shoulder, quite a bit of traffic and a deep ditch along the side. Right there she saw an opening where she could get back up onto the 101 without too much difficulty, and that’s what she did.

She was headed for the Little Creek Casino, which is operated by the Squaxin Island Tribe. With just over a mile to go she again saw an easy way off the 101, onto a road that took her straight there. She had started walking around 10:30 and finished just before 2:00. She texted Lori that she was done and standing next to the totem pole at the trading post, and Lori called the neighbours who had offered to help with the driving. They all came out to pick her up.

Back at the house, she and Lori sat outside overlooking the lake down the hill with some very refreshing juice, and Lori offered her some lunch. She was really hungry, so the acorn squash lasagna hit the spot. They sat and chatted, and Jeana was very interested to learn about the work Lori and her late husband did over many years with marginalized seniors and people with developmental delays in Shelton. Lori continues to serve those communities today.

Before they knew it, the afternoon had turned toward evening and the sun was beginning to set. Without the bright sun in her eyes, Lori felt she could drive the short distance down to the lake, so together, with her dog Isabella, they drove down and watched the sun set behind the mountains across the lake. Jeana was glad to see it: to breathe deeply and savour the moment.

Her host that night was Lori, in Shelton.

It almost felt too good to be true. But it is true.

Jeana Moore
The little cottage in the woods where Jeana stayed: a low wooden cabin with a covered porch hung with string lights, a short flight of steps and a leaf-strewn path, under tall firs and fronds of bamboo.A painting of pale pink rhododendron flowers among dark green leaves.Still, dark water in a woodland pond mirrors the trees above it, with a grassy bank beyond and autumn leaves at its edge.A tree trunk thickly covered in moss rises among slender trees and ferns in sunlit woods.Mossy trunks lean across a woodland slope carpeted with fallen leaves, lit by the afternoon sun.The broad, ridged base of an old cedar, with drooping fronds of green and rust-coloured foliage around it.Big green maple leaves hang in front of a mossy, leaning trunk, with ferns on the forest floor below.A quiet road with a wide shoulder runs between woods and a hillside of yellow autumn trees under a clear blue sky, with power lines alongside.A path covered in fallen leaves leads into the woods past a wooden post, between birches and trees turning yellow.Close-up of a carved and painted totem pole at the trading post: a figure with a red face holds a white-painted form ringed in red, beside a column of carved bright blue shapes.An interpretive sign under a timber shelter, headed “The Squaxin Island Tribe”, with historical photographs and a map of the inlets of southern Puget Sound.A sign listing the present-day tribes of the Olympic Peninsula, from Squaxin Island, Makah and Skokomish to Quinault, Hoh and Quileute, and those of the Kitsap Peninsula with rights in Hood Canal, Port Gamble S’Klallam and Suquamish.
Show all 24 photos from this dayShow fewer photos
Between two tall, dark tree trunks the view opens over a lake and wooded hills in the afternoon light.Sunset glows orange behind tall tree trunks and the outline of the hills, with a glint of the lake below.Jeana stands smiling on a wooden dock in her yellow-green safety vest, with the still lake behind her reflecting a pink and blue evening sky.Streaks of pink cloud above a dark line of firs on the far shore of the lake at dusk.Jeana bends to pet Isabella, Lori’s brown and white dog, on the wooden dock by the lake.The trees and houses of the far shore reflected upside down in the lake, with pink sunset clouds rippling across the water.Pink clouds drift above the tree line across the lake, mirrored in the calm water.A small dock and a couple of posts stand in the still lake as the sky turns gold behind low wooded hills.Streaks of pink and grey cloud sweep across the evening sky above the dark shoreline, reflected in the lake.Tall firs stand in silhouette against a band of pink sunset on the far shore, doubled in the water below.Fir trees in black silhouette against a vivid orange and pink sky, their reflections stretching across the lake.Bright orange clouds over the dark tree line and a few lit windows on the far shore, mirrored in the lake at dusk.
Distance walked
8.1 miles
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Sources

Local history and background reading for this stop.

  1. Shoreline District aquatic transactions — checked Sep 5, 2026
  2. About Mason Health — checked Sep 5, 2026
  3. McLane Creek Basin study — checked Sep 5, 2026
The flyer: STOP BLOOD CANCER set in tall letters over a dark plum page, a quote, and a QR code beside a text-to-join line for the U.S.One standing face of the table tent: the same headline and quote on the left, a large QR code on the right.

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Print it. Put it where people already stand.

A coffee counter, a church foyer, a break room, a race table. Every sheet carries the code that opens Jeana’s walk, and a number to text for anyone who would rather not scan — no app, no wifi, nothing to hand back.Every sheet carries the code that opens Jeana’s walk — nothing to install, nothing to hand back. The number to text printed beside it is for joining NMDP, which registers people who live in the U.S., its territories and the freely associated states. If you live anywhere else, find your country’s registry.

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