YEAR: 2012

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: September

DATE: sept 22

STATE: Washington

COUNTY: Chelan County

LOCATION DETAILS: Thousand Trails camp site. 20752 Chiwawa Loop Rd Leavenworth, WA 98626. 18 miles west of Leavenworth, WA

NEAREST TOWN: Plain, WA

NEAREST ROAD: Chiwawa Loop Rd

OBSERVED: My wife and I spent all summer camping at the thousand trails resort in Plain WA.On the night of September 22 2012, we were spending time out by the camp fire. The campground was mostly empty. This is a very large campground 18 miles west of Leavenworth WA.

It was around 11:30PM at night. We were drinking coffee and enjoying the warm starlit evening. I noticed a very strong sulfur musty smell. My wife said, "Do you smell that?" I told her that I did. In my 40 years of being in the northwest woods I have never smelled anything like it. In a few minutes, a medium piece of wood came flying into the camp. This piece of wood hit our trailer and bounced off it, and landed on our wood pile. We both were in shock. My wife said, "What the hell was that!?" We both looked at each other and said, " You don't think it was you know who?" The smell left, but in a few minutes it came back. I asked my wife where my NIKON was. It was at this point that a rock came flying into camp.

There were major fires all around us at the time. The animals in that part of the woods were majorly displaced during this time. There is more to this story. We would like to talk with a researcher to tell the rest.

ALSO NOTICED: We did find what looked like trees staked together to make a cover nearby earlier during our stay. My wife also noticed screams off in the distance that evening.

OTHER WITNESSES: No

OTHER STORIES: No

TIME AND CONDITIONS: 11:30pm

ENVIRONMENT: Heavy Eastern Washington Forest land. Close to the Wenatchee River. Also close to Lake Wenatchee and Fish Lake. Ponderosa pines and white pine forests.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Laura Roeder:

Spoke with this witness for about 45 minutes over the phone. He is a long-time fire fighter and investigator with a department in the south Seattle metro area.

He and his wife are very familiar with this very large, well-established campground, and had spent the entire summer camping at this campsite. This particular site at the campground is at the terminus of several trails, near the southwest edge of the property. During the peak of summer, it was a popular mountain bike trail. On the campground map, this site is also next to the only dumpster for that campground loop. He stated that there is also irrigation close by, as well as the Wenatchee River.

On this night, there was only one other party in the entire campground, an older couple with an RV that retired quite early, and well away from their location. This was also at the time that there were a number of fires in the forests nearby, the witness had noted.

As they sat chatting and looking up at the stars, a very strong stench wafted into camp, and the witness’s wife asked if he smelled it, too. He said that he did, but it was something that he, as an experienced outdoorsman, had never smelled before. It was similar to a deer/gamey scent, but also strongly sulfuric.

Suddenly, as they were talking, a piece of wood came flying into camp, hit their trailer, and landed in their woodpile. They were very startled. The piece of wood was about 14 inches long and a few inches around with broken edges. They listened for sounds of footsteps or brush cracking, but heard none. The strong smell then seemed to go away.

They had a mild interest and had watched Finding Bigfoot several times, and wondered if this smell and the piece of wood flying into camp might have been from one. The strong smell then came back, and seemed to be coming from the southwest, from a very dense, brushy area of the forest. The witness then asked his wife where his camera was, and suddenly a rock (they could not determine exactly how big, but it sounded relatively small as it hit the ground) came into camp and landed on the ground near them.

Again, they were both very startled, as there had been no evidence of any other people in the campground for days, except the one elderly couple that had gone to bed much earlier that night, across the campground.

The witness’ wife then told him about something odd that had happened earlier in the evening. Since they had stayed at this campground for the entire summer, they knew some of the habitual happenings of the neighborhood. There was a house some distance away, across from the other end of the campground. They had several dogs, and every evening, the dogs would bark for a period of time. She had noticed that the dogs did not bark at all that night. After she noticed this, she said she heard a series of odd calls in the distance when she was away from their immediate site. She said they had sounded just like screeching calls that they’d heard Matt Moneymaker do on Finding Bigfoot.

The witness decided to file a report as he had never smelled anything quite like they did that night before with all his years of being in the outdoors (and it went away and came back), as well as the stick and rock oddly flying into their site.

While this campground is very large, and one would expect a fairly consistent human presence all around, it was well after peak season when this occurred and the witness and his wife saw no evidence of people in their immediate area. The witness seemed very credible and spoke in a very concise manner, which is likely reflective of his years as a metro fire investigator.

It is possible that there may have been a person around their site that could have thrown the stick and rock into it, but there was no evidence of footfalls or the ambient noise like branch breaks, etc. that would be expected when a person is moving about in the woods in the dark. With the strange odor, a stick and a rock being thrown into camp and witnessed by both parties, coupled with the abnormal activity by the dogs and the calls the witness’s wife heard earlier, I believe it is possible that a sasquatch was in the area that night.

About BFRO Investigator Laura Roeder:

Laura Roeder is an IT analyst in the aerospace industry living near Seattle, Washington. She had a Class A sighting while cave hunting near Mt. Adams in 2004 and another on a private group expedition in 2012. She has also had multiple Class B encounters in southwest Washington and various locations around Washington state over a span of approximately 20 years. She attended the 2012 Western Washington BFRO expedition, co-hosted the 2013 WA Cascades Area #1 expedition, and assisted at the 2013 WA Area #2 and 2013 Olympic Peninsula expeditions. She continues to do research and attend expeditions as available.

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