Here’s a view from the CCC-built stone mini-castle lookout tower on top of Orcas Island’s Mt. Constitution in Moran State Park. This is looking north toward Canada in the distance, with the two islands we camped and kayaked on for three days closer in: Sucia Island (left) and Matia Island (right). Mt. Constitution is the highest mountains (2407 feet) in the San Juan Islands, so it gives a wonderful 360 degree view of the island groups, waterways, boats, mainland, Canada, Olympics, and Cascades.
Mom is popping open a bottle of wine; gotta love kayaks instead of backpacks for stuff like that! Dad is mentally preparing himself for the hard work of kicking back to relax, while Karen is practicing her face making abilities. We navigated from the north shore of Orcas Island and around Sucia Island into Echo Bay, where we camped on the bay’s western shore. This camp provided a good central base from which to explore Sucia and Matia Islands plus the network of trails that meander throughout Sucia. The islands are almost entirely marine state park, so it’s all fair game for exploring. Boats of all types, as you can see in the background, moor here for a day or week or whatever as they cruise the San Juans.
Here’s Dad soaking up some rays and scenery on the south side of Sucia Island. The rock undulating formations that line the shore form very interesting shapes and smoothed-hole patterns that are caused by sea salt on sandstone, combined with wind and wave action. It’s a great lesson in marine geology at work. As is always the case in the San Juans, it was important to be aware of the direction and intensity of water currents throughout the day, plus the location of tide rips. Experience and a good understanding of local charts is the key there.
Mom and Karen are taking their double kayak into Snoring Bay, which is located on the southeast side of Sucia Island. This small bay has a shallow head with a beach that crosses over to Mud Bay on the other side and connects with the island’s walking trails. The land to the right is Johnson Point; on the north side of the point are some great viewing spots for getting close to seals. You don’t even have to come to them since they’ll pop up their heads above the water right by your kayak!
Mom, Scott, and Dad on a headland that forms the south shore of Fox Cove on Sucia Island. That’s Orcas Island in the background. On our last day for this kayak trip, we paddled along the nooks and crannies of the island’s south side. We parked our kayaks on the coast of Fossil Bay and walked around some of the island trails before meeting the tide flow just right for our kayak crossing back to Orcas.
Dad and Mom are checking out the full circle view from the top of Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island. There’s a 1000 foot drop to the forests below in the background, and the mainland (called “back in America” by the locals) and Cascade Mountains are visible further out (looking southeast). The night before, we stayed at a cabin in the rustic Doe Bay resort, which came complete with showers (felt good after 3 days of kayaking), tasty food, and clothing-optional natural hot springs hot tubs.
Dad took a little shut-eye in a somewhat precarious position on a rock above one of the many waterfalls that plummet through Cascade Creek in Moran State Park on Orcas Island. Fortunately he didn’t roll to the right or left to “get more comfortable”, especially since he was resting on hard rock! We hiked among several waterfalls here, with a little post-kayak-trip napping thrown in for good measure. Afterwards, we explored Eastsound and some of the roads of Orcas before heading back to the mainland via the pretty ferry route.
In celebration of Mom’s birthday, we all got together high above Seattle at the SkyCity, which is a fancy restaurant located at the top of the Space Needle. The entire restaurant revolves a full circle every 50 minutes, so our window seats treated us to views of the Cascade Mountains, Puget Sound, a beautiful glowing orange-sky sunset over the Olympics, and the Seattle skyline as it brightened throughout the night. Best part of the food was Mom’s dessert: a funky UFO-themed ice cream dish that came complete with fog-producing dry ice!
We hiked down the trail and across river rocks to the bottom of Snoqualmie Falls, where we could look up at the large waterfall and feel its powerful sound and spray. We also explored some other local trails and waterfalls to end a fun week of Mom and Dad visiting.