The Washington State Department of Transportation will close the Gee Creek rest areas on both directions of Interstate 5, near the state Highway 502 interchange at Exit 11, for annual maintenance this week and next.
The southbound rest area will be closed until 4:30 p.m. Friday. Work started early Monday morning. The northbound rest area will be closed from 1 a.m. April 15 to 4:30 p.m. April 19.
During the closures, maintenance crews will deep clean each location, repair damaged picnic areas, update landscaping, and conduct routine safety inspections of the electrical and plumbing systems, according to WSDOT.
Both rest areas are among the busiest in the state, according to WSDOT, with about 800,000 annual visitors using each facility. WSDOT calculated the estimate based on the number of toilet flushes.
