Chambers Bay Loop Trail
In the city of University Place, nestled on the western edge of Tacoma, Washington, you can find a great city park tucked between a golf course and the bay. A rather steep trail takes you from the top of a ridge down to flat, open field above the water’s edge with more trails taking you throughout the rest of Chambers Creek Regional Park. (Note: you can instead drive directly here, avoiding the walk up the ridge, but where’s the fun in that.) There is a dog park and plenty of room for throwing frisbees, flying kites, biking, or just relaxing and taking in the fresh air. There is also a bridge taking you over the Amtrak tracks directly down to the beach. Really fun and all very nicely maintained, the whole park is almost a thousand acres in full. Ok… While all that description makes it sound like almost any other good city park, it is actually fascinatingly more than that; there are also huge, half broken concrete pillars and posts, relics of a long-gone mining operation, in the center of the park, giving it the feel of a post-apocalyptic film set. Quite surreal, and judging from the many other photographers there, quite photogenic. If this is the post-apocalypse, count me in.
I visited during my “Trail of Trails” tour in September 2021.
See all of my Tacoma area posts.
Nice person in Portland, Oregon, and beyond.
