Our Visit to Mima Mounds in Olympia
One weekend I announced that I needed to get out of the house and go for a drive. My husband's suggestion: "Let's go see the Mima Mounds."
My response: "The what?"
He has a knack for knowing about odd little places like this, and I'm glad he does. Off we went.
Getting There
Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve is a short drive off I-5, southwest of Olympia, Washington. The Experience Olympia visitor site has detailed directions.
One heads-up: parking requires a Washington Discover Pass. Buy one ahead of time if you don't already have it.
What Are the Mima Mounds?
The preserve protects a prairie covered in hundreds of evenly spaced, grassy mounds, each several feet tall.
Photos don't quite capture it. The whole landscape rises and falls in gentle humps, like a field of tiny hills.
Trails wind through the mounds, and the main loop is a little under 2 miles. On our visit it was pouring rain with a strong wind, so we cut the walk short and went for clam chowder in downtown Olympia instead. (No regrets.)
We still stayed long enough for some goofy family selfies.
The kids' verdict: come back on a sunny day.
Spring Wildflowers
The big bonus of a spring visit is the wildflowers. I wished I'd brought my Pacific Northwest plant guide, but once home I identified this purple bloom as camas, a member of the lily family.
From a distance, the blue camas weaving between the mounds almost looked like streams of water. Fittingly, Meriwether Lewis described a camas meadow in his journal the same way. Camas bulbs were also an important food for Native peoples of the region. Don't go digging, though: deadly "death camas" often grows right alongside it.
So What Made the Mounds?
Nobody knows for certain. Scientists have proposed glaciers, earthquakes, flooding, and even generations of burrowing pocket gophers.
I'll admit I'm partial to the more imaginative theories.
We'll be back on a drier day to walk the full loop.
Tips for Visiting
- Bring a Discover Pass for parking.
- Go in spring (roughly April through May) for the best wildflowers.
- Dress for the weather. The prairie is open, with little shelter from wind and rain.
- Stay on the trails to protect the mounds and plants.
Have you been to Mima Mounds? What's your theory about how they formed?
